Abusive Parents / Live-Action Films

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Works with their own pages:

• The DCU
• Marvel Universe

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Individual examples:

• The dinner table scene in After Earth goes a bit too far with Cypher's aloofness to his son, making him seem like this instead. Especially when you learn the reason for it is that he resents Kitai leaving his sister to be killed by an ursa, when he would have undoubtedly just been killed himself if he'd stayed.
• In Agnes of God, Agnes is sexually molested by her mother.
• In The Alzheimer's Case it's revealed that Laddo and his brother were physically and sexually abused by their father as children, which explains Laddo's hatred of harming children as an adult.
• The Archer: Bob straps his son Michael for having let Lauren and Rebecca escape. It's strongly implied this is far from the first time he's done this, since it comes off as routine.
• Await Further Instructions has Tony — a Control Freak who values Blind Obedience above all else during the crisis, and Granddad, who instilled such values in Tony with the added benefit of beating him black and blue for wetting the bed, and attributes the willfulness of Nick to Tony's refusal to administer such beatings when he was younger.
• In the alternate 1985 of Back to the Future Part II, Biff Tannen proves himself to be abusive to both his Trophy Wife Lorraine and his adopted children, even threatening to put his wife and her children in jail alongside her brother Joey if she ever tried to leave him.
• Inverted in the Bollywood movie Baghban. Raj and Pooja provided their four sons with everything they needed, at the expense of their own desires. However, when they are forced to live with their sons, they force Raj and Pooja to live seperately. Both receive a lot of abuse staying at their son.
• Bethany: Claire's mother had shades of this, making her daughter take part in beauty pageants, and probably also yelling at her quite a bit (assuming all that wasn't in her head). She was even worse to Bethany. She hid her away from the world because of her birth defects, stitched a mask to her face, and made her live in secret tunnels in the walls. Her only friend was Claire, who thought she was her imaginary friend.
• Macy Jean isn't trying to be abusive, but none the less makes her daughter's life a living hell in Beyond the Lights. She micromanages Noni's life and career to the point that Noni feels as though she is, in her own words, "suffocating in the middle of the street and no one can see me dying". This, along with the demands and hyper-sexualized image forced upon her by her record label, is what leads Noni to attempt suicide by jumping off her balcony — and ultimately to her firing her mother as her manager.
• Bird Box: Malorie threatens her kids with physical harm at least a few times to make sure they know not to stray from any orders she gives, which is probably traumatizing, and leaves the girl particularly frightened of her. She severely regrets it in the end.
• Nina's mother in Black Swan is shown to be overbearing and emotionally crippling; she still lives with her 28-year-old daughter, constantly keeps tabs on Nina's career (by phoning in to the people at the ballet company), projects her own regrets and failures on her — at one point implying that Nina was the reason she had to give up on her dreams... to Nina's face no less, and is presented to the audience as a barrier between Nina and her sexuality, let alone adulthood in general. How much of this is the real her, and how much is a result of Nina's slowly slipping grip on reality is anyone's guess.
• Bloodthirsty: Grey was raised in different foster homes, some of which she indicates had been terrible, with cruel foster parents who'd leave the kids to go hungry at times.
• The Breakfast Club: All five of the main characters have these.
  • Bender's father is an alcoholic who beats him for no discernible reason and his mother also calls him lazy.
  • Brian's parents emotionally treat him like a dog and live vicariously off of his academic achievements.
  • Claire's parents play mind games on her to get back at each other.
  • Allison's parents don't give a damn, and ignore her.
  • Andy's dad is a sociopathic bastard who pressures his son to be like him and perform perfectly in sports. Like Brian's parents, it is insinuated he gets his jollies off of this.
• Jess' father, in the 2007 Film of the Book of Bridge to Terabithia, is a borderline case. He is abjectly disrespectful of his son's creativity and constantly makes sneering remarks about his son's kind heart and artistic ability. However, he begins making a Heel–Face Turn by the end of the story, brought on by Leslie's death. Jess retains his kindness and creativity, despite his father's harsh treatment.
• In Broken Blossoms Lucy Burrows is regularly beaten by her father, who eventually kills her.
• The Butterfly Effect has Kayleigh's father. In the first timeline, he often had her strip and filmed her. In another timeline, due to Evan's interference, he left her alone but shifted the abuse to her brother. It is implied that it was physical abuse rather than sexual.
• In The Candy Snatchers, Sean's mother openly despises him for being mute. Most of her screen time is spent yelling at him, hitting him, complaining about him, or threatening to destroy his toys. At one point she gives him one of her downers even though he's a toddler just to get him out of her way for eight hours.
• In The Catcher, Johnny's father is a 'Sports Dad': driving his son so hard to be perfect in baseball that it reaches the point of physical abuse. Johnny snaps and beats his dad to death with a baseball bat.
• Frank Abagnale Jr.'s parents in Catch Me If You Can but his father engages in emotional abuse in one of his last scenes. Frank has been trying to stop his criminal lifestyle for a while now, but can't go through with it until his father tell him that it's alright to do so. Instead Frank Sr. refuses and tries to use his son as a weapon against the government out of spite, because they didn't support him when his business went under. This part of the film did not happen in real life.
• Julio from Change of Habit has a father who hits him, insults him, and orders him not to talk unless he can do it without stuttering.
• This is a plot point in Chinatown, and is the source of one of Film Noir's most shocking reveals. To make a long story short, Noah Cross raped Mrs. Mulwray and she had a daughter by him. Mulwray's protectiveness toward her drives a good amount of the plot.
• In A Christmas Story, Ralphie's mom asks him where he learned the "F dash dash dash" word. He decides it's a bad idea to truthfully say his dad, so he says his friend Schwartz. Ralphie's mom calls Mrs. Schwartz and notifies her. She screams "What?!" and proceeds to beat him without even hanging up.
• Closet Land: The main character of the Author's novel has one-her mother locks her inside a closet all day. Also, the Author's mother was at least neglectful if not abusive, failing to notice that her boyfriend was sexually abusing her child.
• Compulsion (2013): Saffron's mom not only constantly pushed her toward stardom regardless of what Saffron wanted, making her anorexic with frequent comments about keeping down her weight, but actually let her be raped by one casting director to secure a part.
• Nathan Grantham in Creepshow, as well as the father of the boy who's reading the comic in the framing story.
• Dead Poets Society had Mr. Perry and Mr. Anderson. Both are emotionally abusive to Neil and Todd respectively, but Mr. Perry is a Vicariously Ambitious narcissist who's overly controlling of Neil's life and determined that he's headed for a medical career no matter the cost to his son's happiness and well-being, while the Andersons neglect and ignore Todd, viewing him as The Unfavorite. Neil is eventually Driven to Suicide by his father's abuse, but he instead passes the blame to his teacher who encouraged him to follow his dreams.
• All the parents of the four villain kids in Descendants. The Evil Queen taught her daughter to value physical appearance above all else while constantly telling her that she wasn't quite pretty enough to meet her standards, Jafar only cares about his son when he steals something of value for his shop, Cruella De Vil treats her son as little more than a slave and values her fur coats and car over his life, and Big Bad Maleficent saw her daughter as a tool to get back in power and (according to a tie-in novel) punished her as a kid for showing basic human kindness towards someone, not to mention how she tried to kill her and her friends during the film's climax for rejecting villainy.
• The parents in Dogtooth keep their kids in a walled-off estate and skew their perceptions of reality (by teaching them the wrong meanings of words and making them come to believe that the outside world is dangerous). When one of the daughters (none of the kids have been given names) comes into contact with some DVDs, the father tapes said DVDs to his hand and beats her brutally with them.
• In Don't Breathe, Rocky relates that after her father left, her mother used to tell her that it was her fault he left, and used to lock her in the trunk of the car to keep her out of the way.
• In Don't Go in the House Donny's mother used to put his bare arms over the gas stove in order to "burn the evil out of him". This seemed to be a regular childhood punishment of his.
• At the end of The Dry, Aaron discovers Ellie's diary and learns that her father Mal Deacon had been sexually and physically abusing her ever since her mother left. He then realises that Mal murdered her by drowning her in the river to prevent her from running away.
• Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: Doric's human parents, who hid her in an attic for years before abandoning her in the woods as she's a tiefling (part demon).
• Eastern Promises: Semyon is physically and verbally abusive well into Kirill's adulthood. It may have gotten worse now that Kirill's a grown man, and is also, at least implicitly, because Kirill is likely gay. It comes across as worse in contrast to how Semyon treats the little girls in their family, which seems genuinely avuncular. Well, maybe not all the little girls in his family — Semyon also orders Kirill to murder one of his illegitimate children, who would be Kirill's own infant half-sister.
• This is a main plot point of El Bola, a Spanish movie in which the main character is verbally and physically abused by his father. The final scene shows him filing a complaint against his father at the police station.
• They're seen on three occasions in Eden Lake: first, Jenny and Steve witness a mother slap her child very strongly for running within the pagoda of the restaurant; later, Steve witnesses Brett's father call his son maliciously and threateningly while he's within his house; thirdly, Jenny witnesses Brett's father smack Brett across the face after the latter refuses to obey him.
• Elves (2017): Ken's father. In the time he's on screen, he's shown to have a very low opinion of his son, insulting him and being impatient with him.
• The 1985 Argentinian movie Esperando la carroza, Matilde has an abusive mother called Elvira Romero De Musicardi who always yells and scolds her daughter with some of her iconic quotes.
  Matilde: ¡Mamá: no tengo agua!
  Elvira: Por empezar dejá de hinchar...
  Matilde: ¡Mamá! Ay... Está helada.
  Elvira: Pero claro, si acabo de sacarla de la heladera.
  Matilde: Vos querés que me agarre una pulmonía.
  Elvira: Mal agradecida. Secate y vestite, querés, que tenés que Ir a comprar tres botellas de agua mineral.
  Elvira: Esta criatura estúpida...
  Matilde: Mamá: dice doña Elisa que nos vayamos todos a la mierda.
  Elvira: Minusválida mental. ¿Quién te enseñó a dejar el teléfono descolgado?
  Elvira: ¡Andá a comprar, Matilde!
  Matilde: Ya te dije que no voy y esto es definitivo y final.
  Elvira: Vas a ir a comprar matambre, mortadela y salchichón o te mato.
  Matilde: Mamá: tengo hambre.
  Elvira: Jodete!
  Matilde: Mamá, puedo ir a lo de la Pocha.
  Elvira: No, no podés. Qué va a decir la gente, quédate y llorá un poco. Llora nena, ¿pero no tenés vergüenza vos?, ah, che, esta me sacó el carácter de los Musicardi, viste que son duros y egoístas que se mueren, en cambio nosotros los Romero somos tan sentimentales que es mejor ser como ellos, te digo, ¿eh?, porque se sufre menos. Mira lo que es a esta nadie me la va a pisotear. Anda a mi cuarto querida...
• In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Credence Barebone is routinely beaten by his adopted, wizard-hating mother, which has been going on since before the start of the film. This is part of the reason Credence is helping the wizard government on investigations into his mother, despite not being a wizard himself.
• Feast of Love: Oscar's dad is a verbally abusive jerkass to him, along with his girlfriend Chloe. Later he even threatens her with a knife.
• First Love, directed by Takashi Miike: We are not told exactly what happened between Monica and her father, but she has terrifying hallucinations of him, in which he is only wearing his underpants. When he got into debt with the Yakuza, he cleared the debt by selling Monica to them, for her to work as a prostitute.
• One of the themes in Forrest Gump is the effect that childhood sexual abuse (at the hands of her father) had over the course of Jenny's (Forrest Gump's sweetheart's) life.
• In Frailty, a father forces his son to murder people the father believes are demons, and punishes him severely when he refuses.
• Late in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell it is reveled that the asylum director is Sarah's father and that he attempted to rape her. This was the event that caused her muteness, and caused her to be consigned to the asylum.
• Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare has Mr. Underwood, Freddy Krueger's foster parent, who used to whip him with a belt, until one day Freddy's sadomasochism proved too much and he got killed.
• From Beyond the Grave: In "An Act of Kindness", Christopher and his wife Mabel are so wrapped up in their Awful Wedded Life that they alomost completely ignore their son, and he ends up becoming collateral damage in their arguments. The Karmic Twist at the end is that Jim and Emily Underwood are actually there to answer the son's prayers and not Christopher's.
• The Galaxy Invader: Joe chases his daughter Carroll with a shotgun and shoots at her because she slapped him.
• Gemini Man: Clay raised Junior and acted like his adopted father. However, he lied to him about his origins, and manipulated Junior to turn into a killer later. Junior is distraught at finding this out.
• Ghost Note: Jack notes that his father was this when he was alive. He beat up Rick for going into his workshop, and when he found Jack in the attic, he choked him and threw him down the attic stares. We later find out that since he was keeping Eugene Burn behind a brick wall in his workshop and hid his guitar in the attic, he may have done those because he didn't want his sons being influenced by them.
• Gimme Shelter (2014): Apple's mother did something that she won't talk about in the past and tries to murder her when Apple won't leave with her.
• Girlfight: When accused by Diana of driving her mother to suicide with abuse, her father strikes her (Diana beats him since she's trained as a boxer at this point).
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): Dr. Emma Russell is revealed to be the emotionally abusive variety. It's subtly implied in the film (and all but confirmed in a deleted scene and the novelization) that Emma has been trying to turn Madison against her father out of spite after the latter distanced himself from them in a Grief-Induced Split. However, the big hitter which makes Emma hit this trope is that she's been indoctrinating Madison into her and Alan Jonah's Eco-Terrorist plot to release the Kaiju, by showing Madison herself how benevolent some of the very gentlest Titans (namely Mothra) can be whilst limiting Maddie's exposure to other, much more violent Titans and sugarcoating the sheer amount of global bloodshed that Emma's plan (which Emma made Madison directly complicit in) would involve. Furthermore, Emma's mental instability has caused her to fail to teach her daughter in any way how to mentally cope with the horrible things they'll be doing, nor did she prepare Maddie for her friends and even her father being among their victims, which leads to Madison being increasingly traumatized as the bodies start dropping because of the events that she and her mother started. Bear in mind, Madison is just 12 years old and Emma has likely screwed around with Maddie's head since the divorce when she was six or seven.
• Godzilla vs. Kong: Since getting custody of Madison after Emma's death, Dr. Mark Russell has become an emotionally abusive helicopter parent, especially more so in the novelization. He wants to make up for the time he missed with Madison but goes about it in the worst way. Mark seems to have completely forgotten that Madison is stronger and smarter than most kids her age, so he treats her like a stupid kid who doesn't know what she's talking about. Mark wants his daughter to be as normal as possible, down to them now living in a normal house in a normal neighborhood. Going as far as enlisting his sister, Cassidy, to help out with Madison, Mark gives Madison little freedom and expects her to obey him without question, dismissing her thoughts and feelings about Godzilla and being miserable in school outright no matter how reasonable they are. After Madison was homeschooled for years, Mark dumps her into public high school and expects her to tough it out for her lack of social skills with other kids, although she's ahead of them, and they, except for her only friend Josh, all hate her because of Emma's infamous reputation. Madison calls Mark out on using his insecurities to emotionally blackmail her into helplessness. Having rejoined Monarch in an upper-level capacity, Mark also pulls rank on Madison like a dictator to make her avoid all Titan-related matters so he won't have to worry about her on top of everything else and make things easier for himself at her expense. Mark's parenting style makes Madison feel betrayed and hurt despite her tough skin; she feels her dad doesn't trust her, either because his trust issues with Emma transferred to her or for some other reason. It's ultimately unsurprising that Madison runs off to get to the bottom of Godzilla's rampaging and its connection to Apex.
• In The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery, John Egan is a He-Man Woman Hater who refuses to have women even tangentially involved in his work. He drunkenly confesses to George that his misogyny comes from experiences with his alcoholic abusive mother, whom he eventually murdered by pushing her down a flight of stairs.
• Greta: Greta is implied to have been this to her daughter, who committed suicide. Along with that, a woman who had known her speculates she herself suffered from extreme abuse as a child, giving her references to being "put in a box" (something she had later done to victims).
• In The Grizzlies, Kyle's father is an alcoholic and physically abusive to him and his mother to the point where he runs away and sleeps in an abandoned cargo container every night. Miranda's mother emotionally and physically abuses her, slapping her and burning her school books outside their house to punish her for not helping out at home.
• Andrew Garfield's character, Desmond Doss, in Hacksaw Ridge has an alcoholic father who beats him and his brother most days of their childhood. Still, it's implied his alcohol problems started after seeing the horrors of World War I, and Desmond seems to have reconciled with him by his adulthood. Specifically, the father gave up drinking after Desmond stopped him from abusing his wife and pointed a gun at him, causing his father to curl up and sob.
• Michael Myers had these in the Halloween (2007) remake.
• In Heathers, J.D.'s father Bud Dean is strongly implied to be a sociopath who doesn't care about his son. He also drove his wife into committing suicide.
• Hercules (2014): Cotys is revealed to have coerced his daughter into going along with him by threatening her son (his grandson, which means that he's an abusive grandfather as well). Naturally, she hates him. Then she's tried to stop his plot and is no longer useful, he orders her killed.
• Drake to Ivan in Hobo with a Shotgun. Drake lavishes all of his attention and affection on Ivan's brother Slick, and continually belittles Ivan. He even tells says that he doesn't care if Ivan lives or dies when Abby is holding him hostage.
• The Hunger Games: It is shown in the film that Peeta's mother at the very least is abusive. She is shown to be yelling at him, presumably for burning bread. The other indicator is that she told him that District 12 might have a winner, and it is more telling that his response is "She wasn't talking about me."
• In Infamous (2020), Dean's father is an alcoholic who beats his son when he gets drunk. Dean is only living with because the conditions of his parole require that he lives with a parent and his mother is dead.
• In Jack the Reaper, All the signs indicate that Jessie is being sexually abused by her father.
• Jagged Mind: Abusive Parents: Alex tells Billie her parents punished her for any failure to meet their high standards by being Denied Food as Punishment or locked in her room. This might explain somewhat why she's messed up.
• Jug Face: Loriss responds to her refusing to submit to a virginity test by burning her thigh with a cigarette, and then cuts her finger to find out who took said virginity. Sustin is more caring, but still complicit. That is, until she runs off with Dawai, and he whips her so badly she miscarries.
• In Julia X, Julia and Jessica were sexually abused by their father.
• Kin (2018): Milly tells Elijah her parents beat her for crying, and she eventually ran away from home. Elijah's also got a scar on his hand from something one of his birth parents did, and was adopted early on (likely because he was then removed from their care).
• Kindergarten Cop:
  • Though thankfully not shown onscreen, Zack is regularly beaten by his father (who also beats his mother) and, as a result, is emotionally stunted and regularly comes to school with bruises from "falling down the stairs." When your homeroom teacher happens to be Arnold Schwarzenegger, you can bet that the child-beating brute is going to get a delightful collection of bruises of his own...
  • Cullen Crisp isn't too great either. In one scene he'll gush about meeting his son again. Then in another, he holds the kid hostage.
  • Crisp also implies that his own mother's overbearing nature may have scarred him.
• K. Roth's mother in The Living Wake is of the emotionally abusive variety. Coldly blames his father's disappearance on him (as in, tells him to his face that it was his fault. And his father disappeared when he was five), and refuses to believe him when he tells her that he only has one day left to live, and would like her to come to his funeral, which he'll be leading later that day. Once he actually does die, she does show a bit of remorse, but not nearly enough.
• In The Loft, Philip and Zoe's father (and Chris's stepfather) was a violent alcoholic who used to physically abuse Philip and and Zoe, although Chris escaped his wrath.
• The Lord of the Rings: Denethor is emotionally abusive towards his youngest son Faramir, The Un-Favourite. The following may be one of the cruelest things a parent has ever said to a child in cinema:
  Faramir: (Trying Not to Cry) You wish now that our places had been exchanged. That I had died and Boromir had lived.
  Denethor: Yes. I wish that.
  • Moreover, Denethor attempts a Murder-Suicide with Faramir (who's unconscious and thus cannot defend himself) after he completely loses hope and his mind. Sadly, he does show relief and happiness when he sees Faramir is alive after previously presuming he was dead...and then Denethor runs screaming off a cliff due to being on fire due to his aforementioned attempt to burn himself and Faramir.
  • A scene entitled "Sons of the Steward" from the Extended Edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers further elaborates on Denethor's constant belittlement of Faramir. Even Boromir, his eldest son and "favorite", is clearly a "Well Done, Son" Guy due to his father's high expectations of him.
• Victoria Breaux in Madea's Family Reunion hates and mistreats her older daughter, Vanessa, apparently out of hatred of her father for abandoning her and leaving her broke and even allowed her second husband to rape her to keep him from leaving the family. She goes as far as to extend this hatred to her grandchildren through Vanessa, openly referring to them as bastards and saying she doesn't want to see them. While she favors and pampers her younger daughter, Lisa, she also controls her life and has been stealing from her trust fund to find her wealthy lifestyle because her late husband left her nothing to live on. She also expects Lisa to marry a Domestic Abuser so she can maintain her lifestyle now that the money is almost gone. By the end of the movie, both daughters have freed themselves from her abuse/control and she seems to be working to reconcile things with them.
• Frank Zito's mother in Maniac! (1980). In the original it is strongly implied that his mother regularly burnt him with cigarettes, we see the scars in the opening scene on his chest as he examines them in a mirror. There is also a scene in which he burns a little boy mannequin with a cigarette in the same place, while he has an audio flashback of his mother's psychological abuse. There are several audio flashbacks of her locking him in a closet as punishment while he begs her not to. In a scene where he talks to a victim (who he imagines as his mother) he mentions how she brought men back to the house for sex in return for money, and how he had witnessed this as a child. He also mentions how she would go out and leave him on his own. In the remake, there are visual flashbacks of him witnessing his mother having sex with her clients. He was locked in the closet and she knew he could see her having sex, so in the case she intended him to witness it. Another visual flashback is shown of his mother having sex with a client, this time outside (and at night), Frank watches them and is clearly disturbed. She is then verbally abusive to him and shouts at him to wait in the car.
• Maps to the Stars has two instances: actress Havana Segrand, who claims she was abused by her actress mom (although the ghost of said mom begs to differ), and TV psychologist Dr. Stannis Weiss, who physically assaults a young woman who is also his daughter from an incestuous marriage.
• Matilda: Much like their literary counterparts, Matilda Wormwood lives with an abusive family and Miss Agatha Trunchbull's constantly mistreats her half-sister Jennifer Honey.
• Ma Vie En Rose: Ludovic's parents both yell and even hit her over her wearing dresses, due to their distress from Ludovic being gender nonconforming (at the very least). They eventually relent, regretting this as they see how much Ludovic is hurt by their refusal to let her express herself this way.
• The title character in Mikey had these as well.
• Mommie Dearest, which is based on the infamous exploits of Joan Crawford. Faye Dunaway's Crawford is painful to listen to at times.
• Monster: Hoshikawa's father, who is single, seems to be an alcoholic. He thinks that whatever problems his son may have at school, are his son's fault, that he will discipline.
• Mortuary (1983): Paul's father used to lock him in the mortuary as a punishment for misbehaving.
• Mr. Deeds implies that the father of one of the characters was physically abusive, as Mr Deeds' character lectures the character about swearing in front of the ladies as well as skipping school. Although he does tell the dad about skipping school, he apparently didn't tell the dad about swearing in front of the ladies, to which when he found out from Deeds, he was implied to have beaten the son with a belt. It is done for laughs. With the character being an (adult) football player.
• Bill Heslop in Muriel's Wedding degrades his children at every turn, including this little gem in the middle of a restaurant where he was supposed to be impressing a pair of Japanese businessmen: "Useless. You're all useless! A bunch of useless no-hopes..."
• Hinted at with Charlie in Mystery Team.
• In the movie Natural Born Killers there is a flashback which shows Mickey as a deliveryman who came to the house where Mallory lived with her abusive father, her neglectful mother, and her younger brother Kevin. The flashback is portrayed as an All In The Family or Married... With Children-style sitcom with a canned laughter track, the "audience" laughing hardest when Mallory is subjected to lewd comments, being molested by her father, and threatened with rape. It's implied he's raped her before, when her mother notes that Kevin was only born because her father was drunk and didn't realize he was in his own bedroom, and not Mallory's.
• No Kidding: Lionel has them; Mr. Rockbottom is never happy with him, always shouts, and isn't afraid to get physical with him, whereas Lill, while she dotes over Lionel, sits back and doesn't try to stop her husband:
  Mr. Rockbottom: Right, Lionel? Now you enjoy yourself here, my boy. Understand? Or I'll brain ya.
  Lionel: Yes, sir.
• John Schneider's character Jacob, from October Baby, is a rare unintentional example of this trope. He lies to his adopted daughter, uses the borderline-suicidal passages in her diary as a pretext for further hospitalization, violates the Hippocratic Oath, pushes her out of relationship with her best friend, and threatens to pull her out of college. All for her own good, mind you.
• One of Homer Hickam, Jr.'s schoolmates in October Sky has an abusive stepfather, finally resulting in Homer Hickam, Sr. stepping in and threatening to beat the stepfather any time he sees evidence that he's been abusing the boy.
• The Odd Way Home: Maya's father sexually abused her so severely that she is now incapable of giving birth, and her mother hated her for stealing her husband away.
• In One Foot in Hell, Julie tells Dan that her father was a drunk who used to pimp her out to his friends to earn drinking money.
• In Pay It Forward, Trevor's father beats his mother, Mr. Simonet's father beat his mother and him (not to mention burning him alive), and Trevor's grandmother is implied to have been this.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides: While Blackbeard treated his daughter kindly at first, he at one point forced Jack to obey him by threatening to shoot her during a game of Russian Roulette. Even Jack is surprised to find out he wasn't lying. Later on, Blackbeard tries to convince Angelica to sacrifice her own life in exchange for his own.
• Precious: Poor, poor Clareece "Precious" Jones. An illiterate and obese teenager, she has been raped by her father and impregnated twice, and endures constant and physical abuse from her unemployed mother, Mary. To escape from her grimy reality, she often tries to imagine a world where she's loved and appreciated.
• The Professional: Even before she became an assassin's apprentice, Mathilda Lando had already had a horrible life with her violent, abusive father and sister as well as having an apathetic mother that doesn't care for her or her younger brother. It says a lot that the reason the poor girl is out for vengeance against Stansfield is because of said little brother, who the bastard went out of his way to kill.
• The monstrous Mrs. Bates in Psycho inflicted awful emotional abuse on her son, Norman. First of all, she cut him off from all other society throughout childhood, making him utterly dependent on her. All the while, she tells him that sex is evil and dirty, and that women are whores (except her). She then abandons him at age 12 when she finds a boyfriend. Unable to deal with the loss of his one companion, Norman murders them both. Wracked with guilt afterwards, he develops an identity disorder, occasionally taking on her personality to deal with his guilt and grief. Unfortunately, even the internalised Mrs. Bates is emotionally abusive, and Norman is riddled with anxieties over his sexuality and still smothered by his domineering mother.
• The entire reason two brothers attempt to build a flying machine in Radio Flyer is to escape their Wicked Stepfather. "The King", as he's called, is particularly abusive to Bobby, the younger brother, beating him over the tiniest things while in a drunken rage. At one point Bobby even needs to be hospitalized for the abuse.
• Rags: While most of his nastiness is directed at his stepson Charlie, Arthur still has the tendency to pick on Lloyd as well, yelling at him in several scenes and not intervening when Andrew physically attacks him. At the end, when Lloyd starts spilling his secret to Charlie, he snaps at him and Lloyd recoils in fear, protected by Diego and Martha. His treatment of him brings Lloyd and Charlie closer together, in fact; after shouting at him during a rehearsal, a dejected Lloyd seeks comfort in talking to Charlie, who witnessed the whole thing and can certainly relate.
• JC from The Rainbow Experiment wears sunglasses to school so people won't see the black eyes his father gives him. He does his best to prevent anyone from finding out his father is an abuser so he won't be deported to Mexico.
• In The Rawhide Terror, Brent beats his stepson Jimmy hard enough that he requires serious medical attention.
• A Recipe for Seduction: Bunny spends the film demanding that Jessica marry Billy despite hating him, forcing her daughter to be with a man she dislikes just to keep the family out of debt. Then it's revealed that she's having an affair with Billy, and is willing to murder someone just to make sure Bunny does what she wants her to.
• Reform School Girls: Lisa's foster mother used to lock her and her kid brother in an icebox in the garage as punishment. Her brother eventually suffocated during one of these episodes.
• Room in Rome: Natasha's father sexually abused her sister and ended up traumatizing both of them. Given that she pretends she's her twin, it's possible Natasha (or both) is the one who had actually suffered the abuse
• Tony Montana's mother Georgina in Scarface. She disapproves of Tony's criminal career, even rejecting a generous offer of $1,000 from her son.
• Scarred: Tiny's father beats her every time she insists that Jonah Kandie is still alive. He is, of course. However, Tiny's father convinced himself that Jonah Kandie is dead.
• In Shame, it's implied that one or both of Brandon and Sissy's parents was abusive or neglectful towards them. For starters, neither of them even mention their parents at any point in the film, they both have obvious psychological issues, and at one point, Sissy tells Brandon, "We're not bad people. We just come from a bad place." This may have also contributed to Brandon and Sissy's odd relationship with each other.
• In Silent Fall, it turns out that Fred Warden was raping both Sylvie and Tim and taking dirty pictures of Tim, while Darla did nothing to stop him.
• Sing Street: Barry has an alcoholic father who physically and emotionally abuses him.
• In Son of a Gun, JR has a permanent scar on his forehead as a result of one his father's beatings. He explains to Natasha that the reason he can't swim is that as a kid he nervous about swimming, and his father decided the best way for him to learn was to throw overboard from a boat.
• Gordie's, Chris's and Teddy's fathers in Stand by Me. Gordie's father is emotionally abusive, Chris's father is physically abusive, and Teddy's father pressed Teddy's ear down on a hot stove disfiguring it, presumably during a flashback to his time in WWII. (Yet, Teddy furiously defends his father when the junk man calls him a "loony". This loyalty is something Gordie claims to never have understood.)
• In Star Trek (2009) Kirk's stepfather, Frank, is implied to have been abusive.
• The Star Wars series, and its Expanded Universe, has numerous examples, which is not surprising given its enormous cast:
  • In The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader lops off his own son's hand in a lightsaber duel and then has the audacity to ask him to join the Dark Side. In the previous movie, he had his daughter outright tortured and forced her to watch her homeworld get blown up, though he wasn't aware of their relationship at that point.
  • Darth Sidious isn't the biological father of Darth Maul, but he did raise him. It was not fun for Maul. When Maul survived, it got even worse. The same applies with Anakin/Darth Vader, as Anakin (who has no biological father) looked up to Palpatine (Sidious' civilian identity) as a father figure.
  • As it turns out, Palpatine did have a biological son. While we don't know how badly he was treated, it must have been pretty bad for him to abandon his last name and flee to lay low on an out-of-the-way desert planet with his wife and their daughter Rey. It only gets worse from there.Sidious senses Rey's growing Force potential, and dispatches an assassin to bring his granddaughter to Exegol, where he intended to possess her and make her the new Empress of the Sith. Not wanting their daughter to be taken by a Sith Lord, Rey's parents make the difficult decision to abandon her on Jakku to throw the assassin off her trail. It works, but when the assassin catches up to them and doesn't get an answer on Rey's whereabouts, Sidious orders their deaths. Not even his own descendants are immune from his cruelty and ambition.
  • One 80s issue of the Marvel Comics Star Wars series has Luke visit a planet where he meets a young child thief named Scamp. It's shown that he and his siblings are forced by their cruel father to steal from the city's richer families to satisfy his own greed. One scene even has the man striking one of Scamp's brothers.
  • In the Knights of the Old Republic comic series, we find that the Mandalorian Mad Scientist Demagol has a daughter. Having a war criminal who experiments on children (including her) and captured prisoners is certainly gonna insure she is really messed up as an adult. And wouldn't you know it, that's exactly what happens.
  • The Star Wars: Age of Resistance issue featuring General Hux opens with a flashback of a young Hux being berated by his father Brendol for dropping a tray of glasses. The older Hux calls his son useless and lets him be humiliated by Admiral Brooks before yelling at him for being so weak. A conversation between Brendol and Grand Admiral Rae Sloane in Aftermath: Empire's End implies that Brendol beats his son as well.
• Stoker gives us Evelyn Stoker. This quote from the film should say it all.
  "You know, I've often wondered why it is we have children in the first place. And the conclusion I've come to is... At some point in our lives we realize things are screwed up beyond repair. So we decide to start again. Wipe the slate clean. Start fresh. And then we have children. Little carbon copies we can turn to and say, "You will do what I could not. You will succeed where I have failed." Because we want someone to get it right this time. But not me... Personally speaking, I can't wait to watch life tear you apart."
• Sybil, starring Sally Field. A girl is abused so badly she splits into multiple personalities to protect herself. The psychology may be dubious, but the depictions of the abuse are harrowing.
• The title character's father in Tamara, a violent alcoholic who rapes his daughter.
• In a bit of narration in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Sarah Connor reflects on the fact that every would-be father figure Sarah had chosen for John was abusive or in some way unfavorable... except the reprogrammed T-800 sent to protect John.
• That's My Boy: Donny's father was shown to have punched him in the face and called him a dumbass after the latter accidentally impregnates his teacher. It's implied that he offered no support for Donny in raising his new grandson Han Solo, which eventually resulted in the latter being psychologically damaged by Donny's incompetent parenting. This is all Played for Laughs.
  Donny: I didn't know what I was doing. Grandpa was a psycho, you know that.
• Thelma: Thelma's dad burned her hand with a candle to show her what Hell would feel like forever all over her body. He and her mother had also been very controlling of her in general before she left home. However, much of it turns out to result from fear since Thelma inadvertently killed her little brother as a child.
• Thoroughbreds: While Mark largely refrains from physical violence (aside from grabbing her wrist once), he displays some blatant emotionally abusive behavior towards Lily, insulting and belittling her at every opportunity.
• The Transporter: Lai's dad takes this to new levels. He sold Lai to slavery and had her sisters deported elsewhere. When Lai eventually tracks him down, he kidnaps her, violently slaps her in the face and even ordered one of his men to kill her while he goes after Frank (although he held back in tears when he thought she died).
• Trapped: The Alex Cooper Story: Alex's parents. They react to her coming out as being gay by sending away for conversion therapy in a camp run by another couple, the Simms, who hold her prisoner there (they had signed over parental rights, thus also counting for her). As part of her "therapy" and for breaking her resistance, she's beaten (among other abuses).
• Tromeo and Juliet: Capulet locks Juliet inside a cage and hits her in this version as punishment for misbehavior (i.e. being sexual outside marriage). The cage is even inside a soundproofed room so nobody would hear her scream outside, which appalls Tromeo, but Juliet has gotten used to this.
• The Truth About Jane: Jane's formerly loving parents turn steadily more abusive in their attempts to turn Jane straight, until her teacher reveals that Jane is contemplating suicide, which snaps them out of it.
• The Truman Show: Christof, sort of. He was the one who adopted Truman, and his treatment of him is that of a horribly controlling father: trapping him in one place for the rest of his life, violating his privacy, emotionally and psychologically abusing him into staying put by taking away one of the people closet to him, and claiming he is doing it for the greater good. And later trying to kill him when he finally escapes your games. The actors playing Truman's parents count since they deceived Truman for their own personal gain.
• UHF: R.J. Fletcher portrays this real well when he's first seen & heard abusing his son R.J. Fletcher Jr. for not acting intelligent enough.
• A Wakefield Project: In the home movies Reese finds in the inn's basement, he finds out that Nathan Cross' dad was a top contender for father of the year. The videos show him verbally berating his son as not being a man while Nathan is chopping firewood, reminding him his mom left them and basically foisted Nathan on his dad, and having an affair with Nathan's girlfriend, Chloe, which was what drove him to commit his crimes.
• In Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael, Winona Ryder's character had an emotionally abusive adoptive mother.
• Welcome to the Dollhouse: Dawn Weiner has some of the worst parents in the history of film. Her mother is condescending, cruel and constantly talks down to her, while her father doesn't want to know/care she exists. When her little sister is kidnapped, she heroically runs away and tries to find her. Her sister is found, but Dawn's parents don't even care/know that she's gone. Someone call child services.
  • In the director's later film Palindromes, it is revealed Dawn committed suicide as a result of the abuse.
• Nina's parents practice Honor-Related Abuse in When Darkness Falls, because they think Nina is destroying the Family Honor by meeting a boy.
• The entire plot of The White Ribbon revolves around parental brutality, repression and abuse against children in a German pre-war village.
• In The Windmill Massacre, Jennifer's father was a thug who used to brutally beat her and her kid sister.
• Women Is Losers: Celina's dad is an abusive jerkass who mistreats her mom and demands her money as payment for babysitting his grandson (well, her mom does the work mostly) even when Celina pays half already, plus many other expenses. When she angrily tells him off, her dad slams her against the kitchen wall, and then threatens his grandson for intervening. This is the last straw for Celina, who leaves along with her son.
• Young & Wild: Daniela is angrily slapped, shaken and gets her hair pulled by her mother after the latter realizes she's been having sex with Tomás. The fact that she's very controlling of Daniela and constantly spies on her is pretty bad too.
• In Zig Zag (2002), ZigZag's father violently punches and kicks him, charges him rent even though he's only fifteen, and threatens to kick him out if he can't pay.

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