- 25/06/2025
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.
00:5410. Zombieland
00:56This is the first of two zombie movies on this list, but it's very different from most others
01:01in the genre. Zombieland, even with The Living Dead and The Gory Deaths, was still first and
01:06foremost a comedy. The movie was goofy, weirdly heartwarming, and outright hilarious at times,
01:11but there was one moment of pain and darkness just waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting audience.
01:16This revolved around Woody Harlson's character, affectionately known as Tallahassee, by his new
01:21friends. The whole point of using destinations as their names was to avoid getting too close
01:26or attached to each other. But still, Tallahassee found himself discussing his dog, Buck. He loved
01:30the dogs so much that they were best friends, but he was taken away from him by the damn zombies.
01:36It's not until he's playing a game of Monopoly with Columbus, Wichita, and Little Rock that the
01:41realisation hits. Buck wasn't Tallahassee's dog, he was his son, his young boy that was killed by the
01:47zombies, and that he would never see again. Woody Harlson wasn't the only one crying at this point.
01:52Number 9. The Dark Knight
01:54Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy was far darker than the Joel Schumacher and Tim Burton
01:59efforts that came before it. In fairness, this wouldn't have been particularly difficult,
02:03but this was definitely a newer tone to the caped crusader on the big screen. The broodier Bruce Wayne
02:09found himself up against a far creepier version of the Joker in The Dark Knight, but even so,
02:14the movie took an unexpectedly harrowing turn. When the clown prince of crime called out Batman
02:19on TV, the Joker was broadcast interrogating and torturing a man who dressed up like the Batman
02:25in what was a genuinely disturbing video. Offscreen, he took the man's life, but how he announced this
02:30to the world was arguably even darker. Mayor Garcia looked out of his office window across Gotham,
02:36before seeing this Batman impersonator, with the Joker's smile painted on his lips and a noose
02:41around his neck crash into the glass. The shock of the moment of seeing a man hanged by the neck
02:46slamming into the window out of nowhere, followed by the subsequent murder tape, was darker and tougher
02:51to watch than anything else in the movie. Even more so than using a man's head to make a pencil disappear.
02:57Number 8. Mulan
02:58One of the trademarks of Disney animation is the impossibly catchy music. Let It Go, You're Welcome,
03:04and most recently, We Don't Talk About Bruno have taken the world by storm. And songs like these
03:08often distract from how dark the stories can actually be. Take Mulan, for instance. The main
03:13story is about the titular character going undercover as a man in the Chinese army in place
03:18of her father, trying to prove herself not only to Shang, but to her own family. In the background of
03:23this, however, is why she has to join the army in the first place. The setting for the movie is the
03:28invasion of China by the Huns. But with songs like Reflection and Honour to Us All, this could easily
03:33be forgotten. Instead, the troops in Shang's command were having a laugh, becoming friends, and enjoying
03:38their time together. This stopped abruptly, however, after a song about finding the right
03:42girl for them. A girl worth fighting for actually stopped mid-sentence as the troops stumbled across
03:47a village that had been ruthlessly put to the torch. Nothing brings you back to reality like the brutal
03:52deaths of an untold number of innocent people, particularly in a Disney movie.
03:57Number 7. Star Wars Revenge of the Sith
03:59The Star Wars prequel trilogy told the story of Anakin Skywalker and his seduction by Darth Sidious
04:05and the dark side. The once great Jedi, who were supposed to bring balance to the Force,
04:09played a great role in bringing down almost the entire Order, save for Yoda and Obi-Wan.
04:14Everyone watching was already aware of the ultimate fate of Anakin. It was no secret that he would
04:18eventually become Darth Vader, and the movies fell flat. One of the biggest criticisms across the board
04:23was the goofiness and silliness, which wasn't just brought to the table by Jar Jar Binks alone.
04:28Arguably the defining moment of the entire trilogy, however, was the execution of Order 66.
04:33Palpatine ordered the new Darth Vader and the entire clone army to kill every Jedi,
04:38and a harrowing montage showing the murder of the galaxy's peacekeepers followed.
04:42But nothing compared to the deaths of the younglings. At the Jedi Temple,
04:47Anakin came across the defenceless younglings who looked to their elder for help. Anakin instead
04:51looked into those innocent eyes and drew his lightsaber. The deaths of these children weren't
04:56initially shown on screen, though footage was later seen on a security hologram,
05:01as were their little bodies afterwards. Grim stuff.
05:04Number 6, Up.
05:05When you go in to watch a Pixar movie, it's to be expected that there's going to be a great deal
05:10of emotion, and usually more than a little heartbreak. If the studio can make an audience
05:14genuinely care about toys and robots, just imagine what can happen with actual humans.
05:20On the face of it, Up looked like it would be a nice, uplifting movie about the relationship
05:23between an old man and a young boy. This was very much true, but no one expected the opening 10
05:29minutes to be as devastating and distressing as they were. Even for Pixar, the opening scenes of
05:34Up were tough to take. Carl and Ellie's relationship was truly special, but in the montage that showed
05:39their time together, there were two gut punches that should have at least come with a warning
05:43beforehand. The first was Ellie's trip to the Doctor that confirmed she had either suffered a
05:47miscarriage or was unable to have children at all, followed by her death. Naturally, this tore Carl apart,
05:53and audiences along with him.
05:55Number 5. In Bruges
05:56Before Martin McDonagh's award nominated The Banshees of Inner Sharon, the acclaimed director
06:01worked with both Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson on In Bruges. The movie was a dark comedy that
06:07followed Ray and Ken, two hitmen who had been sent to Bruges after a job gone wrong. Early on,
06:12audiences knew that these two friends were contract killers, but the tone of the movie didn't
06:16exactly reflect that. There was plenty of goofy humour and a grown man sarcastically pouting about
06:22having to be in Bruges. But then, exactly what happened during the previous job was shown. In Ray's
06:27first job for Harry, he killed a priest, firing at the target first through the wall of a confessional
06:32booth before shooting him in the back. The problem was that the killer didn't see who was on the other
06:36side of the priest. The shot of the unmoving little boy killed by a bullet of Ray's that went straight
06:41through the priest is haunting. This took the movie down a very dark path and opened the door to some
06:46very suicidal thoughts of Ray after what he had done. There was still a surprising amount of humour
06:51in the movie, but it was never quite the same tone after this scene.
06:554. The Lion King
06:57There are countless iconic moments in Disney animation, with more than a few coming in the
07:01original Lion King. The opening scene, the Hakuna Matata montage and more are favourites among Disney
07:07fans, but the movie isn't all sunshine and singing. In fact, The Lion King is arguably the most traumatic
07:13Disney movie ever, and that takes some doing. The phrase, long live the King, will forever be
07:18associated with the moment Scar throws his brother into the stampede to his death. After the fun songs
07:23and playful nature between Simba and his father, and even with the obvious evil of Scar and his hyenas,
07:29this was jarring. But it was about to get so much worse. Poor little Simba finds the corpse of his
07:34father and tries desperately to wake him up, as only an innocent child could. How can a movie so
07:39beloved be so difficult to watch? 3. A Quiet Place
07:43From the beginning of his feature directorial debut, John Krasinski proved himself to be a
07:48master of suspense. The opening minutes of A Quiet Place are as close to silent as possible,
07:53setting the eerie tone for the story and the situation itself. Things first escalate when the
07:58young boy of the family picks up some batteries for a rocket toy that just so happens to make a
08:02loud noise. When he turns it on to the horror of the rest of his family, they are a good few hundred
08:07yards away, so the father sprints towards him immediately. Even in spite of the movie's tense
08:12opening, nobody expected those hideous aliens to beat Krasinski to his son. Surely the movie
08:17wouldn't open with such a brutal death after what was a relatively calm, if eerie, first few minutes.
08:23Turns out that yes, yes it would. That innocent kid was killed just a fraction of a second before
08:27his dad was able to save him. This fractured the family beyond repair, and gave the entire movie
08:32a whole new tone for the rest of its runtime. 2. Jojo Rabbit
08:36For a movie based around World War II, Jojo Rabbit was a light-hearted joy of a movie,
08:41for the most part. Such is the impact of Taika Waititi when he gets things right,
08:46and doesn't go too far Love and Thunder style. For all its comedy, however, there was a deep
08:50emotional thread throughout, based around Jojo's mother, Rosie. While her son was a member of the
08:55Hitler Youth, she herself risked her life to hide a young Jewish girl from the Nazis. There's a scene in
09:00the movie where Rosie is standing at a higher level than Jojo, so her shoes are directly in his
09:05eyeline. The audience thinks nothing of it at the time, it's just a mother playing with her son,
09:09but it comes back in a haunting, devastating way later in the movie. As Jojo is following a butterfly
09:14through the town square, he once again comes upon those same shoes at his eyeline, only this time
09:20there is nothing underneath. She's been hanged. Jojo Rabbit had plenty of laughs, and things never got
09:25too dark, which made this hugely impactful moment all the more heartbreaking.
09:301. I Am Legend
09:31This list has largely been comprised of the deaths of numerous characters, whether it was characters
09:36largely unknown, someone's parents, or even the death of a child. You could argue that none of
09:41them compare to the death of an animal on the big screen, however. Audiences typically go into certain
09:46genres of films expecting to see death, and though these can be devastating, the death of a dog,
09:51particularly one as good as Robert Neville's in I Am Legend, just hits different. This took a
09:56relatively dark movie to a whole new level instantly. The horror of the fight sequence
10:01before it, the realisation that the dog, Sam, had been hurt and would soon turn against her best
10:06friend, and the action of Robert killing her himself was just too much to take. The act itself
10:11happens off-screen in a way, where Will Smith is visible but Sam isn't. You could argue this as some
10:16small solace, but that didn't make it any less traumatic. The death of a dog is one of the worst
10:20things you can see on the big screen, particularly when the owner is forced to put it down himself.
10:25And that concludes our list. If you think we missed any, then do let us know in the comments
10:29below. And while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification bell.
10:33Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be found across various social medias
10:37just by searching Ellie Littlechild. I've been Ellie with WhatCulture. I hope you have a magical day,
10:42and I'll see you real soon.
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