Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
Perhaps the most brutally realistic bear attack ever depicted on film.
- The opening raid on the camp. The Ree are utterly ruthless in their rampage against the trappers. People getting shot with arrows, stabbed, shot, guts hanging out—the violence is all there.
- The bear attack scene, particularly when we get a glimpse at Glass' wounds. Later on, when he tries healing himself, he puts gunpowder on his slashed throat and uses a makeshift fire to cauterize the wound. It works but Glass is in obvious horrible pain.
- Glass' whole situation is terrifying, being horrifically injured in a time and place where medical aid was crude, at best, then being betrayed and left for dead by a former-comrade who murders his son. And things don't get better as he now has to trek through dozens of miles of hostile wilderness, again with terrible wounds, just for the mere chance at survival.
- The death of Hawk manages to be this and a Tear Jerker, given how sudden it is and how Glass is utterly helpless to stop Fitzgerald.
- As much of a loathsome bastard as he is, Fitzgerald's backstory is legitimately grim. Being scalped alive is a torturous experience, to say the least, though it doesn't come close to excusing his bigotry against indigenous people nor any of his other evil.
- Many of Glass' dreams/visions are deeply unnerving, of particular note is his dream of Hawk in the ruined Spanish church, and his vision of his wife hovering inches above him as he lies injured from his duel with Fitzgerald.
