40 Best Death Scenes Of 2011

Scream 4

The Death: Ghostface gets slash happy with Olivia (Marielle Jaffe) in her own bedroom, spraying the walls with her blood and smashing her through a window. All while Emma Roberts and Hayden Panettiere watch on.

Look Away When: Sidney (Neve Campbell) bursts into the bedroom and finds Olivia curled up on her bed, cradling her exposed innards…

X-Men: First Class

The Death: Magneto (Michael Fassbender) exacts his revenge on the man who killed his mother, using a coin against Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) like a coin’s never been used before.

Look Away When: The coin eases its way through Shaw’s forehead and disappears inside as Professor X (James McAvoy) screamed in telekinetic pain…

Hobo With A Shotgun

The Death: The Hobo (Rutger Hauer) traps a guy under a drain cover with his head roadside. Then he loops a rope around his neck, attaches the end of the rope to the car and puts the pedal to the metal.

Look Away When: The rope goes taut…

I Saw The Devil

The Death: A taxi driver gets slashed to pieces by Kyung-chul (Choi Min-sik) – while he’s still driving the car. All in a single, blood-hazed take. Awesome.

Look Away When: The arterial spray hits the camera, and our knife-wielding psycho just keeps slashing…

Black Swan

The Death: Nina (Natalie Portman) finally achieves greatness on stage as she performs herself to death as the black swan.

Look Away When : Nina lands on the crash mat, only to discover blood oozing out of her torso.

Final Destination 5

The Death: Candice (Ellen Wroe) practises her gymnastics routine as numerous horrible hazards get our paranoia well and truly burning. Then all hell breaks loose and Candice flips off the high bars, landing, well, /really/ awkwardly.

Look Away When: Candice lies in a crumpled heap on the floor, legs over head...

The Woman

The Death: In this controversial horror’s closing moments, Peggy (Lauren Ashley Carter) lets The Woman (Pollyanna McIntosh) loose. Except The Woman is really pissed, attacking Belle (Angela Bettis) and chewing off her face. Then she rips out Chris’ (Sean Bridgers) heart and eats it in front of him.

Look Away When:
The Woman gets freed from her restraints…

Ironclad

The Death: William d'Aubigny (Brian Cox) feels the wrath of King John (Paul Giamatti) and his Vikings, as his limbs are all cut off, and he’s catapulted against the castle. Grisly doesn’t quite cover it.

Look Away When: The first foot gets lopped off…

Drive

The Death: Driver (Ryan Gosling) clocks a man in the lift as a potential assassin and makes the first move, kicking the fella to the floor and then stomping on his head. Repeatedly.

Look Away When: Looking away won’t help – the sound effects do all the work here.

Kill List

The Death: A librarian gets beaten to death with a hammer – like, really, really beaten to death – in Ben Wheatley’s riveting sophomore feature.

Look Away When: Duh, the hammer comes out. This ain’t going to be pretty.

Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.