9 Violent Mainstream Movie Scenes That Went Too Far

7. A Man Gets His Faced Smashed With A Bottle Out Of Nowhere - Pan's Labyrinth

Here's a lesson for aspiring filmmakers: When your movie, ostensibly a fairy tale, appears to be for all ages, either refrain from inserting a gratuitous face-stabbing into the middle of it, or advertise the hell out of its adult content. Guillermo del Toro chose something in between, and it was a risky decision that paid off... for the most part.

Throughout Pan's Labyrinth, the director tests just how grim he could make this fantasy, incorporating just as many moments of bone-chilling, violent realism as he does whimsical elements. So it's always hard to tell what the vibe of any given scene is going to be. And so we find the film's most nightmarish monster to be Captain Vidal, a man who hunts down anti-fascist rebels.

One such dissident makes the mistake of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and is repeatedly smashed in the face with a glass bottle (with disturbingly mechanized strikes) until he dies, while his helpless father watches on. This first act of violence is the most violent and thus, the most efficiently traumatising for any children who happened to follow along with the mostly fantastical plot up until that point.