20 TERRIFYING Scenes In Non Horror Movies
3. Drowning In Tar - Miracle Mile
The criminally underappreciated apocalyptic thriller Miracle Mile follows Harry (Anthony Edwards), a man who answers a payphone only to be informed by the caller that nuclear war will break out in less than 70 minutes.
After spending most of the movie anxiously fretting over whether the call is genuine, we learn the terrifying truth.
Amid the mass panic unfolding, Harry and his love interest Julie (Mare Winningham) see a missile in the sky, but as they attempt to hitch a ride away from the area on a helicopter, warhead and EMP detonations cause the chopper to crash into the La Brea Tar Pits.
The pair are left helplessly trapped in the cabin as it quickly fills with tar, at which point all Harry can do to comfort Julie is suggest the possibility of them being turned into diamonds if they take a direct hit from one of the missiles.
In the final shot, the cabin fills with tar, before the sound of a missile strike is heard, implying that Los Angeles was indeed obliterated by a direct hit.
Considering that Miracle Mile is as much a romance as it is an urgent thriller, audiences likely expected Harry and Julie to find a way to survive, but filmmaker Steve De Jarnatt instead decides to cruelly, horrifically pull the rug out.