20 Worst Movie Moments Of 2015

2. Home Sweet Hell: The Moment Where The Children Are Raped

This off-kilter black comedy thriller starring Katherine Heigl and Patrick Wilson isn€™t too bad for the majority of its ninety-eight minute run time. Heigl plays Mona, a suburban housewife who discovers that her husband Don is having an affair... and then discovers that she has an icy flair for the murderously dramatic. There€™s all the usual elements of the post-Coen Brothers crime caper: extortion, ultraviolent criminals, macabre murders and dismemberments, and family ties turned into strangler€™s garottes. It€™s competently staged, well-produced and acted, and everything proceeds onwards until the point where psychotic criminal Murphy threatens to rape Don€™s young son and daughter unless he gets his money. That€™s black, even for a film like this: but it€™s clearly an empty threat designed to establish antagonist Murphy as completely lacking in redeeming qualities in order to up the level of jeopardy at play. It€™s screenwriting shorthand... now that we know what he€™s capable of, we accept that nothing is out of bounds when it comes to taking him down. Except it€™s not an empty threat, and he isn€™t taken down. Mona and Don manage to frame Murphy and his boys for the murders they€™ve committed, and the police arrive to take him and his right hand man in. But Murphy escapes the police at the crime scene, and although he takes his time, he does just as he€™s threatened and turns up on the family€™s driveway again at the end of the film. The screen goes black, the credits roll, and two shots are fired€ followed by the sound of two children screaming. And that€™s it. This blackest of black comedies ends with the very clear implication that the protagonist€™s two pre-teen children are being raped to death by an Irish headcase. That€™s not funny. That€™s not even blackly funny. That€™s an appalling misstep of gargantuan proportions.