(Credits: Far Out / United Artists / Warner Bros / Newmarket Films)
Sat 2 August 2025 16:45, UK
As children, we’re often encouraged to watch light and fluffy films that will protect the bubble of childhood innocence and aid our emotional development. Nearly everything you watched started with a white lamp jumping on a letter ‘I’ or was populated by cartoon creatures.
However, there are many of us who were perhaps emotionally stunted by the experience of watching unintentionally traumatic stories at a very young age, finding our young minds plagued by nightmares after watching a scene that was much harsher to watch as a child.
Whether it be a dark animated film like Watership Down or the ‘Other Mother’ scene in Coraline, there are countless films that had this effect on us, leading us to waste many sleepless nights worrying about the characters we had watched on screen and if they would eventually seep into our waking worlds.
While there are many strong contenders, here are five scenes so traumatising they scarred an entire generation for life.
Five horrendously traumatising movie scenes:
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