Running with Scissors

Running with Scissors (2006) is a dark comedy you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Ryan Murphy and based on Augusten Burroughs' memoir about his genuinely strange 1970s childhood. Annette Bening, Brian Cox, Gwyneth Paltrow, Alec Baldwin, Joseph Fiennes and Evan Rachel Wood lead a cast that commits fully to the absurdity.

When his unstable mother Deirdre ships teenager Augusten off to her psychiatrist Dr. Finch, the boy trades one dysfunction for something far weirder. Finch's household runs on no rules at all — kids eat off the floor, adults share their delusions over dinner, and the house itself is a slow-motion wreck. Brian Cox plays Finch as a man who genuinely believes his own chaos is therapeutic genius. Joseph Fiennes plays a 33-year-old housemate who becomes romantically entangled with 13-year-old Augusten in one of the film's more uncomfortable subplots.

This is adapted from Burroughs' 2002 bestselling memoir, which was controversial enough that the real Finch family sued for defamation — the suit settled out of court. Murphy frames the whole thing as survival comedy: not bleak, not preachy, just honest about how strange it is to grow up in a house where nothing makes sense. Stream Running with Scissors (2006) online on iFILM.