(snip)
This is exactly what I came into the thread to say. That’s the watershed moment in the series, I think: either you walk away from that episode shocked and horrified and unable to watch more, or you walk away from that episode shocked and horrified and determined to watch the rest.
Not a great movie by a long shot, but still- I was SHOCKED when I saw Executive Decision, because…
An action movie is NOT supposed to kill off Steven Seagal so early in the action!
I was floored by the end of Brazil.
I was floored when I learned that the studio attempted to cut the ending of Brazil. 
Allegedly, in some places, this cut version was released!
I barely made it through “Meet Joe Black”. That movie was the longest three days of my life. That being said, in the beginning of the movie when he walks out into the street shocked the shit out of me. I literally jumped out of my seat.
Yes, and as for my comment that Bill Paxton went for it and the studio backed him up: God was, in fact, ordering Matthew McConaghy to kill those people. God wants him to murder the shit out of demonic people who walk the Earth.
Arlington Road. I had food poisoning in a hotel in Peru. I was laid up in bed and this movie came on. I knew nothing about it. My jaw hit the floor at the end.
Taking Lives-
The first five minutes ends with a shocker, then a time jump of decades. The first time I saw it was on TV with no clue, I sat up and said no fucking way! at the shocker. The rest of the movie with Angelina Jolie pails in comparison to those minutes.
Audition, the very first scene where you find out something is horribly horribly wrong:
when the large sack hurls itself against the wall
That was much more disturbing to me than all the torture and body horror that followed.
I am very glad that I went into The Sixth Sense knowing “it’s a ghost story” and nothing else, and into The Crying Game knowing “it’s about the IRA” and nothing else. In both cases, I was shocked as hell, and got so much entertainment from being fooled and then having that realization.
A very different kind of shock: watching the first scene between Chloe Moretz and Nicolas Cage in Kickass.
I was completely caught off guard by the twist in The Incredibles. I was shocked in a different way by Blackhawk Down. I’d never seen a movie with a body count that high before, and felt numb leaving the theater.
“Shutter Island.” :eek:
I got an even bigger shock the second time around watching it when I realized that Michael Caine was right about pretty much everything.
The audience (i.e. us) wants to be fooled, Bale was using a double, Jackman’s trick was real and dangerous.
Whenever the series comes on TV or I’m watching through it, when I see the episode come up I get this peculiar feeling that’s a combination of dread and excitement. I love that episode, but it always makes me a bit depressed and/or sickened.
Man that is a tough movie to watch, will not watch it again but glad I did the first time.
The Crying Game :smack:
I actually started a thread about this. Best Movie I Never Want to Watch Again.
My roommate was actually worse. He grew up in American Samoa instead of New Zealand, but he said everything in the movie happened to someone he knew.
The Vanishing (1988). Probably my first film experience without the traditional happy Hollywood ending.
Even more so for The Deep Blue Sea and
Samuel Jackson
The Prestige still floors me just thinking about it. I saw it only for the fact Christopher Nolan made it, since I had by then realized he was a good bet. I was not expecting Jackman’s character to commit suicide. He doesn’t die multiple times; each duplicate dies once – the night after it was “born” – and it keeps going in this cycle. Sure it’s a limited run, but wasn’t it something like 75 shows? He chose every night to go out there and die for this trick. What if this time the duplication didn’t work? What if it went wrong? Was it worth that? I guess it wouldn’t really matter, he would never find out it didn’t work, he’s drowning in a coffin beneath the stage.
…there’s a twist in The Incredibles?
There’s a similar plot development in the gentle UK drama Two Thousand Acres of Sky that genuinely surprised me.