10 Movies Which Go From 0-100 Right At The End

Director Jonathan Glazer ruffled some pretty big feathers with his acceptance speech for Best International Feature at the 2024 Oscars, calling attention to the death and destruction currently going on in Gaza, but if you expect something equally outspoken from the film that won the award - The Zone of Interest - you've got another thing coming.

A slice of life from Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz, the film has us spend time with the Höss family in and around their home, which borders the camp in the so-called Zone of Interest (a Nazi euphemism for this restricted area). Granted, the film is grim and sickening and loaded with dread throughout, but everything that a Holocaust movie would typically focus on - death, brutality, the camp itself - is pushed purposefully into the background, looming over an idyllic family life that it never really comes into contact with.

That is, until the ending. 

About to return from his Berlin office, Rudolf is seized by a sudden coughing fit, doubling over and retching while he descends an increasingly dark staircase and is seemingly caught, for a few minutes, by the horrors not so much of what he has done, but what all his efforts will become. In this moment, the film whacks us right into the heart of Auschwitz, present-day, making us finally face the reality of horrors that went on behind the camp walls.