25 Greatest Film Deaths This Century

Roger Avary - the other guy responsible for Pulp Fiction - brought The Rules of Attraction to our screens some 23 years ago, adapting one of Bret Easton Ellis’s lesser-known books into a zeitgeist film that never quite found its audience.

Set at fictional Camden College, the movie tracks the lives of Lauren Hynde (Shannon Sossamon), Paul Denton (Ian Somerhalder), and Sean Bateman (James Van Der Beek) as they navigate intertwining, complex, salacious, and occasionally brutal love lives. Sean and Lauren like each other a lot, but can never quite seem to align, with mistakes, misunderstandings, and the prevalence of other partners getting in the way of them getting together.

Among these many roadblocks is an unnamed girl (played by Theresa Wayman), who writes Sean love letters he mistakenly believes are from Lauren; and after she sees him leave a party with another girl, she writes him a final note. This is read to us in voiceover that segues into Harry Nilsson’s “Without You”, with a montage of close-ups in which the girl runs a bath, lights candles, sets aside her jewellery, and opens her veins. As she succumbs to her injuries, we linger in a close-up of her face, before the image tilts and the music distorts, reverb swallowing the song as she passes away.

It’s this editing and camerawork that sell her suicide, making it one of the best scenes of its kind, cutting at last to a full overhead shot that signals bloody finality.