10 Shocking Movie Character Deaths That Came Out Of Nowhere

This is a difficult entry to write—and that’s only partially because the film it’s in is so hard to watch even before this infamous sequence.

Austrian auteur/ helmer of one of cinema’s most overrated films (Funny Games, pick a version) Michel Haneke is—at best—a touch over-praised. The Benny’s Video director had trafficked in vaguely exploitative, self-serious social drama for decades now, and only a handful of critics have called out his simplistic critiques of screen violence.

But damn does he know how to put together a mystery.

2005’s Cache, also known as Hidden, is a tense, claustrophobic, and chillingly open-ended story of Georges, an insomnia-struck Frenchman plagued by both haunting memories of his childhood and anonymously sent videotapes which show that an unseen someone has his family under surveillance. Armed with a guilty conscience our protagonist sets out to find his childhood friend Majid, who he apparently mistreated badly enough to assume he’s the one behind these mystery tapes.

Majid for his part denies any involvement, prompting our nominal hero to pester him, repeatedly confront him, and threaten him, until eventually Majid comes up with a novel way to prove his innocence—by slitting his throat in front of Georges.

As overrated as a lot of Haneke’s oeuvre is, it’s hard to deny the effective horror of this unexpected shock.