- 2 days ago
When movies take a very dark path out of nowhere.
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00:00For a movie to find success of any kind, it has to evoke some sort of emotion from the audience.
00:05Whether it's joy, excitement, intrigue, or nostalgia, those watching a story have to feel
00:10connected to it. It's no easy task, but there are plenty of ways it can be done. Certainly,
00:15positive emotions aren't the only path. Movies can make you feel sad, angry, or scared as an
00:21effective method to commit you to the story. Usually, there are certain types of movies in
00:25which an audience would expect this kind of darkness, but that is not always the case.
00:30Such darkness, particularly coming so abruptly and seemingly out of nowhere, can be quite jarring
00:35for an audience, and it can often then change the complexion of the entire film. On the other hand,
00:40it could potentially add that touch of genuine emotion, even if that emotion is depression,
00:45to make a memorable and often iconic moment. And so, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture,
00:50here with 10 movies that got real dark, real fast.
00:54Number 10, Zombieland. This is the first of two zombie movies on this list, but it's very
00:59different. Buck, he loved the dogs so much they were best friends, but he was taken away from him
01:04by the damn zombies. It's not until he's playing a game of Monopoly with Columbus, Wichita, and Little
01:10Rock that the realisation hits. Buck wasn't Tallahassee's dog, he was his son, his young boy that
01:16was killed by the zombies and that he would never see again. Woody Harrelson wasn't the only one crying
01:21at this point. Number 9, The Dark Knight. Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy was
01:26far darker than the Joel Schumacher and Tim Burton efforts that came before it. In fairness, this
01:31wouldn't have been particularly difficult, but this was definitely a newer tone to the caped crusader
01:36on the big screen. The broodier Bruce Wayne found himself up against a far creepier version of the
01:42Joker in The Dark Knight, but even so, the movie took an unexpectedly harrowing turn when the clown prince
01:48of crime called out Batman on TV. The Joker was broadcast interrogating and torturing a man who
01:53dressed up like the Batman in what was a genuinely disturbing video. Off screen, he took the man's
01:59life, but how he announced this to the world was arguably even darker. Mayor Garcia looked out of his
02:04office window across Gotham before seeing this Batman impersonator, with the Joker's smile painted on
02:10his lips and a noose around his neck, crash into the glass. The shock of the moment of seeing a man
02:15hanged by the neck slamming into the window out of nowhere followed by the subsequent murder tape
02:20was darker and tougher to watch than anything else in the movie, even more so than using a man's head
02:25to make a pencil disappear. Number 8, Mulan. One of the trademarks of Disney animation is the
02:31impossibly catchy music. Let It Go, You're Welcome, and most recently We Don't Talk About Bruno have
02:36taken the world by storm, and songs like these often distract from how dark the stories can actually
02:41be. Take Mulan, for instance. The main story is about the titular character going undercover as
02:46a man in the Chinese army in place of her father, trying to prove herself not only to Shang, but to
02:51her own family. In the background of this, however, is why she has to join the army in the first place.
02:56The setting for the movie is The Invasion of China by the Huns, but with songs like Reflection and
03:01Honor to Us All, this could easily be forgotten. Instead, the troops in Shang's command were having a laugh,
03:07becoming friends, and enjoying their time together. This stopped abruptly, however, after a song
03:11about finding the right girl for them. A girl worth fighting for actually stopped mid-sentence as
03:16the troops stumbled across a village that had been ruthlessly put to the torch. Nothing brings
03:21you back to reality like the brutal deaths of an untold number of innocent people, particularly in
03:26a Disney movie. Number 7, Star Wars Revenge of the Sith. The Star Wars prequel trilogy told the story
03:32of Anakin Skywalker and his seduction by Darth Sidious and the dark side. The once great Jedi, who were
03:38supposed to bring balance to the force, played a great role in bringing down almost the entire
03:42order, save for Yoda and Obi-Wan. Everyone watching was already aware of the ultimate fate
03:46of Anakin. It was no secret that he would eventually become Darth Vader, and the movies fell flat.
03:51One of the biggest criticisms across the board was the goofiness and silliness, which wasn't just
03:56brought to the table by Jar Jar Binks alone. Arguably the defining moment of the entire trilogy,
04:01however, was the execution of Order 66. Palpatine ordered the new Darth Vader and the entire clone army to
04:07kill every Jedi, and a harrowing montage showing the murder of the galaxy's peacekeepers followed,
04:12but nothing compared to the deaths of the younglings. At the Jedi Temple, Anakin came across the
04:18defenseless younglings who looked to their elder for help. Anakin instead looked into those innocent
04:23eyes and drew his lightsaber. The deaths of these children weren't initially shown on screen,
04:28though footage was later seen on a security hologram, as were their little bodies afterwards.
04:33Grim stuff.
04:34Number 6. Up. When you go in to watch a Pixar movie, it's to be expected that there's going
04:39to be a great deal of emotion, and usually more than a little heartbreak. If the studio can make
04:44an audience genuinely care about toys and robots, just imagine what can happen with actual humans.
04:50On the face of it, Up looked like it would be a nice, uplifting movie about the relationship
04:53between an old man and a young boy. This was very much true, but no one expected the opening 10
04:59minutes to be as devastating and distressing as they were. Even for Pixar, the opening scenes of Up
05:04were tough to take. Carl and Ellie's relationship was truly special, but in the montage that showed
05:09their time together, there were two gut punches that should have at least come with a warning
05:13beforehand. The first was Ellie's trip to the doctor that confirmed she had either suffered
05:17a miscarriage or was unable to have children at all, followed by her death. Naturally, this tore Carl
05:22apart and audiences along with him. 5. In Bruges
05:26Before Martin McDonagh's award nominated The Banshees of Inner Sharon, the acclaimed director
05:31worked with both Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson on In Bruges. The movie was a dark comedy that
05:37followed Ray and Ken, two hitmen who had been sent to Bruges after a job gone wrong. Early on,
05:42audiences knew that these two friends were contract killers, but the tone of the movie didn't
05:46exactly reflect that. There was plenty of goofy humour and a grown man sarcastically pouting about
05:52having to be in Bruges. But then, exactly what happened during the previous job was shown.
05:56In Ray's first job for Harry, he killed a priest, firing at the target first through the wall of a
06:01confessional booth before shooting him in the back. The problem was that the killer didn't see who was
06:06on the other side of the priest. The shot of the unmoving little boy killed by a bullet of Ray's
06:11that went straight through the priest is haunting. This took the movie down a very dark path and opened
06:16the door to some very suicidal thoughts of Ray after what he had done. There was still a surprising
06:21amount of humour in the movie, but it was never quite the same tone after this scene.
06:25Number 4. The Lion King
06:27There are countless iconic moments in Disney animation, with more than a few coming in the
06:31original Lion King. The opening scene, the Hakuna Matata montage and more are favourites among
06:37Disney fans, but the movie isn't all sunshine and singing. In fact, The Lion King is arguably the
06:42most traumatic Disney movie ever, and that takes some doing. The phrase,
06:46Long Live the King will forever be associated with the moment Scar throws his brother into
06:51the stampede to his death. After the fun songs and playful nature between Simba and his father,
06:56and even with the obvious evil of Scar and his hyenas, this was jarring. But it was about to get
07:01so much worse. Poor little Simba finds the corpse of his father and tries desperately to wake him up,
07:06as only an innocent child could. How can a movie so beloved be so difficult to watch?
07:11Number 3. A Quiet Place
07:13From the beginning of his feature directorial debut, John Krasinski proved himself to be a master of
07:18suspense. The opening minutes of A Quiet Place are as close to silent as possible, setting the eerie
07:24tone for the story and the situation itself. Things first escalate when the young boy of the family
07:29picks up some batteries for a rocket toy that just so happens to make a loud noise. When he turns it
07:34on to the horror of the rest of his family, they are a good few hundred yards away, so the father
07:38sprints towards him immediately. Even in spite of the movie's tense opening, nobody expected those
07:44hideous aliens to beat Krasinski to his son. Surely the movie wouldn't open with such a brutal death
07:49after what was a relatively calm, if eerie, first few minutes. Turns out that, yes, yes it would.
07:55That innocent kid was killed just a fraction of a second before his dad was able to save him.
07:59This fractured the family beyond repair, and gave the entire movie a whole new tone for the rest of
08:04its runtime. Number 2, Jojo Rabbit. For a movie based around World War II, Jojo Rabbit was a
08:09light-hearted joy of a movie, for the most part. Such is the impact of Taika Waititi when he gets
08:15things right, and doesn't go too far Love and Thunder style. For all its comedy, however, there
08:19was a deep emotional thread throughout, based around Jojo's mother, Rosie. While her son was a
08:25member of the Hitler Youth, she herself risked her life to hide a young Jewish girl from the Nazis.
08:30There's a scene in the movie where Rosie is standing at a higher level than Jojo,
08:33so her shoes are directly in his eyeline. The audience thinks nothing of it at the time,
08:37it's just a mother playing with her son, but it comes back in a haunting, devastating way later
08:42in the movie. As Jojo is following a butterfly through the town square, he once again comes
08:47upon those same shoes at his eyeline, only this time there is nothing underneath. She's been hanged.
08:52Jojo Rabbit had plenty of laughs, and things never got too dark, which made this hugely impactful
08:57moment all the more heartbreaking. Number 1, I Am Legend.
09:01This list has largely been comprised of the deaths of numerous characters, whether it was
09:06characters largely unknown, someone's parents, or even the death of a child. You could argue that
09:10none of them compare to the death of an animal on the big screen, however. Audiences typically go into
09:15certain genres of films expecting to see death, and though these can be devastating, the death of a
09:20dog, particularly one as good as Robert Neville's in I Am Legend, just hits different. This took a
09:26relatively dark movie to a whole new level instantly. The horror of the fight sequence before it, the
09:32realisation that the dog, Sam, had been hurt and would soon turn against her best friend, and the
09:36action of Robert killing her himself was just too much to take. The act itself happens off screen in
09:42a way, where Will Smith is visible but Sam isn't. You could argue this as some small solace, but that
09:47didn't make it any less traumatic. The death of a dog is one of the worst things you can see on the big
09:52screen, particularly when the owner is forced to put it down himself. And that concludes our list,
09:57if you think we missed any then do let us know in the comments below, and while you're there don't
10:00forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification bell. Also head over to Twitter
10:04and follow us there, and I can be found across various social medias just by searching Ellie
10:08Littlechild. I've been Ellie with WhatCulture, I hope you have a magical day, and I'll see you real soon.
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