Most brutal scene?

I thought it was gross when I first saw it, the I saw STARS' Spacticus series. I have to close my eyes watching that show. But I do love Apocalypto.

Seeing that baby torn out of the mother's arm by the leg during the raid made me cringe. I hate seeing children get hurt. Mel Gibson said in the commentary that there was more to the scene but they decided not to show it.

For me it's a hard tie between the jaguar mauling and the beheading after the
sacrifices. Watching that guy cut out a human heart and then the headless bodies rolling down all those stairs turned my stomach.

It doesn't cost a thing to smile and you don’t have to pay to laugh! - India Arie

For me it was blunted, having to watch his wife, whom he loved deeply, tormented by the several of the raiders, precisely the way a mouse gets played with by a cat, and having to see the raider's amusement at her anguish, just before she gets taken away, gang-raped (implied, but not seen), and then killed. All this happening while Blunted was utterly powerless to prevent any of it. I can't imagine anything worse for a man to experience.

A close runner up would have to be the moment where the one character, played by Mayra Serbulo (the character's named only as "Young Woman") is captured, and her daughter, played by Sayuri Gutierrez (credited as "Eldest Daughter") is huddling close beside her, and one of the raiders comes and hauls the child away. The woman yells in anguish because she realizes at that moment she will, in all likelihood, never see her child again.

These aren't the goriest scenes in the movie by any stretch of the imagination. But I think they most powerfully convey the cruelty of which human beings are capable.

I'd have to agree and say the jaguar 'face-eating' scene, towards the end of the movie. I get that we need to understand that these are dangerous, violent times, etc, but personally I thought the graphic scene was OTT and unnecessary.

The sacrifice scene. The heart pulling, the decapitating, how they threw their mutilated bodies down the stairs and caught their heads with their nets, the bizarre mystic behavior, the creepy "elites" smiling at the top of the pyramid, the POV decapitation. Really disturbing stuff.

I actually didn't think the jaguar maul was that bad, especially since I thought those a-holes deserved it. I might have been more disturbed if it happened to a good character.