12 Most Dark And Twisted Movie Scenes Of 2018

6. Barbed-Wire Sacrifice - First Reformed

First Reformed isn't exactly a bloody or violent film, with the thriller opting instead to focus on internal conflict rather than external horror. That decision makes the few violent scenes more impactful though, where grisly murders, like the suicide of one character via a shotgun to the face, are treated with a strange, cold detachment. The message is clear: violence and horror in First Reformed's world is just a painful fact of life.

It's also viewed as a force for change. As Ethan Hawke's troubled priest wrangles with his faith and overall convictions, impotently attempting to change the world from inside the system through discourse and reasoning, he eventually realises that it's going to take something else to send a message. With his health already failing him, he decides to don a suicide vest and blow up his own church during a livestream beaming the building's anniversary celebration to his congregation.

When he sees the woman he loves enter the church, though, he has a change of heart, discards the bomb vest and... wraps his own body in barbed wire, slowly and painfully securing it in place. The scene itself is agonisingly slow, made even more intense by hundreds of people being just outside the door, ready to check on him if he's late for his entrance.

Opting for the destruction of his own body rather than hundreds of innocents, Hawk's character downs a cup of Drano to secure his fate, enjoying one final vision of happiness just before it kicks in.

[Josh Brown]