By Brandon Nolta

Here at Critics Rant, we really love movies. I mean all kinds of movies; if you polled the regular writers, you’d probably find people with passionate, articulate arguments for any number of cinematic wonders, from UN CHIEN ANDALOU to I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, and likely all stops in-between. But, this list you’re reading isn’t intended to make an argument about how great certain movies are, or their historical value, or any some such thing. No, this is a decidedly subjective list of what I term “holy sh*t” moments in film.

Put simply, a “holy sh*t” moment is named such because when you see it, you say … well, you get it. The term doesn’t mean a trick ending, although this list has one or two on it. Nor does it mean something scary jumped out at the characters and made them (and you) soil their drawers, although you might find a scare or two on the list. When I say a “holy sh*t” moment, I mean a moment in the film where the filmmakers—writers, director, actors, gaffer et al—raise the stakes on the narrative, where the story takes a turn or reveals something that honestly and legitimately changes the story or a character therein. It’s a moment so audacious and, when done right as these films do, so unexpected that the viewer is blindsided, and thus involved in a way that movies don’t do like they used to. These films may not be considered great art, but the moments listed below get pretty damn close.

Be warned now; there be plenty of spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen a film mentioned on this list and you want to, skip this list, go watch the film and come back. These moments are usually so integral to a film that knowing them ahead of time ruins the experience. You have been warned.

In no particular order, they are:

10. THE QUIET EARTH (1985): Bruno Lawrence plays depressed researcher Zac Hobson in this New Zealand entry into sci-fi weirdness with a simple premise: Hobson wakes up one morning to find himself the only person on Earth. As he explores his town, he finds water left running, TVs left on, and all manner of evidence indicating that for some reason, everyone else on Earth simply vanished in mid-stride. This knowledge drives him loopy for a little while, but he straightens out just in time to be in his more or less right mind when he meets two other people. As it turns out, the three of them were in the midst of dying when a strange pulse covered the planet, a pulse that originated with the project Hobson worked at before the suicide attempt that ironically saved his life. The project is still running, unfortunately, and Hobson decides to save his new companions (and exit a confrontation over the one woman in the group) by driving a truck bomb into the project. He does, and it works.

HS Moment: After the explosion, Hobson wakes up on what appears to be a tropical beach. He stands up, brushes himself off and looks around, stopping dead at the horizon. Over the horizon, above a calm sea, a gigantic gas planet with rings is rising in the sky. Considering the fact that the DVD artwork shows this shot, it’s not as strong a moment now as it once was, but to those people who were unaware of it when they watched it (like me), the final shot of the film provides a definite charge.

9. THE CRYING GAME (1992): Neil Jordan’s complex romantic thriller is one of those films where more people know the moment than the story itself. Controversial when it came out, the film is actually a smart and nuanced drama about an IRA volunteer named Fergus, played by Stephen Rea, who splits for London after a hostage situation goes bad, leading to the death of a British soldier with whom Fergus had established a rapport. Going off what the soldier had said about his girlfriend Dil, Fergus meets and starts dating Dil, all the while working under a fake name as a day laborer. But, the IRA didn’t look kindly on Fergus bailing, and London isn’t nearly far enough away.

HS Moment: The first time Fergus and Dil approach having sex, Fergus decides to not rush into things. He kisses Dil extensively and works his way down Dil’s body, which is quickly shedding clothes, and keeps heading south until he finds that Dil, who presents as an attractive woman, is actually a man. To say Fergus jumped backward at that point is an understatement, but that’s what audiences all over North America did too. A classic “holy sh*t” moment if ever there was one.




8. CHINATOWN (1974): Lauded as having one of the greatest screenplays ever written, Roman Polanski’s noir-drenched look at, of all things, water rights and the battles over them in 1930s Los Angeles is a film classic any way you cut it. Jack Nicholson plays J.J. Gittes, a private eye who’s hired to look into an adultery case that pulls him into something larger and darker. What starts as adultery pulls him into a web of real estate deals, water rights scandals and enough shady deals to make the Mafia bow their heads in respect and all of it focuses around the lovely Evelyn Mulwray, played by Faye Dunaway, and her avuncular father Noah Cross, played by John Huston.

HS Moment: Near the end of the film, Gittes confronts Evelyn about some inconsistencies in her story about the death of Evelyn’s husband and the presence of a young girl with the husband shortly before he died. Evelyn told Gittes earlier in the film that the young girl was her sister, but under Gittes’ questioning, the truth comes out. The young girl is Evelyn’s daughter … and her sister. Ewww.



7. FIGHT CLUB (1999): It’s the end of the century as we know it, and we feel fine. Edward Norton and Brad Pitt double-team the audience as two men who meet on a plane and, through serendipity and an exploding apartment, begin a movement known as Fight Club for men to reclaim some relevance in a world that devalues masculine traits. As time goes on, Pitt’s character Tyler Durden becomes more radical, soon using the Fight Club aegis to start Project Mayhem, something that involves lots of explosives. Norton’s nameless narrator, freaked by Tyler’s increasing furtiveness and the spiky relationship he has with Marla, played by Helena Bonham Carter, decides it’s time to put a stop to Tyler’s activities. Easy to say, not so easy to do.

HS Moment: In retracing Tyler’s steps on Project Mayhem, the narrator is increasingly unsettled by a growing sense of déjà vu and the fact that everybody seems to recognize him, as well as anticipate what he says. He calls Marla and asks her to say his name. She does: it’s Tyler Durden. The subsequent standoff between Norton and Pitt, where Norton ends up shooting himself to get rid of Pitt, is just icing on one of the most unexpected movie twists in recent years.

6. THE PRESTIGE (2006): In late 19th-century London, two up-and-coming magicians, played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, enter into a deadly rivalry, each one bent on performing a better trick than the other. Bale’s the better magician, but Jackman’s the better showman, and their skills seem almost equally matched. Over the years, their mutual hatred grows, leading them to sabotage each other with increasingly painful results. Then again, magic is their business, and neither one of them are showing everything.

HS Moment: Depending on how close you follow the convoluted narrative, the entire second half of this Christopher Nolan film could count as a great big “holy sh*t.” However, the defining HS moment of the film comes near the end, when Bale breaks into the storage area where Jackman’s character keeps old props and the water tanks from his greatest trick. Bale’s greatest trick is shown to be sleight-of-hand at its best; he’s actually playing identical twins, who are so devoted to keeping up the pretense that nobody, not even the women they love, knows about them. The irony is that Jackman, who couldn’t accept that Bale was using good old stagecraft, actually got a real trick from Tesla: a matter duplicator that precisely creates a copy of anything you put in it. Anything. When Bale breaks in, he finds that Jackman’s trick—which involved hiding himself using electrical arcs and then “magically” appearing in the audience—was done by duplicating himself and sending the duplicate into the audience. Unfortunately, the hiding was accomplished by dropping one into a water tank, and in order to keep things simple, Jackman let the one in the tank drown every time. I defy anybody watching Bale, wandering through rows of water tanks with a drowned Jackman in every one, to keep from yelling “Holy sh*t!”, feeling their skin crawl at the depth of Jackman’s obsession, or both.

5. THE OTHERS (2001): Toward the end of World War II, a lonely woman named Grace, played by Nicole Kidman, waits for her husband to return from the war. Grace, her two children (who are have an extreme sensitivity to light), and some kooky servants all live in the house on the island of Jersey, following strict rules to prevent the children from being harmed. But, there’s been a few new servants hired, and these servants aren’t so hip on following the rules. Grace takes steps to protect her kids, but that may not be enough, especially as the house appears to be haunted.

HS Moment: After the escalations between Grace and the new servants reach a breaking point, Grace gets herself a shotgun and prepares to go Ash on them. The kids run upstairs to hide from a strange old woman who keeps popping up, while Grace keeps the servants at bay with the aforementioned shotgun. The kids see a séance happening in one of the upstairs rooms, led by the old lady that keeps showing up, and the audience experiences the HS moment through the kids. All along, Grace and the kids thought the house was haunted, and it is. By them. Turns out Grace smothered her kids and killed herself years before, and just wasn’t up to facing it. Oh, and the servants? They’re ghosts too. One of the creepiest films, and HS moments, of recent years.

4. THE SIXTH SENSE (1999): Bruce Willis plays Dr. Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist who has withdrawn from the field and life in general after a violent confrontation with a former client, who seems to be hearing voices despite years of therapy. He comes across a young boy named Cole Sear, played by Haley Joel Osment, who seems to be having issues very similar to what his other client experienced. Driven by a sense of failure and his desire to help Cole, Crowe works with the boy to discover the root of his problems, which is straightforward: he sees dead people. Crowe is incredulous at first, but he soon realizes the kid is legit, and tries to help him come to terms with his gift.

HS Moment: The moment in THE SIXTH SENSE comes at the end of an exquisitely subtle chain of events and images. Dr. Crowe has been working with Cole all along, getting him to open up about what he sees and learning to understand what it means. The dead, it seems, haven’t been appearing to Cole to hurt or necessarily scare him; they want his help, and when he provides it, they can move on. This knowledge empowers Cole, allowing him to take a measure of control in his life. The HS moment comes when he applies that knowledge to the person who needs it most: Dr. Crowe, who did not survive the confrontation at the film’s beginning. What a kick.

3. OLDBOY (2003): It’s the late 1980s, and Oh Dae-Su, a drunken and unpleasant Korean businessman, is late for getting home. He’s been pulled in by the cops for being disorderly, and as he walks out of the police station after a friend makes his bail, he calls home to talk to his daughter and wishes her a happy birthday. His friend takes the phone to assure Oh’s wife he’s coming home, and turns around to find his friend gone. Oh has been kidnapped, and is held prisoner by a mysterious captor for 15 years. Released one day with no warning, Oh decides to use what little information he has gleaned from his captor to track down the man and deliver some punishment, helped by a cute waitress he meets along the way. Unfortunately for Oh, there’s a lot more to things than that, and his captor is no dummy.

HS Moment: There are a lot of moments in this film to make audiences squirm. Oh eats a live octopus on camera, gets involved in a fight with 20 dudes in a hallway armed with a hammer, and even practices a little impromptu dentistry with the claw end of said hammer. But, probably the biggest HS moment comes toward the end, when Oh finally confronts his captor—who turns out to be a sick little puppy—and discovers the depths of his captor’s revenge. The captor, who explains the reason for Oh’s imprisonment in a long and icky flashback, reveals to Oh that the waitress, who has been helping Oh in many ways including acrobatic sex, is actually his own daughter, who changed her name when she was adopted following her mom’s murder (all part of the plan). Oh, who thought he was tapped out in the horror department, reacts by cutting out his own tongue with a pair of scissors. Wow.

2. PSYCHO (1960): On the run after stealing $40,000 in cash from her employer, Marion Crane, played by Janet Leigh, decides to stop for the night and rest before going on to meet her boyfriend in his hometown. She pulls into a rundown roadside inn, the Bates Motel, run by the sweetly awkward Norman Bates. Norman is shy and nice, but he’s got an overbearing shrew of a mother, and Marion decides to not talk to Norman any more than she has to. Wise move, although as it turns out, a little too late.

HS Moment: This is one of those cases where the HS moment has to be considered in context of the film and its history. When PSYCHO opened, theatergoers who wanted to see it faced an unusual condition; Hitchcock convinced theater owners to not let anyone in after the movie started, which ran counter to common practice at the time. The reason for this is simple: The film was marketed and sold in such a way that Janet Leigh’s character was considered to be the lead, and for the first 45 minutes, that’s the way it looks. Audiences who have grown up with PSYCHO as a cultural touchstone may not realize this, but for people who are unaware of the film when they first see it, the HS moment—the scene where Norman in drag stabs Marion to death in the shower, all scored to Bernard Herrmann’s screeching violin score—tends to scare the hell out of them. Completely out of left field, it pulls the rug out from under the audience and throws them for a loop, demonstrating that this isn’t the film they thought it was, and that Hitchcock was playing for all the marbles.

1. THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980): After a pitched battle on the ice planet of Hoth, the Rebel Alliance is on the run. Forced by circumstances to split up, Luke and R2 head to Dagobah so Luke can continue his Jedi training under Yoda, while Han, Leia, Chewie and 3PO take a malfunctioning Millennium Falcon and head for Cloud City, run by an old friend of Han’s. Luke’s training starts slowly but goes well, until he receives troubling intimations of his friends’ troubles on Cloud City. Despite Yoda’s warnings, he heads off to save his friends, but a trap awaits him, and the author of the trap, a certain Darth Vader, is close at hand.

HS Moment: Just about everybody reading this knows the moment I mean, but believe it or not, I actually know somebody who has never seen any of the STAR WARS flicks, so just in case that person’s reading this, I’ll set the scene. Luke has fallen into Darth Vader’s trap, but he’s not doing too badly in the fight. However, Darth is pretty badass, and he soon forces Luke out into one of Cloud City’s massive vent shafts. Beaten, bruised and missing a hand thanks to Darth’s lightsaber skills, Luke is hanging over an abyss when Darth offers him a way out. Darth tells Luke that his destiny lies with him, and that Obi-Wan didn’t tell him everything. Luke accuses Darth of killing his father, at which point Darth drops the bomb: “No, Luke. I am your father.” Totally unexpected, and totally right for the story. Arguably the last thing George Lucas did right as a storyteller, Darth’s single line was a “holy sh*t” moment for the ages. Now, let the arguments begin.