Hollywood is said to be descending towards mediocrity, the rise of the franchise attitude as its main culprit. However, for those who find the biggest problem with the hackneyed, over-produced, run-of-the mill superhero conglomerate to be its refusal to grant the audience any reason for introspection, for those who ask more of their Romantic heroes than a five minute monologue that conveniently wraps up all the moral dilemmas of an otherwise lackluster story just in time for some solid explosion and kick and punch, there is a new trend taking hold among the more versatile filmmakers of Hollywood.

It concerns the subject of mental illness, an issue consistently sidelined despite its prevalence and despite its social cost. The trend is towards movies that try to portray an accurate picture of what it means to fall victim to and struggle with the stigma of mental disorders in America today.

Michael Keaton in Birdman (2014)

In the past five years, four of the most outstanding examples of the genre have been Tom Ford’s A Single Man, Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter, Steve McQueen’s Shame, and Alejandro Gonzales Injarito’s Birdman. A middle-aged professor’s bout of depression after the sudden death of his lover, a Midwestern blue collar worker’s battle with delusional disorder, an artist’s last-ditch efforts to combat schizophrenia, and a lonely New Yorker’s self-worth corroded by stigma of sex addiction are iconoclastic stories about human mind in conflict with itself.

The same seamless pattern of storytelling is used in each movie. The goal is to have the audience confront the absolute debilitating nature of mental illness, the protagonists fettered and social ties jeopardized by the stigma attached to these disorders. The beginning moments of all four movies share the exact same descriptive tone; the audience is immediately placed in the aberrant world of the illness.

Steve McQueen’s Shame (2011)

The audience, through the protagonists’ eyes, becomes aware of what has already been compromised and of the pending fear that there is still more left to lose as the disease has yet to take full form. All four stories tell the story of a protagonist in transition.

This is when the disease makes an echo in the host’s brain, informing him of its arrival, of its seismic capabilities, and the most and the worst, of its intention to remain permanently. At this stage the protagonist is conscious of the disarray the disease is causing, yet helpless in detracting its course, what the writer William Styron described as the terrifying “foreknowledge that no remedy will come- not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute.”

Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain in Take Shelter (2011)

Michael Fassbender, Michael Keaton, Colin Firth, and Michael Shannon’s masterful performances are all carefully calibrated to show this dark struggle. The movies have presented some of the most remarkably rich female character performances of the past five years. The women are fighting to reverse the course of a moldering relationship, the protagonist’s last and most valuable personal tie — to a wife, a sister, a daughter, or a lover. The women courageously resist, and even though each story, rightly so, refuses to diminish the sufferance attached to the illness by way of a clear, classic happy ending, the supporting female roles deliver the equal balance between the dark realities of the disease and hopes of recovery.

Colin Firth and Julian Moore in A single Man (2009)

American theaters have never been more successful in pandering to the escapist appeal of safe movies than today, yet it is equally true that some of the darkest elements of American realism are being captured today in pictures in an unprecedented manner and with amazing elegance. If the constant regurgitation of the male-centrist action-adventure movies has failed to help us realize the true talent of our female artists, maybe our support for this new trend will. If the overblown power of those heroes does not satisfy your taste; maybe the solemn struggle of these heroes will.

Kia Rahnama is a student of international law at George Washington University. He frequently writes about politics and cinema and can be found on Twitter at @KRahnama.