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Movies most often use it for scenes of great significance, usually those that offer a plot twist or appear in the finale. Despite slow-motion’s popularity as a storytelling tool, some movies used it to better effect than others.
7 Bonnie And Clyde (1967)
The movie Bonnie and Clyde belongs among some of the greatest classics, and that’s despite the fact that most people watching the movie know that the couple won’t get their happily ever after. The two young bank robbers meet their end in the movie’s finale, and to make the moment even more memorable, the creators used slow-motion.
Once Bonnie and Clyde are shot by multiple bullets, time slows down as they fall and die. Using slow-motion is a good way to draw attention to such an important moment, as Bonnie’s and Clyde’s death scene no doubt is.
6 The Usual Suspects (1995)
The Usual Suspects is one of the few movies the audience is unlikely to watch twice even though it’s brilliant — because it relies heavily on the final twist. When agent Kujan realizes that Verbal, the man he spent quite some time interrogating, is actually Keyser Söze, the man he was looking for, it’s already too late.
When Kujan comes to the realization, time slows down and the coffee cup he was holding falls out of his hands because of the shock. This is the defining moment of the entire movie and using slow-motion helps to highlight just how important it is for the story.
5 The Matrix (1999)
There can only be one king of slow-motion in science fiction movies, and that’s The Matrix. One of the most iconic movie scenes of all time is when Neo faces Agent Smith. In the shootout between Smith and Neo, the latter has to dodge bullets.
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A slow-motion scene, the now-famous bullet time, follows so that the audience could see Neo dodging the bullets. And even though he gets hurt anyway, Trinity shows up to save the day and shoots agent Smith, who falls down, once again in slow-motion and with detailed attention paid to his injury. It’s moments like these that made TheMatrix into a classic.
4 Underworld (2003)
The best part in the vampire movie series Underworld is in the first movie, when Kate Beckinsale’s Selene discovers that the things she believed in might not be true. Even more importantly, Selene takes on a lot of enemy Lycans and manages to kill them. One such impressive moment happens when Selene jumps off a building and kills all the Lycans present.
The moment is in slow-motion, which gives the audience the opportunity to enjoy Selene’s fighting skills even more, and it also showcases how fast and efficient vampires are at disposing of their enemies.
3 Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Sherlock Holmes is one of the few movies that manage to find a story-related reason for using slow-motion. In this case, it helps to demonstrate Sherlock’s brilliant mind and how it works. At the beginning of the movie, Sherlock is fighting an opponent in a boxing ring, and before he actually defeats him in real life, he designs the way how to do it in his head.
He plans it all out in slow-motion while the rest of the world around him barely moves. That clearly suggests that Sherlock’s brain works a million miles a minute, since he’s able to devise a working strategy in what seems like no time at all.
2 Zombieland (2009)
Slow-motion scenes have their rightful place not just in action movies, but in horror comedies as well. Zombieland is a good example. It uses slow-motion in a scene where a lot of people are running away from the zombies. The moment even has a music setting — the song For Whom the Bell Tolls by Metallica.
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In case the audience wouldn’t realize how dangerous zombies are, the slow-motion scene makes it obvious, since not every person manages to run away from them. It’s a good start to the movie that suggests that Zombieland won’t take itself entirely seriously.
1 Dredd (2012)
The best use of slow-motion often appears in movies that use it for narrative purposes, not just because it looks great. In the futuristic world of Dredd with Karl Urban in the titular role, a drug exists that has an impact on people’s perception.
It slows down the speed with which they see the world around them. The drug even has an appropriate name as it’s called Slo-Mo. Unsurprisingly, the existence of the drug makes for some impressive slow-motion scenes, but none of them feel out of place.
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