20 Anxiety-Inducing Moments That'll Terrify You Senseless

Well, this was terrifying. 

In the second half of Alex Garland's fantastic war film, which depicts a second American Civil War, a group of journalists come across several soldiers preparing a mass grave. They're led by a racist, psychopathic Militiaman (Jesse Plemons), who calmly executes one of the group when he realizes he's a foreigner. 

This abrupt outbreak of violence sets the tone for the agonizing scene that follows, as the Militiaman interrogates the others about their country of origin, before eventually killing one of the others when he confesses that he's from Hong Kong. One of the other journalists (Stephen McKinley Henderson) saves the group by running the Militiaman and his allies over, but it's a close call. He might've killed them all otherwise. 

Thanks to Garland's typically strong writing, this would always have been a good scene, but the person who turns it all up to 11 is Jesse Plemons, who's completely brilliant and makes this a panic-inducing watch. The way in which he intimidates the group, the casualness of his killings, those pink sunglasses - everything about this character is heart-in-mouth frightening. 

Quite frankly, it's a serious injustice that Jesse Plemons wasn't nominated for Best Supporting Actor for this. Sure, he wasn't credited, and he's only in Civil War for one scene, but he absolutely owned an already terrific movie, and if Isabella Rossellini could get nominated for a fairly forgettable one-scene turn in Conclave that same year, then there should've been room for Plemons.