10 Most Cringe-Worthy Scenes In Amazing Movies

There are cringe-worthy scenes, and then there are scenes that make you so uncomfortable that you immediately wish you were literally anywhere else doing literally anything else.

Such is true of the infamously unbearable answering machine scene in Doug Liman's fantastic comedy Swingers. The scene sees newly-single Mike (Jon Favreau) making a sweaty, awkward mess of leaving a voicemail message for a woman he met at a club earlier that night.

Mike, racked with anxiety, rambles through his first message, resulting in the machine cutting off before he can finish reading out his phone number.

He then calls back to complete the number but screws up again, and keeps making more mistakes on subsequent messages as he grows more nervous, until the woman eventually answers the phone and tells him to never call her again.

Liman does a fantastic job dragging the scene out for three soul-evacuating minutes, while Favreau's awkward performance will be discomfortingly recognisable to all the chronic over-thinkers out there.

There's blocking your own shot, and then there's straight-up firebombing it with your own self-sabotaging anxiety. Nobody could blame you for skipping this scene on repeat viewings.