10 Most Anxiety-Inducing Movie Scenes EVER
Rating a 10/10 on the sweat-o-meter.
You might watch movies for reprieve from the stresses of everyday life. A window into another world for a brief moment that allows you to bask in simple cinematic joys - like the wonders of space travel, or the unreachable realms at the bottom of the ocean, or even just the sordid joys of being... in love. You know what I mean. Oi oi.
But that escapism always comes with a price. Did you know that you can asphyxiate in space in about seconds if you manage to avoid exploding your lungs or boiling out your own eyes? Or that the Mariana Trench goes down as far as Everest goes up, and would crush you into a tiny shrivelled piece of potpourri instantaneously should you find yourself at the bottom of it? Or even that at least 11,000 people suddenly die in the throws of impassioned boinking a year? DID YOU?
Even the most placid of movies are riddled with tension should you think about them too hard, and that's without even considering the ones actually designed to get your heart racing. Which we're about to do. Gulp.
10. Prometheus - Alien C-Section
If there's one thing most people can safely say they'd never want, it's to be impregnated by a violent alien species that will tear you apart from the inside out. I mean, I'm not speaking for those folk that get their rocks off to ovipositor, egg-laying sex toys that appear exclusively on Wish adverts and VICE articles, but I'm not here to kink shame either.
But that's exactly what happens to poor Elizabeth Shaw during the run of Prometheus. Previously infertile but suddenly finding herself in the advanced stages of pregnancy, Shaw realises something inhuman has made it's home inside her - and she needs to get it out quickly. Repurposing an automated surgical machine to perform an emergency C-Section on her, it's a nail-biting sequence where she has to reprogram the Med-Pod against its 'male' settings and figure out a roundabout way of extracting the creature.
And even when she does get the damn squid out, it's stuck in a glass tube freaking out with her, making for a relentless, painful experience from start to finish. Yes, Alien could have very easily gone here, but let's give its lesser loved child a bit of appreciation too, hey?