The whole point of movies is to get an emotional reaction out of you. Sometimes it's a laugh, other times a cry. Some movies want to scare the absolute crap out of you and some just want to make you think a little about our place in the universe. All of these moments are well and good, but there also exists little nugget in movies that make you blurt, "What the fuck?!" These scenes can be gross, shocking, weird, or stupid. This year had no shortage of any of those, and we've gone ahead and collected a few of our favorites.
Below you'll find a list of our 10 favorite WTF movie moments from 2017. These moments come from movies of all different types and genres with the only qualifier being that they made us stop dead in our tracks to let our brains catch up with us. These were our favorites, but we want to know yours, too, so, share in the comments your favorite WTF movies of the year.
Spoiler Warning: Obviously, we're going to be spoiling the events of these movies, so if you haven't seen any particular movie, just skip ahead to the next page.
Pennywise's Dance From IT
It can't be understated how many WTF moments there are in IT, 99% of which all revolve around Pennywise. We could have easily gone with him, oh I don't know, crawling out of a projection as a giant trying to gobble up some kids, but that's kind of expected from Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard). What isn't expected is that he randomly breaks into a jig in a highly meme-able moment. When Beverly (Sophia Lillis) awakens in Pennywise's lair, there's plenty of discarded children's toys lying around to creep her out, but nothing can prepare her for when Pennywise's cart transforms into a stage and Pennywise begins dancing. It's like if Mike Myers just started to tango before he gutted you. Pennywise doesn't smile or move his head at all; he just stares blankly while kinking his feet to the side. Poor Bev can only avert her eyes to look for an exit. Anyway, he's not called Pennywise the Dancing Clown because he just holds balloons all day.
Flash and Cyborg Rob Superman's Grave In Justice League
One issue that cropped up when Justice League hit theaters is that the movie tried to marry two different tones -- a more lighthearted approach coupled with the darker origins of the DCEU. That battle is personified in the scene where Flash (Ezra Miller) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) literally rob Superman's corpse from his grave. They have shovels and everything! This is a major superhero tentpole and this is how the movie chooses to spend its super short two-hour runtime?! It's a nice bonding moment between the two characters for sure, but it's just so out of left field. If you hadn't seen this movie and someone tried to describe this scene to you, you'd probably think they were lying.
The Flute Scene From Alien: Covenant
Alien: Covenant wasn't the movie people were expecting. Half Alien movie, half Prometheus movie, this film is just as interested in exploring the origin of the xenomorphs as it is the meaning of life. The film also contained a double dose of Michael Fassbender, who plays two identical android characters named David and Walter, and director Ridley Scott leans real heavily on these two characters. David is capable of learning and experiencing new things, while Walter isn't. So, David attempts to teach Walter how to play the flute, mostly by helping him with the fingering. The subtext of the scene is made regular text when David gives Walter a peck on the lips. It's Michael Fassbender kissing Michael Fassbender in a movie about giant aliens ripping people apart. It's totally random.
What The Book Of Henry Is Actually About
On the surface, The Book of Henry looks like a fairly harmless and fluffy family film about a boy super genius taking care of his immature mother (played by Naomi Watts). Nope. It's about the mother following a direct set of instructions to murder the abusive stepfather of their next door neighbor. You see, Henry learns the girl next door is abused by her stepfather and begins to plot to kill the stepfather. However, Henry DIES of a brain tumor and has to leave the written instructions to his mother so that she can finish the job. This is an asinine set up (there's no reason Henry can't just record the abuse and turn it in as evidence) and is so beyond tone deaf that it might as well be blind and mute, too.
Baby Groot Finds A Toe In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Compared to the rest of the MCU, the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise is unapologetically weird. This is mostly due to James Gunn and his sense of humor shining through his movies with Guardians of Galaxy Vol. 2 being a prime example of his love for weird shit. The galaxy is filled with oddballs, but none are bigger than Baby Groot, whose general confusion at the world causes some of the sequel's bigger laughs. He also might be a heartless monster because he apparently cut off a man's toe. While trying to help Yondu and Rocket escape Ravager prison, Groot brings back a severed toe instead of Yondu's prototype fin. The Ravagers don't keep around a jar of severed toes (Rocket checked), so that means Groot straight up ripped a man's toe off. What the fuck, Baby Groot?
The Song And Dance Number In The Shape Of Water
You would think that in a movie about a woman and a fish man falling in love, the fact that they have sex would be the WTF moment from The Shape of Water. However, the romance between the mute Elisa (Sally Hawkins) and Amphibian Man (Doug Jones) is played totally straight and is treated as natural as can be. It's simply two people falling in love, gills or no gills, and them coming together is a celebration. That's not to say that the movie doesn't have its oddities, such as the out-of-nowhere musical number. Elisa, a romantic through and through, is unable to vocalize how much she has come to love Amphibian Man and daydreams a song and dance number straight out of the Golden Age of Hollywood. The screen goes black and white as Elisa and her beau dance in perfect sync together on an immaculate stage surrounded by backup dancers. It's weird and catches you off guard but fits in really well with the fairytale narrative of The Shape of Water.
The Escape Scene from Gerald's Game
Leave it to Stephen King to have two different movies based on his books make it onto this list. The year 2017 was a big year for Stephen King adaptations and while IT stole the spotlight, another quality movie snuck in there in the form of Gerald's Game. The Netflix movie follows Jessie (Carla Gugino), a woman whose attempt to spice up her struggling marriage ends in a worst-case scenario. Handcuffed to her bed with no key, her husband dead on the floor, and psychological-based hallucinations in the works, Jessie needs to get out there NOW. With no other option, she shatters her water glass and uses the shards to CUT OFF chunks of her wrist so that she can slide out of her cuffs. It's incredibly gruesome and they show all of it, like the skin of her hand folding up while she pulls against her cuffs. It sends shivers down the spine just thinking about it! It's a pretty nutty movie as a whole, but that part is the standout.
Introduction To The Sunken Place In Get Out
Get Out is arguably THE movie of 2017. An early hit from the beginning of the year that no one was expecting, the social horror movie has stayed in the conversation long enough to be getting awards traction. Get Out is a master class in layering suspense, dropping little clues that not everything is alright in the Armitage household, but nothing prepares viewers for the Sunken Place. During the film, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) is hypnotized by Missy Armitage (Catherine Keener) and he suddenly sinks within himself into a space called the Sunken Place. Chris sinks lower into a void, unable to scream or move; he can only watch his own actions. It's the first major clue about what's going on in Get Out and it throws viewers for a loop because up until then, Get Out seemed like it was a relatively normal movie. Following that moment there's hypnosis and really messed-up human auctioning, and the whole movie changes.
The Entirety Of mother!
Mother! was built in a lab by movie scientists to leave people confused, angry, and even more confused. Everything about Darren Aronofsky's psychological horror film with biblical undertones is deliberate. This was meant to push buttons and as such, mother! is one of the single most fucked up movies you'll ever see. From start to finish, you have no idea what is going on as Jennifer Lawrence sees beating hearts in the walls of her home and gets increasingly disturbed by her husband, Javier Bardem. A newborn baby is killed and eaten in this movie. Lawrence has her heart literally ripped out of her chest. Not so shockingly, audience members HATED mother! while some critics were confounded by it and others ultimately bought into what Aronofsky was going for. It's actually something of a movie miracle that a director was given such creative control over his movie that even baby cannibalism wasn't enough to make a studio executive go, "Uh maybe this is too far?" Who knows what place mother! will have in cinema history, but you will likely never forget this movie if you saw it.
Floating Leia In Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Star Wars: The Last Jedi has proven itself to be a major tentpole event film that has brought in differing reactions from people. While fans may argue over Snoke and Canto Bight until the porgs come home, most everyone seems to be in agreement that the weirdest scene in the sequel revolves around Leia. After she is blasted in the cold embrace of space, the audience is sure that Leia is dead, but then she opens her eyes and uses the Force to literally fly herself back to the safety of her ship. It's tough to nail down exactly why this scene doesn't work. The moment is a bit exploitive considering what happened to Carrie Fisher; plus we're seeing Leia do something she's never done before, so it feels like it's coming out of left-field, and she's out in space for a while, to boot. Seeing her with the Force is cool, but the moment is just so over the top that it quickly became one of the bigger WTF movie moments of the year.
