Moments pages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned!
Holy shit, yes. Leave it to Terry Gilliam to make a gingerbread man terrifying.
- The spider horse.
- At roughly the midpoint of the film, the Mirror Queen sends an enchanted horse to kidnap a little girl, something it does by spitting webbing at her to ensnare her, then yanking her into the air and swallowing her whole. The fact we see her vanish down its throat by way of a shadow on the wall does not help. Of course, for added measure, when the heroes catch it, we can see her moving around inside its belly, and we get a shot down its gaping mouth & throat to see her terrified eyes before it carries her off into the woods.
- It's worse. During the first foray into the forest, we see the Queen's Huntsman feed that horse a handful of white spiders. When the heroes return from exploring, the horse is twitching and dancing and visibly uncomfortable, before it oddly kneels for Jakob. When the young girl finds the horse later, she strokes its head and compliments it, before noticing one of the spiders. By then, it's too late, and the webbing from its mouth has stuck fast to her, and all her efforts to get free only trap her further.
- Pity the poor kitten that got chopped up into bits into a fan...
- The scene where the Mirror Queen's face starts to shatter like a mirror was pretty horrifying to see.
- There's the way the queen brainwashes people into serving her. She knows magic, so you'd think she'd just cast a spell. Nope. She has this sort of medal with a huge spike on the back, so when she puts the medal on someone, she stabs them in the chest with it. And they become so devoted to her, they don't care! In the climax, she does this to Will while he's lying on the ground from a knife wound and is too weak to fight back. After she's been killed and the tower collapsed, Will still gasps out "serve my queen" when asked what to do next.
- Remember hearing the story about the Gingerbread Man you were little, where a cookie randomly comes to life and runs off saying that no one can catch him until he gets snapped up by a fox while crossing a river, a quaint little story with not much rhyme or reason? How could that ever be scary? By reimagining the Gingerbread Man as an amorphous, indestructible mud monster which starts off its presence by essentially melting a little girl's face and taking it for itself, lumbering after her in an utterly disturbing way, and then pulling said child into itself and running off as it and her fuse and fully turn into the Gingerbread Man.Bunst: [stunned in horror] I do believe I've soiled myself...Hidlick: [equally stunned] Oh good. I thought that was me.
- When one of Gapaldi's men is pulled up into the trees by sentient branches, his body lands on Gapaldi a short time later. Gapaldi chastises him for not being around when he needs him... Until he notices that the man's entire lower half has been reduced to the bones underneath.
- And before that, the other of Gapaldi's henchmen gets dragged by more branches into the roots of a large tree. As the brothers struggle to pull him out, he's killed instantly when a large root shoots through his body ass-to-mouth, and erupts from his face.
