I’m talking about a moment when a villain has the hero at their mercy and then does a move to really show what an utter bastard they are. There’s no shortage of them, but one that really sticks out to me is one line from “Se7en” at the climax from Kevin Spacey as John Doe.
“Oh…he didn’t know.”
Anyone who’s seen “Se7en” will know exactly what I mean. As brutal as that film’s outcome is, that just makes it all the worse.
What’s your worst?
You asked about film but I’m gonna answer comic books. For me, the X-Men scene where Dark Beast "cask of Amontillado"s original Beast behind the brick wall is my top answer. The comic spends time clarifying that Hank McCoy’s (Beast) nature is inquisitive, and his curiosity so great that merely not knowing an answer is harder for him than receiving a negative answer, so that the cruelty is extra-pronounced when Beast asks Dark Beast why he is doing this and Dark Beast just grins at him and says “Because” before placing the last brick. As a kid, I found that level of taunting truly to be haunting