Follow TV Tropes

This is based on opinion. Please don't list it on a work's trope example list.

Following

Nightmare Fuel / Taken

Go To

Taken:

  • The whole friggin' movie. Or to phrase it another way: for the love of all that's holy, DO NOT show this movie to a parent whose teenage child is planning on going overseas soon. Instead, show it to the kid!
  • Bryan Mills himself counts. The fact that such a normal, kind man is capable of dishing out so much pain on other fellow humans without flinching is chilling. Yes, in the movies he mostly unleashes his skills on people who deserved it, but considering that the CIA certainly isn't always spot on in their intel, there is always the possibility that Mills had gone after innocents while he was an active agent.
    • Also keep in mind that Bryan shot Jean-Claude's wife. At a family dinner. With kids sleeping upstairs. And he loudly announced that he would kill her unless Jean-Claude speaks.
      Bryan: Give me what I want, or the last thing you'll see before I make your children orphans is the bullet I put between her eyes!
  • The flashback from the girl who had Kim's jacket when she was taken to the "red 'ouse". The guy with her in the car isn't Peter. This means the gang had several spotters out snaring young women, not just the guy Bryan beats up and inadvertently kills.
    • It seems rather obvious that the organization has multiple spotters. I mean, all the girls on the construction site, the "red 'ouse", the club and not to mention all those girls who have disappeared or died by the time the film takes place can't have been one man's work alone.
  • Bryan searching through an impromptu brothel, coming upon several young women who are all sickly, sweaty and have their arms covered in needle marks. Brrr.
    • His finding Amanda's half-naked body, handcuffed to the bed and dead of a drug overdose with vomit all over her.
  • Bryan's Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique of Marko, which involves electrocuting him through rusty nails stabbed into his legs.
    Bryan: Wake up! I need you to be focused! (stabs nails into Marko's legs, causing him to scream) Are you focused yet?
    • Not to mention Bryan's cold speech about how outsourcing torture to Third World nations was ineffecient because of unreliable power grids, forcing torturers to use even more extreme methods. However, in an industrial nation like France, he can just leave the power on "until it's disconnected for lack of payment of the bill"... Which is exactly what he does.
  • The scene when Bryan stumbles into what can best be described as "eBay for sex slaves." It's extremely disturbing the way the announcer of the auction refers to these living, breathing human beings as though they're mere objects (it's chilling to hear a person being announced as "sold for 250,000"). She calls Bryan's daughter "The last item" and the girls are forced to parade around on a small stage, scantily clad and clearly drugged (and unlike with standard prostitutes, they're not smiling or pretending that they want to be there, most likely because they can barely stand up straight and are scared out of their minds). The buyers themselves make the situation worse; they're totally nonchalant, as if they're on a routine shopping trip. Not one of them shows as much as a hint of sympathy for the innocent women who are doomed to spend the rest of their lives being raped and drugged on a regular basis. Then, after the auction, the announcer tells the buyers "That concludes the sales for tonight" and that they "can collect [their] purchases directly." Even Bryan, despite most likely having seen it all in his line of work with the CIA, is visibly taken aback.
  • Kim being forced into Go-Go Enslavement during the auction? Scary. Sheikh Raman just happening to have another costume of his own, sewn like a wedding dress and fitting Kim's exact size? Frightening.

Taken 2:

  • The Albanians' interrogation of Jean-Claude. Even if Jean-Claude is hard to sympathize with, Suko's ways of torturing him look very unpleasant, to say nothing of another Albanian waving the teddy bear of Jean-Claude's son in his face, implying that they either already killed his family or are threatening to do so if he doesn't tell them about Bryan's whereabouts. Whether which circumstance is the actual case, both are horrifying to think about when it comes to a family man and his children.

Top