10 Movies That Got Real Dark, Real Fast

Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy was far darker than the Joel Schumacher and Tim Burton efforts that came before it. In fairness, this wouldn’t have been particularly difficult, but this was definitely a newer tone to the caped crusader on the big screen.

The broodier Bruce Wayne found himself up against a far creepier version of the Joker in The Dark Knight, but even so, the movie took an unexpectedly harrowing turn when the Clown Prince of Crime called out Batman on TV.

The Joker was broadcast interrogating and torturing a man who dressed up like the Batman, in what was a genuinely disturbing video. Off-screen, he took the man's life, but how he announced this to the world was arguably even darker. Mayor Garcia looked out of his office window across Gotham, before seeing this Batman impersonator - with the Joker's smile painted on his lips and a noose around his neck - crash into the glass.

The shock of the moment - of seeing a man hanged by the neck slamming into the window out of nowhere, followed by the subsequent murder tape - was darker and tougher to watch than anything else in the movie. Even more so than using a man’s head to make a pencil disappear.