20 Most Intense Movie Scenes Ever
Shocking, terrifying...and awesome.
Movie audiences these days have been exposed to so much that it's hard to truly make them feel shocked, exhilarated or appalled anymore, but with a winning combination of a skilled filmmaker, worthy material and game actors, cinema can still get the blood pumping and the palms sweating.
These 20 scenes, from brutal deaths to awesome car chases, terrifying scares and unbearable suspense set-pieces, represent cinema at its most dizzying intense.
Not merely daring to be suspenseful, these scenes all took things much further with a full-on sensory assault that left audiences squirming, gripping their seats tightly and fully giving themselves over to the escapist quality of film.
You may not like all these movies or ever want to watch these white-knuckle scenes again, but it goes without saying that each did a fantastic job milking the adrenal glands of audiences worldwide, and creating iconic movie moments that won't ever be forgotten...
20. The Bear Attack - The Revenant
No scene from Alejandro G. Iñárritu's searing masterpiece was as talked about as the early bear attack sequence, in which fur trapper Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is brutally mauled by a bear in one stomach-knotting single take.
The mind-boggling quality of the CGI bear and DiCaprio's gutsy, Oscar-winning work contribute to making this by far the most realistic bear attack on film. Unless you're scrutinising the visual effects with a magnifying glass, it is staggeringly convincing.
Ignore all that "bear rape" controversy and you've got an extremely discomforting and visceral sequence which sets up the rest of the movie.