Current Events > What are the most unsettling deaths in TV/film?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Not the most brutal or gruesome, but deaths that were uncomfortable to watch for some other reason.

Example: Jurassic World, the babysitter. She seemed like a decent person who was forced to look after and protect the kids, yet she got the most over-the-top and violent death thats usually reserved for the douchebag villain getting his comeuppance.

Another example is Breaking Bad, Jesses single mom girlfriend. Even though it mightve been the most painless death and she didnt even know it happened, I havent ever rewatched the series because I dread that part so much.

Spooks (MI5 in the US)
Second episode has the most gruesome and grisly death.

If you've seen Jason X think opposite temperature.

Saving Private Ryan, you know the one...

Yeah the babysitter's death was over the top out of nowhere for absolutely no reason, only thing I remember about all those movies.

Probably something from Akame Ga Kill off the top of my head, in a show that's not afraid to kill people off. If you're watching it for the first time it's excellent for that.

Kaori from Akira. Not only does she go through soo much shit the entire movie, but she gets killed off in a painful/gruesome way that really ruined the movie experience for me.

The wife in I saw the devil.

Main character (implied) in Eden Lake.

Exploding woman in Cloverfield.

Its mostly unfair deaths that get to me.

Alien Resurrection: the hybrid alien. It's a gruesome way to die, AND the fact that it was basically crying for its mother made it so much worse

It doesn't even happen on screen but like the way Rambo describes what happened to his friend in Vietnam is disquieting

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


Excellent answer, fucking Hell that was rough.

The bathtub scene in Mirrors came to mind since I just watched that recently

i haven't watched the movie (this is the reason actually) but the bone tomahawk one. ifyky. i watched the clip and i felt icky for like a week. i'm thinking about it now since i mentioned it, and i'm squirming.

Game of thrones Princess Shireen. Her screams where haunting.

LeCh0nk posted...

Game of thrones Princess Shireen. Her screams where haunting.

This made me fucking angry more than anything, like did she only exist so the writers could manufacture some unbearable sad?

These arent gory or shocking, more emotional.

13 Reasons Why.
the end of season one. You know what happens the whole show, you know its coming, but man it was still so depressing and sad.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
her mother. It was just random and out of nowhere. It was realistic. No monsters, no villains. Just a random health issue.
It was in real time I believe with no music and seeing the shock and horror of Buffy. It just felt so realistic to me the way it was done. Buffy fights everything, yet here she was pacing and couldnt punch or do anything to help.

Game of Thrones: Oberyn getting his head crushed. That shit traumatized me badly for a few days. Not just because it was brutally violent (it was amazingly well-crafted as an effect) but because I thought I had been spoiled on the outcome years prior. I went into watching that fight knowing in my heart that Oberyn was going to win, because I knew Tyrion got out of prison. I just didn't know the full details of how, so I assumed Oberyn won the fight.

The feeling in my stomach when I watched him get his skull crushed in was...intense. Like something happening right before my eyes that I knew with such confidence should not have been happening. It was the most insane moment of the entire series for me. I don't think anything will ever replicate that feeling.

That JW death is one of the most unfair I have ever seen in a movie.

A couple that stand out for me:

The slow knife death in Saving Private Ryan (if you've seen the movie, you know the one)
The oven death in Thanksgiving

Might be cheating here because it may not necessarily be unsettling or gruesome, but the first one that came to mind is Littlefoot's Mother in The Land Before Time.

Fuck that movie, for not only being as depressing as it was, but also for making little 5-year-old me have an existential crisis and realize that my mom was going to die one day. Lol

One of the Devilman movies showed a kid dying and then being tampered with in gruesome fashion.
Also in Peter Jackon's King Kong, the swamp slugs.

Old Yeller (1957)
Where the Red Fern Grows (1974)

As an animal lover who especially loves dogs these deaths will always be the hardest thing for me on film. My dad sat me down at a very young age in the early 80s to watch Old Yeller.

In school in the late 80s we read the book for Where the Red Fern Grows then watched the movie in class. Not a dry eye in the room.

These two will always be my answer for this type of question. These are the most emotional and hard to watch scenes for me.

LeCh0nk posted...

Game of thrones Princess Shireen. Her screams where haunting.

GoT had some standouts but that one was truly something that stuck with me for a bit.

LeCh0nk posted...

Game of thrones Princess Shireen. Her screams where haunting.

this is the most angry i've ever gotten at a fictional death. wasn't unsettling for me tho.

I can just say all animal deaths and keep it simple, no matter how tame the manner of death might be.

Cant watch Fear again for that reason. Fuck Mark Wahlberg, he was too good in that role.

The "richest man in Gingertown" in Dragonball Z. I guess the same could be said for everyone else Cell absorbed, but goddamn did the show linger on his for so long. Just the way he melts away, with his scream gradually distorting and then fading. Shit gave me nightmares for years as a kid.

Cell draining people was always oddly terrifying for an anime meant for children

SAlYAN posted...

The "richest man in Gingertown" in Dragonball Z. I guess the same could be said for everyone else Cell absorbed, but goddamn did the show linger on his for so long. Just the way he melts away, with his scream gradually distorting and then fading. Shit gave me nightmares for years as a kid.

Lol read my mind

Quint in Jaws. It's literally the guy's worst nightmare to die that way, and it's so drawn-out to the point where you have to wonder if he could've saved himself by grabbing something or planting his foot somewhere else at the right moment (things that were probably running through the character's mind as well).

Oh, speaking of anime, Fullmetal Alchemist, we all know the one.

GreatnessGuru posted...

Spooks (MI5 in the US)
Second episode has the most gruesome and grisly death.

If you've seen Jason X think opposite temperature.

Topic was won in the second post.

Laura Palmer in Fire Walk With Me.

But then I saw somebody post Where the Red Fern Grows and now I'm fucked up.

Definitely Nina Tucker in the original Full Metal Alchemist. Everything done to her was horrible and it was just made worse that Scar Mercy killed her.

Edit: Oh TC kind of Ninja'd me on that one lol

Another one I just thought of, the face melding dude in the Thing 2011. Like damn, what a horrible way to go.

BCS: Howard Hamlin

Tom hanks in Philadelphia. How he slowly wastes away throughout the film is just heartbreaking, then you get to the scene where he shows his lesions in court and it almost becomes too much.

Lost: Nikki and Paolo get buried alive

Has the director or someone involved in Jurassic World, ever answered why they did that death?

Why hasn't anybody said "Any death in 'Terrifier' 1 and 2"?

Hayame_Zero posted...

Alien Resurrection: the hybrid alien. It's a gruesome way to die, AND the fact that it was basically crying for its mother made it so much worse

Also most of the deaths in Day of the Dead. Rhodes being ripped apart, the head being ripped off and the scream turning into a high-pitched, the dude's eye ripped out as he's laughing hysterically, etc

It took me years to figure out Rickles scream goes high-pitched because his vocal cords are being stretched.

masterpug53 posted...

Quint in Jaws.

Came in to say this. The close up of him coughing up blood traumatized me as a kid.

Perksurx posted...

Why hasn't anybody said "Any death in 'Terrifier' 1 and 2"?

doing this in it's own way is bringing it up, but why do people ask why something hasn't been brought up instead of simply bringing it up? just bring it up lol.

pauIie posted...

doing this in it's own way is bringing it up, but why do people ask why something hasn't been brought up instead of simply bringing it up? just bring it up lol.

Any death in 'Terrifier' 1 and 2.

Zikten posted...

Has the director or someone involved in Jurassic World, ever answered why they did that death?

Pretty sure i read that the actress specifically requested an over the top, gruesome end for her character.

MrKapowski posted...

Pretty sure i read that the actress specifically requested an over the top, gruesome end for her character.

Was it? I know the director said that she was the first female character to get killed off in a Jurassic Park movie so that's why he made it that way to make it memorable. I remember it was from some article or something, but I can't seem to find it.

I always think about the old guy living in the sterile apartment in Creepshow. You don't actually see how he dies, you just see thousands of cockroaches suddenly erupt from his corpse

This is brutal and gruesome (to a degree), but I had to add it:

Spoilers for the movie Casino: Joe Pesci and his brother getting severely beaten by baseball bats and buried alive. I've seen gorier stuff in movies, but that one got me when I first saw it and still slightly to this day.

BuzzKilljoy posted...

Laura Palmer in Fire Walk With Me.

This one too. Even though you know it's coming, it's brutal to watch. The whole movie is a pretty heavy sit. Great movie, but rough to watch.

Mega_Mana posted...

BCS: Howard Hamlin

And this one too.

Mega_Mana posted...

BCS: Howard Hamlin

Honestly Chuck's got to me way worse, particularly coming off the heels of the scene depicting his sad regression into mental illness accompanied by that really haunting soundtrack. Pretty much everyone on the internet knew that he'd end up dying in a house fire, but next to no one saw coming that it was intentionally set.

I distinctly remember the original airing putting up a suicide hotline number right after that episode cut to black, and I didn't doubt that it was necessary.

Narutaru just so much of Narutaru.