Best thriller movie questions of all time

Please vote as you browse around to help the best rise to the top.

Final Destination 2 picture

Question: In the dentist office scene, Tim almost chokes to death when the toy puffer fish falls into his mouth, but the nurse saves him by pulling it out. Nora should be next, but Tim gets crushed by the glass pane anyway. This is a major mistake on death's list.

M0vi3

Chosen answer: No it simply means that Tim was not supposed to die by the puffer fish. He was meant to be saved so that he could die later. The movie shows multiple instances where someone almost dies, but at the last second is saved. It's a common way to build suspense.

shortdanzr

More Final Destination 2 questions
Enemy of the State picture

Question: What does the sequence with the fake Brill have to do with anything? I've watched this scene several times and can't find its significance in the film.

manthabeat

Chosen answer: The fake Brill is an undercover federal agent trying to find out what Will Smith knows about the video tape.

Mister Ed

Poor writing though as that character is never spoke of again.

More Enemy of the State questions
Heat picture

Question: In the scene right before the big bank heist, a detective comes into the situation room informing the team that a CI Hugh Benny had a tip about Neil McCauley looking at Far East National Bank. How the heck did Waingro (working for Benny and VanZandt) even know about this score? McCauley hadn't even discussed it with Kelso when Waingro took down the armored car.

Answer: Waingro helped Van Zandt track down Trejo. Waingro then tortured Trejo and threatened his family if he didn't give up McCauley. With his back to the wall, Trejo gave Waingro and Hugh Benny the details of the bank heist, but Waingro killed Trejo's family anyway and beat Trejo almost to death. Benny then gives the tip to the police on Van Zandt's order.

BaconIsMyBFF

I wonder how Trejo was tracked, I don't remember his name being revealed during Waingro's time with the crew, or any other information.

Well, we never see the crew prior to their first heist. Trejo could have given Waingro his name during the planning of that heist.

BaconIsMyBFF

Waingro met this crew only once. How would he know who Trejo is or where he lives? Right before the heist, Trejo is asked to mislead police away from the heist.

More Heat questions
The Thing picture

Question: In the last part of the movie, how are they supposed to drive the snow vehicles? There is a scene before where they cut the wires of all the vehicles to disable them for the quarantine. Am I missing something?

Michele SoIntense Anghileri

Chosen answer: By disabling the snow vehicles, they are making sure that the creature can't use them to escape from the quarantine zone. Since the creature can assimilate anybody, it would probably know how to use one.

More The Thing questions
Prisoners picture

Question: What motivated Bob Taylor (an earlier abductee of the same perpetrators) to implicate himself in the current abductions by stealing the girls' clothing items and taking them to his home?

BF

Chosen answer: Because he was once abducted by the same kidnappers when he was a child, and it has damaged him emotionally. He is recreating the abductions, playing the part of a kidnapper, and be keeps the clothes as a memento of his past experience.

raywest

More Prisoners questions
Spider-Man picture

Question: What was Tobey Maguire's full process to get Spider-man's body? What was his body and fighting training and food diets? Is there any website where they have it in full writing?

Answer: The following is taken directly from People Magazine May 27, 2002: WORKOUT: Maguire exercised for at least 3.5 hours, six days a week, with his regimen varying "depending on how sore he felt," says Joujon-Roche. Mornings were spent improving his flexibility with yoga and splits, along with building strength through abdominal and lower-body exercises on an oversize ball. "We would just work on each body part until we killed it," Joujon-Roche says. "Then the next day we'd go to another and kill that one." Afternoons were devoted to cardiovascular activities like martial arts and cycling, to burn fat, plus gymnastics. "Tobey did his own flips with that Spider-Man hood on," says Joujon-Roche. "We gave him self-assuredness." DIET: For breakfast Joujon-Roche made the actor, a vegetarian, a "high-protein shake that included nuts, essential oils and vitamins." Lunch, he says, was often "marinated tofu with broccoli and walnuts and dinner a big veggie burger with brown rice." The menu varied with Maguire's output. "If his workout was pure weights," says Joujon-Roche, "he needed protein. If he did cardio, he'd have a shake of all carbs."

More Spider-Man questions
The Talented Mr. Ripley picture

Question: Maybe I missed a major plot point, but why exactly does Tom kill his lover at the very end?

Krista

Chosen answer: Tom & his lover are travelling on a boat. The rich girl, who knows Tom as Dickie is also on the boat. If they were to meet, Tom's false identity would have been revealed, and the lover would have been able to figure out that Tom actually murdered Dickie.

marfbody

Answer: He had to kill him. Tom couldn't kill Meredith because she wasn't alone and Peter was.

ChristmasJonesfan

More The Talented Mr. Ripley questions
Enough picture

Question: I found it odd that Slim's real name is never revealed. Why does she have this nickname, with no explanation as to why she never tells anyone her real name? Was there a deleted scene?

Answer: From memory her daughter says "I don't even think you're that slim" making a dig she's not that skinny, maybe it's due to her being thin?

Answer: I wonder if the nickname is related to the difficult times in her life. Her father was not around. She and her mother did not have much money. Maybe she felt that she had a "slim chance" of life getting easier.

More Enough questions
Kill Bill: Volume 2 picture

Question: What drink was Bill drinking at the end, when Beatrix and he was talking? It was too small for me to make out since I have not seen the bottle myself or recognize some of the writings on it.

Answer: It looks like a bottle of Tres Generaciones Añejo, a Mexican tequila.

Sierra1

More Kill Bill: Volume 2 questions
Push picture

Question: At the end of the movie we find out that it was really soy sauce that was injected into Nick's arm. Wouldn't injecting soy sauce directly into your blood stream still kill you, or at least have some sort of ill side effects?

Answer: Soy sauce is mostly soy protein and salt in water- it might raise your blood pressure for a while, but assuming you're in reasonably good health, and presuming it wasn't a ridiculously large amount, your liver will filter it out after a short while.

This is incorrect, there are several variables in this but given the syringe size I'm guessing that he injected approx 50ml. Now 50ml injected intravenously would almost certainly cause sepsis and he would die from septic shock within a day or so. The reason for this is that soy sauce is a fermented product full of several different types of bacteria in large quantities which would be quite friendly in the gut but disastrous in the blood stream. Also the sodium and yeasts and funghi in the sauce would not be good either. If however the injection was subcutaneous but not intravenous then it may not be fatal but it would certainly give him a very nasty infected cyst that would have the potential to be fatal if not treated correctly.

More Push questions
The Ring picture

Question: When does Rachel realise if she shows the film to someone else she won't die? And if she knew, is that why she showed it to Noah, to kill him on purpose?

Answer: Rachel doesn't know that showing the film to someone else will cause you not to die until death skips her. She remembers that Samara wanted to be "heard". She never meant to kill Noah.

Ginger Painter

Answer: At the end of the movie, she is crying about why she wasn't killed and Noah was. She vocalizes "What did I do, that he didn't?" That's when she sees the copy she made. It wasn't that she just showed it to someone else. She made a copy and Aiden watched that copy. Aiden is why it skipped her.

Almost right. It's just the copy. Copying the video makes it skip you. That's why she has Aiden make a copy as well.

lionhead

You have to show the copy to someone else as well. That's why Aiden asks Rachel at the very end "What about the person we show it to? What happens to them?"

Phaneron

But doesn't he have less than a day left by then? Hardly a time to relax, they need to make a terrible decision, quickly. I always had the idea making a copy was enough because of that.

lionhead

He watched the tape the morning of either Rachel's 4th or 5th day, so he should have at least 3 days left by this point. Though it appears the film was being inconsistent with the markings that Samara leaves on the tape's viewers, since Rachel noticed Samara's hand print on Aiden's arm and then his nose started bleeding. For Rachel, she got her nosebleed before receiving the mark on her arm.

Phaneron

Actually, you need to do both: make a copy and show it to someone else. This is further explained in The Ring 2. At the beginning, the guy had made a copy but since the girl covered her eyes and didn't watch the whole thing, he was still killed by Samara. So making a copy is not enough in itself to be spared if no-one else watches it. The same goes for Rachel. She made a copy on the 2nd day, but Becca tells her she only has 4 days left when she visits the psych ward indicating she hadn't been spared yet. It's only after Aidan watches the copy she made that death skips her for good.

Answer: No, it's wrong. Just making a copy won't save you; you need to show it to someone else, and then this someone else is cursed instead of you. The Japanese movie explains it well. Plus, in the official second movie, a man dies from Samara after making the copy because nobody watched it. Also, at the end of the 1st movie, Aiden asks from the copy, "What will happen to the one who will watch it?"

More The Ring questions

Answer: It was Gustav Hasford's idea. It happened in the original book that the story is based on, "The Short Timers."

Captain Defenestrator

More Full Metal Jacket questions
Knowing picture

Question: Why, near the end of the film, does Caleb start writing numbers which are supposed to be predictions of future events, when the world is going to end?

Answer: Great question. Probably writing predictions for the "new" world.

Paul Van Scott

So did someone decode the list? Just for s* and giggles :).

Answer: I think Caleb started writing the numbers so he could tell his father the coordinates of the location he needed to take the children in a last ditch effort, since the girl whom originally wrote the numbers didn't complete them. He un-"knowing"-ly made the same mistake and interrupted him again.

More Knowing questions
Die Hard: With a Vengeance picture

Question: I always wondered about this. As a cop, McClane knew about weapons. While handing over the machine gun to Zeus, he explained how it worked. But he did not tell Zeus to switch the safety catch off. How on earth could McClane forget to tell something crucial like that? Zeus isn't even pissed about it later on, while it could have cost him his life.

Shibito

Answer: And Zeus mentions about brothers knowing how to shoot guns.

Chosen answer: A simple omission, in the heat of the moment he forgot to mention it. He may have thought, since he just took the gun off an enemy, that the safety was already off.

McClane probably did that intentionally as Zeus didn't know much about guns. In fact, you hear McClane say "Don't be a hero, you find him, you come get me."

More Die Hard: With a Vengeance questions
The Terminator picture

Question: How exactly do both the Terminator and Kyle find addresses? We are led to believe that is the reason for the phone books, but none of the addresses in the phone books match up to the addresses where either the first Sarah is killed, nor the apartment of our Sarah.

Answer: Gonna be totally honest... that might just be nothing more than a simple continuity error. They accidentally made a phonebook prop that didn't match up with the locations where they shot, and assumed most people wouldn't notice or care. (And to be even more honest, I never noticed it until I saw this question today.)

TedStixon

Answer: My two cents: The T-800 Terminator does indeed, rip out the page of a phonebook for the address, but remember, he was looking for any and all Sarah Connors, not a specific address. He did not know which Sarah would give birth to John Connor, so by process of elimination he began terminating any woman with the name Sarah Connor. He did plug the first Sarah Connor (a housewife), then went to kill the other Sarah Connors in the phone book.

Scott215

I already gave that answer, but apparently that's not what the question is asking.

Charles Austin Miller

Answer: Both the T-800 and Kyle look up Sarah's address in the phonebook and it's Kyle who rips out a page. Neither uses a police computer; that's the T-1000 in Terminator 2.

But that doesn't answer the question (and it's already been mentioned) since the information in the phonebook appears wrong.

Bishop73

Answer: Kyle we are shown uses a police computer to find the addresses. The T800 just uses the phonebook as you mentioned. He rips the page out and takes it with him.

Ssiscool

Except 2 of the addresses in the phone book don't match. So how does the Terminator find them using the phonebook?

Bishop73

The Terminator is just blindly killing everyone in the phone book whose name is Sarah Connor (apparently a common name). Process of elimination. So, the day he arrives, unrelated women named Sarah Connor start dropping like flies, and the police believe it's the work of a serial killer. Our heroine Sarah Connor barely escapes this sweeping extermination by sheer luck and Kyle's intervention.

Charles Austin Miller

You just described the plot. Were you trying to answer the question? Because the question still stands. (As it is, it's either a mistake or plot hole in the film).

Bishop73

Perhaps I'm not getting the question. What is meant by "none of the addresses in the phone books match up"? Match up to what, the murder scene addresses? I wasn't aware that the murder scene addresses were prominently displayed.

Charles Austin Miller

Exactly. The addresses seen don't match. Specifically the first Sarah Connor's house number is "14239", but in the phonebook it is listed as "1823." And the real Sarah Connor lives in an apartment but the phonebook doesn't list an apartment number.

Bishop73

Perhaps though this all doesn't matter because phone books can quickly become outdated, the phone book he found could be over a year old. Someone moves but can still be listed in the phone book with their old address. He could have gone to the addresses but found someone else living there and then asked where the previous owner might be, and he was told (or he forced them). This might be how he found all the Sarah Connors.

lionhead

Are any of the Sarah's listed as living at 1823? I've not got access to the film right now to check.

Ssiscool

The first is listed as "1823." The second is "2816." The 3rd is "309." Although after reviewing the scene and thinking about it, for "309" (which is supposedly our Sarah J Connor), the full address isn't actually seen and the apartment number could have been listed.

Bishop73

Reese never uses a police computer; that's the T-1000 in Terminator 2. He rips out the page from the phonebook. The T800 also uses the phonebook but is never shown ripping out a page.

More The Terminator questions
Final Destination 5 picture

Question: Bludworth states that he's, "Seen this before" referring to Death's Design. If the bridge incident takes place before Flight 180, and is the first, then how would he have seen it before? And why is the bridge incident not mentioned in the first film if it took place only two weeks earlier?

Answer: To answer your first question, Bludworth does in fact mention he has "seen this before", but this means he could have seen these events before the film series ever took place. It is possible that this is where he had learned a lot about death's design. This could even hint at another sequel/prequel. To answer your second question, none of the survivors had been alive to tell the tale of what happened to the survivors of the bridge collapse. In the first few movies, it is noted that the protagonist freaks out, thus, startling MANY people. In the 5th film, Sam is only seen freaking out inside the bus. Even if the FBI have the information, they could have finished the investigation completely, due to Sam, Molly, and Nathan surviving (Until the end of the movie, that is).

M0vi3

More Final Destination 5 questions
Valentine picture

Question: I don't get the ending. We see Adam shot the masked person who is Dorothy, so I figured the killer was Dorothy, but reading a correction entry it states that it's obvious the killer was Adam. If the killer was Adam then how did he get Dorothy in the suit and mask and then make her attack her friend before shooting her?

Answer: If you remember, Dorothy kind of stumbled into her friend from around a corner before they both fell down the stairs. Adam could have quite easily forced her into the costume and then pushed her, making her seem like she was trying to attack her friend.

Answer: There's a deleted scene which shows Adam attacking and putting the costume on her.

Joey221995

Answer: The first chapter shows Jeremy Milton as a boy getting attacked and in the background there is a person wearing the mask at the party. Weird considering the mask wasn't suppose to come around for 13 years.

What exactly do you mean about the mask not coming around for 13 years. The whole reason he chose that mask was because it was at the Valentine's Day dance when they all accused him and beat him.

Answer: Both were working together because both experienced rejection and both concealed their distaste towards their fake friends equally. In the beginning just before the first murder she (the med student) put the knife on the belly button getting ready to make an incision. Guys are hairy down there unless they shave, even then you can still tell. Also, girls' skin texture is different from that of a man. This includes the abdomen. That was a feminine abdomen. I'll add to this more, you saw how the masked killer was stabbing the body bags. There was some struggle in the stabbing since women are not as muscular and women move differently compared to men. Also, remember the scene at the house party in which the women hit the masked killer with a poolstick over the head. After the mask killer kills her, in the next scene you see Dorthy checking her head in the mirror as if she is looking for a mark.

Answer: Why didn't she scream or say it's me Dorothy or even just take the mask off.

When Dorothy fell and then regained consciousness it took her a few seconds for her to come round and Adam shot her before she had time to sat anything at all or either Adam and Dorothy may have been working together.

Answer: Well you're all forgetting about the parents. Unless Jeremy had some sort of record the school and their parents would discover the truth thus making his imprisonment not needed.

Rob245

More Valentine questions
Hancock picture

Question: I'm not sure if I was seeing things but during the fight between Hancock and Mary, when it goes all windy and stormy, at one point it cuts to some people who are screaming and running away. I thought I saw a figure that appears to be made out of rocks or similar material and about 10 foot tall, it wasn't our hero or heroine as they were not in that scene so what on earth was it?

Answer: I saw it, too, and wondered. He's a street performer in L.A. that just happened to be around during filming. See: http://io9.com/5023487/hancock-giant-robot-mystery-++-solved.

johnrosa

More Hancock questions
Lakeview Terrace picture

Question: (Spoiler warning) I didn't really understand why the wildfire was put into the story. I know that fires happen in California often and that the scene at the end of the movie looks creepy with all of the smoke and fires in the background, but was there supposed to be any other special meaning or symbolism?

Answer: As far as symbolism, from a film student's perspective (mine), it's like destruction or division, two common themes in the film. The two characters are split in values and the fire is raging between them. As the fire gets closer to the houses, it increases in intensity, as does the fighting between neighbors. I think in this film, fire was used not only as a plot device, but a metaphor for the story as well.

manthabeat

More Lakeview Terrace questions
Robocop picture

Question: When Robocop is about to arrest Jones, he suddenly feels his system malfunctioning. Jones then explains that Directive 4 is used to shut him down if he attempts to arrest a senior officer of OCP. Why did Jones put this directive into Robocop? At the time nobody knew he was working with Boddicker.

Answer: Because he knew he was doing illegal activities. Robocop was said to be highly efficient at his job and Jones did not want to risk him out on the streets without the insurance of shutting him down if Robo came after him.

MasterOfAll

More Robocop questions

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.