Traumatizing Deaths in Horror Movies
Horror movies deal with
all kinds of scary things, from vampires to werewolves to serial killers.
But almost every horror
movie has one thing in common: death. Lots and lots of death. Here are some of
the most memorable horror movie deaths of all time.
Zombieland
Bill Murray's appearance
in Zombieland is the greatest cameo of all-time. There's no debating this.
It's a scientific fact. But
what makes it so great? Well, first of all, Murray is playing himself trying to
survive the zombie apocalypse. Second, Murray is blasted to kingdom come in one
of the most hysterical deaths ever put to film. It all starts innocently
enough.
A group of survivors
hanging out in Hollywood decide to spend the night in Murray's mansion. At
first, the house seems abandoned, but then the comedian comes stumbling out of
the shadows. His skin is pale, his arms are outstretched, and he's moaning like
he's one of the living dead. As it turns out, he's just pulling a prank, but
Columbus isn't in on the joke. When Murray staggers into the room, Columbus
whips out a shotgun and shoots the actor at point-blank range. The joke is
perfectly timed and incredibly shocking, especially when Murray reacts with his
trademark deadpan wit.
"Is that how you
say hello where you come from?"
"Oh my god, I can't
believe I just shot Bill Murray."
The real kicker comes
when Murray's accepted that he's a goner.
"So do you have any
regrets?"
"Garfield,
maybe."
Alien
Directed by Ridley
Scott, Alien hit theaters in 1979, and all these years later, people are still
talking about the chestburster. The scene starts innocently enough. The crew of
the Nostromo is sitting around a dinner table, enjoying a meal together. They're
laughing and ribbing each other, and they're all glad their buddy Kane is doing
okay. Just a few minutes earlier, Kane was unconscious, with some sort of
creature attached to his face, but now he seems all right, until he starts
convulsing.
"I don't want to
talk about what it's made of. I'm eating this." (coughs)
Then just a few seconds
later, a parasite rips out of his chest, sending gallons of gore across the
room.
It's a little baby
Xenomorph, and it scampers away before anyone can kill it, leaving Kane's lifeless
body behind. Even though it's been four decades since Alien hit theaters, this
visceral scene still makes us nauseous to this day.
Apostle
Here's some good advice
for horror movie characters: stop visiting islands that are home to pagan cults.
Those trips never end
well. That's a lesson Thomas Richardson learns the hard way in Apostle. The film follows Thomas as he infiltrates the island of
Erisden, hoping to rescue his sister from a
bloodthirsty religious group. In the most gruesome scene in the film, Thomas is
a- bystander, helpless to intervene as an innocent young man is killed in the
most sadistic way possible.
Jeremy is a lovable kid
who's head over heels for a beautiful girl named Ffion. But when her psycho dad
sticks a knife in her gut, Jeremy is framed for the crime. He's then tossed
onto a nasty torture device called "The Heathen's Stand." His head
and limbs are held in place with bone-crushing vices, and as the poor guy screams
in fear and pain, a rusty drill slowly but surely bores into his skull. It's a
shockingly violent scene, made even worse because Jeremy is so kind-hearted. As
that drill leaves a gaping hole where his brain used to be, we're turning our
heads away from the screen as fast as possible.
The Cabin in the Woods
In a film full of
memorable moments, the most memorable scene in Cabin in the Woods has to be
when all the monsters escape their cages and murder everyone in sight. Almost
every creature imaginable shows up for this slaughterfest. We've got
Pennywise's cousin, an Evil Dead tree, an off-brand Cenobite, and many, many more.
Each and every monster kills in its own unique way.
The bad guys from The
Strangers set some people on fire, a group of sadistic surgeons perform a
painful operation, and a nasty old hag rips a soldier's soul right out of his
body. But the most memorable death scene has got to be when merman-obsessed
Hadley finally has his dream of seeing a merman come true. That dream becomes a
nightmarish reality when a hungry merman crawls toward him and starts chowing
down.
"Aw, come on."
His reaction is
priceless, and when the beast starts shooting blood from its blowhole, that's the
icing on an incredibly gory cake.
Hereditary
Hereditary is a film
filled with shocking scenes, but arguably none more horrifying than the death
of Charlie. She's got a major peanut allergy, and when she takes a bite of a
nut-filled cake, she goes into shock. Her older brother Peter grabs her, and
starts tearing down the road, rushing to the hospital as fast as he can, while
Charlie gasps for breath in the backseat. That's when Charlie decides to stick
her head out the window, hoping it will help her catch her breath. Peter
frantically swerves out of the way of a dead deer in the road and the
unthinkable happens.There's a sickening thud, and Charlie's head goes flying
off her shoulders.
It's a moment that comes
out of absolutely nowhere. Audiences were expecting Charlie would be a major
character throughout the film. But not even halfway into the story, this
13-year-old girl has been decapitated, and that look on Peter's face is the
same look we all had when Charlie's head went tumbling down the road.
The Mist
After escaping a store
filled with psychos and a parking lot crawling with killer bugs, the five
survivors drive off into the mist, hoping to find help. They drive for hours,
and eventually, their car runs out of gas. As they sit on the side of the road,
they think about what might happen if they get attacked by that thing with the
spiky tentacles or if they're webbed up by those giant spiders. Getting ripped
apart by otherworldly monsters is nobody's idea of a peaceful death, so they choose
to take their own lives. Unfortunately, they only have four bullets, so the
leader of the bunch does the deed, offing everybody, including his 8-year-old
son. It's an absolutely devastating scene.
The car is filled with
corpses, and our hero is screaming at the top of his lungs. But then, adding
insult to injury, the military comes rolling on by. If only the survivors had
waited a minute or two, they would've found salvation. Instead, The Mist has
one of the most hopeless endings in cinematic history, one that still wrecks
horror fans to this day.
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger is one of
cinema's most ingenious serial killers. He's turned victims into puppets,
smashed them into TVs, and morphed them into motorcycles. But Krueger's most
iconic kill is still one of his very first: when he turns Johnny Depp into Old
Faithful. The premise of A Nightmare on Elm Street is simple. Don't fall asleep
or else Freddy Krueger will kill you in your dreams. But poor old Glen just
can't stay awake. So when he drifts away in his bed, that's when Freddy shows
up, ready for fun.
His gloved hand comes
out of Glen's mattress and drags the screaming teen down into the abyss.
There's a pause, just
for a second, and then gallons and gallons of blood shoot out of the bed. It's
dark, red, and disgusting, and the geyser seems to last forever.
The Omen
The Omen follows U.S.
ambassador Robert Thorn, a man who suspects his adopted son Damien might be the
spawn of Satan. And Thorn isn't the only one who thinks Damien might have a
really bad dad. Photographer Keith Jennings also wonders if Damien has demonic
DNA, so he teams up with Thorn to uncover the truth about this creepy little
kid. Eventually, their quest takes them to Israel where they learn there's only
one way to defeat the Antichrist: stab him with seven sacred daggers.
Naturally, Thorn is
reluctant to murder his adopted son, but Jennings is totally gung-ho about
preventing Armageddon. But as he goes to collect the knives, the forces of evil
decide that Jennings has got to go.
When a work truck
"accidentally" rolls downhill, a giant pane of glass of goes flying
out of the bed. Jennings looks up at the exact wrong moment, and the glass
sheet sends his head spinning through the air in slow motion. It's an
incredible special effect, one that shocks us no matter how many times we've
seen it.
Scanners
David Cronenberg is the
king of body horror, and his disturbing powers are on full display in Scanners.
Released in 1981,
Scanners takes place in a world where psychics exist, and naturally, people who
can read minds are the next big step in private security. In the film's most
explosive scene, a security company called ConSec plans on showing off their
"scanner" service by having a mild-mannered mind-reader demonstrate
his abilities. Unfortunately, when he calls for volunteers, he picks a guy
named Darryl who happens to be a super powerful telepath. Even worse, Darryl is
kind of an evil jerk.
When the unassuming
scanner tries to get into his brain, Darryl turns the tables. The poor guy
begins to shake and twitch as Darryl attacks his mind, smiling and sneering the
entire time. The unassuming scanner is clearly in pain, suffering the world's
worst headache, and when the psychic pressure becomes too much, his head
explodes all over the place. Blood and brains go flying everywhere, and the
scene is still absolutely mind-blowing today.
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
A common trope of the
horror genre is that hillbillies are all psychopaths just waiting to chop you
up with a chainsaw. But Tucker and Dale vs. Evil subverts that cliche by
showcasing two lovable good old boys whose vacation is interrupted by a group
of college kids that mistake them for Deliverance-style rednecks. And since
these kids have seen one too many horror movies, they declare war on the
backwoods bumpkins. Of course, these kids aren't exactly skilled when it comes
to murder, and every time they try to murder Tucker and Dale, they just end up
killing themselves in progressively more gruesome ways.
Perhaps the most
jaw-dropping moment comes as Tucker is tossing logs into a woodchipper. That's
when one of the college kids, armed with a screwdriver, sneaks up on Tucker and
tries to jump on his back. Unfortunately, Tucker bends over at that exact
moment, and the kid goes sailing straight into the machine. A horrified Tucker
does his best to pull the guy out, but he gets covered in gooey, red bits of
college student. The scene is equal parts horrendous and hilarious, and Tucker
makes it even funnier when he asks the mangled-up kid one very dumb question.
"Are you
okay?"
You're Next
Near the end of this
home invasion thriller, our hero Erin has dispatched the masked killers who
butchered her boyfriend's family. But there are still more foes to face. As it
turns out, the assassins were hired by her boyfriend's brother, Felix, who was hoping
to kill his family so he could inherit his parents' fortune. Unfortunately,
Felix didn't know that Erin was basically an Australian Jason Bourne. So when
the two finally throw down, Erin gets clever with some kitchen utensils. But
while pots and knives come in handy, Erin lands the final blow by shoving the
blades of a blender into the top of Felix's head.
And then to make sure
that he won't get away, she plugs the blender into the wall and makes herself a
brain shake. The scene takes all the elements you need for a fantastic horror movie
death - creativity, comedy, and a whole lot of gore - and blends them together
perfectly. So to speak.
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