8 Movie Deaths So Gruesome They Had To Happen Off-Screen

8. Death By Shovel - War Of The Worlds

In War of the Worlds, Steven Spielberg's adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel, the director fearlessly shows us in 12A-bothering fashion just what an alien-organised human holocaust would look like. This includes mass annihilation via ray guns that turn people into ash clouds, enormous alien machines draining people of blood to spray on their crops, and other general hyperviolent nonsense that threatens to keep kids awake at night hoping ET stays the hell home. But despite all this, Spielberg still doesn't want us to see how hero Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) despatches paranoid lunatic Harlan Ogilvy (Tim Robbins) in the closed room of Ogilvy's basement. After telling his daughter (Dakota Fanning) to sing herself a lullaby so she can't hear the blood-curdling screams of a man getting beaten to death by her own father, Ray shakily emerges victorious. After all the senseless slaughter of easily one of Spielberg's darkest movies, and certainly the darkest of his blockbusters (he also made Munich around the same time - man must have been working through some issues), he still just can't bring himself to showing you Tom Cruise stoving loveable, crazy ol' Tim Robbins' head in with a shovel.