Best Film Death Scenes

2007

Hostel Part II (2007)

In this writer/director Eli Roth slasher-horror film sequel, the second installment of the bloody slasher films, it was rightly accused of being 'torture-porn' or 'violence-porn.'

On a budget of 10ドル.2 million, the controversial film grossed revenues of 17ドル.6 million (domestic) and 35ドル.7 million (worldwide).

In this second installment, the tables were turned -- the victims were three American college-aged females. who were vacationing in Eastern Europe, where they were befriended and then betrayed by another Slovakian - a beautiful nude model named Axelle (Vera Jordanova).

In the film's 10 minute prologue, the surviving, ill-fated Paxton Rodriguez (Jay Hernandez) from the first film was hospitalized in Europe and questioned about his experiences in Slovakia a week earlier, where he had survived and escaped. In a flashback, he described:

"It's some kind of factory, where these people, these very rich people, they pay to torture and kill kids. Mostly backpackers. And they killed two of my friends....They take you from this hostel and they bring you to this factory..."

He described how members of the 'hunting club' who killed people all had tattoos of a bloodhound dog. Paxton was asked about a dead man in a toilet stall in Vienna with the same bloodhound tattoo. It was suspected that Paxton had murdered the man, and there was proof that he was there - he had been videotaped on security cameras. One of the questioners showed his own bloodhound tattoo, and Paxton was seized in his bed and stabbed in the heart, and his abdomen was split open and internal organs were seized.

Back in the US, Paxton was regularly waking up in the middle of the night, suffering nightmarish dreams and visions. His concerned girlfriend Stephanie (Jordan Ladd) was upset that he refused to report to the police what had occurred in Slovakia: ("These people are tied into everyone. Somebody starts asking questions, they're gonna come after me, and they're gonna find me..."); she felt that he was "going crazy."

The next morning, she found him seated upright at their breakfast kitchen table. He had been cleanly decapitated by a chain-saw (with a cat licking on the bloody headless stump). The severed head was presumably delivered in a large box to the manager of the Elite Hunting Club in Slovakia - it was later displayed in a room of the manager Sasha Rassimov's home with other trophy heads.

Three new victims for this sequel were in Rome as college-aged art students:

• Beth (Lauren German), a self-possessed, studious rich girl
• Whitney (Bijou Phillips), spoiled, pretty, sex-crazed and slutty
• Lorna (Heather Matarazzo), a socially-awkward, journal-keeping, up-tight, sheltered nerd-loner from Baltimore, a non-drinker

Beth was enticed by their beautiful and statuesque nude model Axelle (Vera Jordanova), another Slovakian, during art class. On their overnight train ride to Prague, Axelle happened to be traveling there too, and befriended the girls when they ran into trouble with some unpleasant Italian guys. She urged the girls to take a diversion from Prague to Slovakia in Eastern Europe - for a brief vacation spa visit and stay in a hostel with cheap prices of 10 euros for a night. Unbeknownst to them, the creepy hostel Desk Clerk (Milda Havlas) uploaded their passport photos to an auction site where their lives were bid upon.

Unbeknownst to them, Axelle was working for Sasha (Milan Knazko) who was running an underground murder-for-money operation, the Elite Hunting Club in Slovakia. They were betrayed when two Americans businessmen pals bid upon the new crop of victims:

• Todd (Richard Burgi), a rich, self-assured, bad-ass, arrogant and sadistic individual
• Stuart (Roger Bart), a wimpy and quieter man who suffered from ethical qualms and second thoughts

The most controversial and disturbing death scene was the unsettling and lingering death of the character of Eastern European vacationer and art student Lorna. She became the victim of a member of the sick and sadistic wealthy elite who paid to experience the torture and suffering of others.

The drunken Lorna was the first casualty. She was kidnapped during the village's outdoor Dozinski (Harvest Festival) by a local man named Roman (Roman Janecka), who had offered her a boat ride. With two accomplices, she was hooded, gagged, and taken away.

She was stripped, gagged, and hung by chains upside down by her ankles in a dungeon - while the female client Mrs. Bathory (Monika Malacova) entered (behind her) and removed her black robe to reveal her nakedness, and reclined below her in an ornately-decorated tub surrounded by candles.

Lorna was first terrorized when the bather took a large hand-held scythe by her side and stroked the bare skin of the torture victim, and then cut off her mouth gag. Swinging above her, Lorna begged for her life. She was repeatedly sliced (and had her throat slit) by the sick female client below her who was ecstatic as she slashed away with a large scythe and ecstatically bathed naked in the blood as it dripped down upon her, in the style of Elizabeth Bathory in the large bath, who believed that she would retain her youthful image by bathing in the blood. After reveling in the blood, "Mrs. Bathory" cut Lorna's throat to kill her.

I Am Legend (2007)

In director Francis Lawrence's (and Warner Bros.') post-apocalyptic sci-fi and action-horror film, the screenplay (by Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman) was based upon Richard Matheson's 1954 horror novel "I Am Legend" about zombies and the apocalypse; the book was the inspiration for two other previous sci-fi horror films, including:

• The Last Man on Earth (1964)
• The Omega Man (1971)

The film's tagline was: "The Last Man On Earth is Not Alone." With a huge budget of 150ドル million, the tremendously popular film grossed revenues of 256ドル.4 million (domestic) and 585ドル.5 million (worldwide). Major on-location sites in NYC included Times Square, Tribeca, and Washington Square, with one of the most spectacular scenes involving a fragmented Brooklyn Bridge (a 5ドル million dollar scene).

• now three years later in the year 2012, ex-US Army military scientist-virologist Dr. Robert Neville (Will Smith) was one of the few surviving individuals remaining in a mostly-deserted NYC after a man-made virus (a genetically-engineered cancer cure that mutated and became deadly) caused a global pandemic-plague that virtually wiped out most of the global population; in 2009, a lethal airborne strain of the virus (The Krippin Virus) had killed 90% of the population, while the others had been transformed (mutated) into vampiric-albino zombies
• Dr. Neville had survived because he was immune to the virus, but was still working to develop a cure by experiments on infected rats and his own blood; he had heavily fortified a place to live in the area of Washington Square Park; his only companion was his German Shepherd dog named "Sam" or Samantha

• by day with his trusted dog, Neville hunted and foraged for food and supplies throughout the starkly deserted, ravaged and abandoned city (with cars left on the streets) and in its vacated stores; he also sought to make daily radio broadcasts to possible survivors to meet with him at noon at the South Street Seaport, to combat his immense loneliness
• every day, he faced the threat of aggressive, zombified, vampirish, virus-infected mutant creatures or hemocytes (called DarkSeekers) that only emerged at night because they were vulnerable to sunlight; his violent assailants were victims of the virus; other dangers came from a pack of infected dogs
• in the film's climax, he realized that he had found the cure for the virus (preserved in a vial of blood), while he was being violently attacked in a protective, plexi-glassed enclosure
• he met up with two other immune survivors from Maryland who had heard his broadcast, Anna (Alice Braga) and her young son Ethan (Charlie Tahan); they were on their way to a survivors' camp in Bethel, VT, after surviving the outbreak on a Red Cross evacuation ship from São Paulo
• to save the two other survivors and the human race (with the cure in a vial of blood), he pulled the pin on a hand grenade and charged at the attackers to sacrifice himself; his strategy killed off the infected leader Alpha Male (Dash Mihok) and all of the others in his laboratory basement

Into the Wild (2007)

In director/writer Sean Penn's documentary-styled, ill-fated odyssey and biopic drama, based upon Jon Krakauer's 1996 non-fiction book, it told about a quest for self-discovery by an adventurous individual who hiked across North America and into the Alaskan wilderness in the early 1990s.

With a budget of 15ドル million, it grossed revenues of 18ドル.4 million (domestic) and 56ドル.7 million (worldwide).

• in the opening scene (actually a concluding sequence) titled "Final Chapter: Getting of Wisdom," free-spirited, idealistic, arrogant college-grad adventurer Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) (who had renamed himself "Alexander Supertramp") arrived at a remote portion of Alaska (known as Healy, north of Denali National Park) in 1992
• he had forsaken his estranged family and many friends along his wanderlust journey; he set up a camp inside an abandoned city bus ("The Magic Bus"); there, he began to live a life of isolation, diary-writing, and hunting for sustenance
• a flashback returned to two years earlier, when he graduated from Emory University (Atlanta, Georgia); he was quickly disillusioned by modern and "corrupt" civilization (after he learned he had been born out-of-wedlock); he began a cross-country drive that ended near Las Vegas where he abandoned his car and began hitchhiking; he wandered to N. California, then back to South Dakota, down to Mexico, and west to Los Angeles, taking odd jobs and having various misadventures
• on the S. California border with Mexico in the Sonoran Desert, he had a brief encounter at an RV park with teenaged Tracy Tatro (Kristen Stewart), a guitar player who was introduced to him as "little Joni Mitchell" - and he spent an enjoyable but brief time with her
• he also met up, a month later at the Salton Sea (California) with kindly, elderly widower and leather worker Ron Franz (Oscar-nominated Hal Holbrook); they had a discussion on a rocky hilltop - where they both climbed up - to talk about where to find human happiness:
  • "From the bits and pieces I've put together, you know, from what you told me about your family, your mother and your dad, and I know you've got your problems with the church too, but there's some kind of bigger thing we can all appreciate, and it sounds like you don't mind calling it God. But when you forgive, you love, and when you love, God's light shines on you"
• two months later, during their tearful and heartfelt parting scene just before Ron dropped off hitchhiking 'Alex' at the start of his Alaskan adventure, he proposed paternalistically to adopt 'Alex' as his grandchild:
  • "You know, my, uh, my mother was an only child and so was my father, and, uh, I was their only child, so, uh, when I'm gone, I'm the end of the line. My family will be finished. What do you say you let me adopt you? I can be, say, your grandfather."
• unfortunately, 'Alex' demurred:
  • "Ron, could we talk about this when I get back from Alaska? Would that be okay?"
• but they would never have another opportunity to speak
• the final scene flashed-forward about four months in Alaska to find Chris' prolonged, lonely, and painful death due to starvation and poisoning after eating inedible Wild Sweet Peas (mistaken for Wild Potato Alaska Carrot) - his final words were scrawled in block letters into his journal:
  • "HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED"
• two weeks later, his body was found by moose-hunters

• there was incredible pull-back shot from his face (as a single tear dropped from the corner of his right eye and then his left eye) as he gazed up at the light in the back of his abandoned 'magic bus' home (an IH 1946 abandoned bus) and expired
• the last image of the film was an actual self-portrait photograph of Chris sitting next to his bus

The Mist (2007) (aka Stephen King's The Mist)

In writer/director Frank Darabont's (and Dimension Films') science-fiction horror-thriller film, it was an adaptation of Stephen King's 1980 novella. Its main premise was to illustrate how people would begin to act irrationally in the face of a massive and life-threatening disaster.

Its tagline was:

"FEAR CHANGES EVERYTHING."

On a budget of 18ドル million, it grossed revenues of 25ドル.6 million (domestic), and 57ドル.5 million (worldwide).

• it told about a strong thunderstorm and a subsequent massive power outage that affected the small town of Bridgton, Maine. Then, a mysterious, unnatural fog or mist full of otherworldly, monstrous inter-dimensional creatures, pterodactyl-like animals, tentacled snake-like worms, spider-like monsters, and giant flying insects enveloped and trapped a few dozen people in the local supermarket known as Food House, and then assaulted them. Unseen forces inside the mist attacked some of those who left the store and dragged them into the mist. The monstrous creatures were also able to gain access into the store and wreak havoc.

• one of the store's baggers named Norm (Chris Owen) was grabbed by a tentacle and dragged out into the mist to his death. Other deaths of those who ventured out into the mist proved that it was absolutely true that there were bloodthirsty monsters out there inside the mist. Cashier Sally (Alexa Davalos) was stung in the neck by one of the flying insects. One giant insect also landed on frenzied religious fanatic Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), but it didn't harm her. Some hypothesized that her preachings and rantings about being punished by a divine God were credible and true, and she attracted followers to her beliefs about a "Judgment Day." The emboldened Mrs. Carmody also began to urge human sacrifices to appease the monsters and drive them away.
• shortly later in a nearby pharmacy where medical supplies were being sought by a group led by painter-artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane), the group found dozens of sticky, cocooned and webbed victims of spider-like creatures hung from the ceiling. They were attacked by huge venomous spiders who sprayed them with acidic webbing.
• one explanation given for the onslaught of creatures within the mist was that it was the result of a chemical leak, or a botched military experiment to find other dimensions in the nearby Arrowhead military base. Under pressure, one military officer Private Wayne Jessup (Sam Witwer) admitted that a top-secret project had attempted to open a portal to another other-worldly dimension, but had unwittingly unleashed the creatures into the world. For his admission, Jessup was personally attacked and stabbed, and forced outside to be one of Carmody's sacrifices to save the group - he was grabbed and devoured by a praying-mantis creature.
• to save himself and others from the same fate (feeling threatened by Mrs. Carmody), David and a group of others attempted to leave the supermarket. They were blocked by some of Mrs. Carmody's devout followers with knifes and other weapons, but were saved when the supermarket's assistant manager Ollie Weeks (Toby Jones) shot Mrs. Carmody point-blank in the chest and forehead, instantly killing her. Her murder shocked the others out of their mindless and crazed devotion to her, and they backed away.
• the group was able to sneak off, but a few members of the group lost their lives in the parking lot before the other survivors were able to flee in David's SUV. David's wife Stephanie "Steff" Drayton (Kelly Collins Lintz) was found dead in his destroyed home. She was a victim of cocooning by the spider-creatures. Besides David, the four others in the vehicle, as they drove through an apocalyptic scene of death and destruction, were:
  • Billy Drayton (Nathan Gamble), David's 8 year-old son
  • Amanda Dunfrey (Laurie Holden), a married teacher, blonde, David's newfound love interest
  • Irene Reppler (Frances Sternhagen), Amanda's elderly co-worker teacher
  • Dan Miller (Jeffrey DeMunn), an elderly man
• after driving many miles, the car ran out of gas in the midst of a monster-ridden mist-shrouded, winding forested road. The film's highly controversial final few minutes (not in the Stephen King novella, although King approved of the addition) was a sadistic, tacked-on, bleak, nihilistic and sacrificial ending. The stranded group, with no hope of rescue or escape, decided to commit suicide - for their quick and merciful end.
• David realized that there were only four bullets left, so he opted to mercy-kill the four occupants of the car (with bullet shots to the head), leaving himself as the only survivor. After four blasts, he agonized about killing himself by placing the gun in his mouth. He then stepped out of the van and screamed in anguish for one of the unseen blood-thirsty creatures to come and kill him -- "Come on!" -- but then, the mist began to lift. A military caravan of tanks and trucks pulled up and emerged from the mist, in a deus ex machina moment.

• the military police torched the remaining creatures with flamethrowers, and helped any remaining survivors. The sight caused a weeping David to collapse to his knees in dazed disbelief at the pointlessness of his inane murderous sacrifice. The camera rose up to display the large-scale recovery-salvage effort.

Mother of Tears (2007, It.) (aka La Terza Madre, or The Third Mother)

In writer/director Dario Argento's supernatural-horror film, it was the third horror-fest work of the director's "Three Mothers" trilogy. It was preceded by:

• Suspiria (1977, It.)
• Inferno (1980, It.)

The film was based on Suspiria de Profundis written by Thomas De Quincey in 1845. The director adapted the collection of essay into the film's story and screenplay. The plot depicted, in 21st century Rome, a violent confrontation with the last surviving and cruel "Mother" known as Mater Lachrymarum (Moran Atias) - a member of a trio of ancient malevolent black witches known as the 'Three Mothers.'

The Italian film performed poorly at the box-office, and wasn't able to recoup its production budget of 3ドル.5 million.

• in Rome, Catholic church workers were digging up the caskets of corpses (of 19th century church officials)
• one of the unearthed coffins included skeletal remains of a 19th century church official; they found an ancient rectangular box-shaped urn (belonging to the Mater) chained to the casket; the seal of the urn was broken as it was opened; they didn't realize that opening the urn had unwittingly unleashed a long-dormant evil
• magical artifacts discovered inside the urn included:
  • a dark-red cloak or tunic costume ("some kind of talisman" with unusual inscriptions in an "ancient language")
  • an ornate dagger
  • three small female statues (representing the three mothers or witches)
• the urn was shipped to the Museum of Ancient Art in Rome for further study; the workers at the museum included:
  • Michael Pierce (Adam James), the main curator; a single father who was dating an American art student named Sarah Mandy (Asia Argento)
  • Giselle Mares (Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni), an assistant archaeologist
• at night during Michael's absence, researcher Giselle (with Sarah) opened the urn; after the building shook, the assistant curator Giselle was suddenly assaulted by demonic forces; in the spectacularly brutal and gory murder, her teeth were bashed out with a metal pestle; her belly was disemboweled with the dagger (causing her intestines to spill onto the floor), and her neck was strangled by her own ropy innards
• then, she was consumed by three, shadowy, crazed demonic agents and an encouraging, evil screaming pet monkey
• Sarah was able to escape from the building with help from a disembodied voice that guided her through locked doors (magically thrown open) [Note: Later, it was discovered that the voice belonged to Elisa Mandy (Daria Nicolodi), a powerful white witch.]
• further assaults, mass suicides and violent murders spread rapidly through Rome

No Country for Old Men (2007)

In the Coen Brothers' dark Best Picture-winning crime drama and western thriller, it was based upon Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel about a bad drug-deal gone wrong in early 1980s West Texas. It told of the relentless efforts of a ferocious, violent, and psychotic hitman who had escaped policy custody and jail, to recover a satchel with 2ドル million dollars from the aftermath of the failed drug deal. He was searching for the money that had been retrieved by Vietnam veteran, welder and local Texas cowboy Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin).

• in the opening tense scene, a young deputy (Zach Hopkins) was strangled to death by the handcuffed amoral, ferocious, and violent thrill-killer Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), one of the scariest villains ever created, using his handcuffs as a garrote from behind; after the killing, he reacted with a grinning, satisfied exhalation, and then walked away from the bloody, scuffed-up floor from the flailing boots of the struggling man
• throughout the film, the enigmatic Chigurh, after escaping custody and jail, killed other victims with his signature weapon - a compressed-air cattlegun, as he relentlessly pursued the satchel with the money, held by Moss (Josh Brolin); Moss' theft of the funds led to an exciting chase and cat-and-mouse pursuit game
• when he was finally able to confront Moss by phone, Chigurh promised that Moss' young and innocent wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) wouldn't be hurt if Moss gave up the money, but he defiantly refused:
  • Chigurh: "You know how this is gonna turn out, don't you?"
    Moss: "Nope."
    Chigurh: "I think you do. So this is what I'll offer. You bring me the money and I'll let her go. Otherwise, she's accountable, the same as you. That's the best deal you're gonna get. I won't tell you you can save yourself, because you can't."
    Moss: "Yeah, I'm gonna bring you somethin', all right. Decided to make you a special project of mine. You ain't gonna have to come look for me at all" (Moss hung up the pay phone)
• at the film's conclusion, the evil and remorseless killer confronted the now-widowed Carla Jean in her bedroom - preceded by a mournful dialogue between the two; she spoke first:
  • "I knew this wasn't done with. I ain't got the money. What little I had is long gone and there's bills a-plenty to pay yet. I buried my mother today. Ain't paid for that neither....I need to sit down. You got no cause to hurt me."
• Anton explained how he had earlier pledged to Moss that he would kill her if he didn't bring him the 2ドル million in stolen drug money: "No, but I gave my word...to your husband." [Note: This was despite the fact that Moss had already been murdered by Mexican drug lords in an El Paso motel, not Anton, and was thus unable to deliver the money.] She responded:
  • "That don't make sense. You gave your word to my husband to kill me?"
• Chigurh tried to explain:
  • "Your husband had the opportunity to save you. Instead, he used you to try to save himself."
• after she told him: "Not like that. Not like you say. You don't have to do this," the killer responded: "People always say the same thing...They say, 'You don't have to do this'."
• Chigurh then offered her his usual 50/50 chance of survival by flipping a coin ("OK. This is the best I can do. Call it"), but she refused:
  • "I knowed you was crazy when I saw you sittin' there. I knowed exactly what was in store for me... I ain't gonna call it...The coin don't have no say - it's just you."
• he replied: "I got here the same way the coin did"; she was then predictably murdered (off-screen), signified by his leaving the house alone

Superman: Doomsday (2007)

In Warner Bros.' PG-rated, animated superhero direct-to-video movie, the story was based on the "The Death of Superman" plot that appeared in DC Comics' publications in the 1990s.

The budget of 3ドル.5 million for the stand-alone film was recouped with sales of 10ドル million (in home media).

• Man of Steel Superman's (voice of Adam Baldwin) main nemesis Doomsday was accidentally unearthed when LexCorp employees (working for supervillain Lex Luthor (voice of James Marsters)) were digging into the ground outside of Metropolis and discovered the super-soldier's alien spaceship
• when the capsule was opened, a mindless, hostile, inter-galactic, indestructible, genetically-engineered creature known as Doomsday was unleashed; it reacted with a killing rampage towards the city
• during a violent battle between Superman and the LexCorp creature, the superhero sacrificially lifted the unstoppable killing machine miles into the atmosphere and crashed back into the Earth with it at super-speed, causing them to burn up during reentry
• the impact sent shockwaves throughout the city and left a huge crater, and extinguished the red-eyes of the monstrous creature
• when the smoke and debris cleared from the air, Lois Lane (voice of Anne Heche) ran to Superman's side after he collapsed, and found him with blood dripping from the corners of his mouth; he asked her if the creature was dead ("Is everyone...?") and she assured him:
  • "You did it Superman, we're safe, all of us."
• Superman had a dramatic, tearjerking death; after he spoke his final words: "Good, that's-that's all that matters"; tears welled up in Lois' eyes as he fell limp and lifeless, and died in her arms