20 TERRIFYING Scenes In Non Horror Movies
5. Apollo 1 Test Fire - First Man
Damien Chazelle's First Man is a meticulously crafted dramatisation of the Apollo 11 moon landing and all the toil that led up to it, including the tragic failure of the Apollo 1 mission.
During a rehearsal test on January 27, 1967, all three crew members - Ed White (Jason Clarke), Gus Grissom (Shea Whigham), and Roger Chaffee (Cory Michael Smith) - were killed by a fire inside the cabin module, and Chazelle captures it here with unnerving matter-of-factness.
He certainly doesn't linger on the grislier details of the accident, but opts for a more clinical depiction, showing the fire spreading through the cabin before swiftly cutting to the outside, where the escape hatch is dented from a high-pressure explosion and things go eerily silent.
The visceral horror of what these men experienced in their final moments is palpably depicted by Chazelle, all while avoiding a lurid lurch into tasteless exploitation territory.