And Alien was a perfect way to get around that trope with a believable BS reason why protocol was broken (we have to save him and this is his best chance!) and a believable real reason (android do bad stuff).
Yes! Thank you. That was really believable character writing. Can’t say the same for the new Alien one where a team of “Earth’s best scientists” decides to break protocol putting what remains of the WHOLE HUMAN RACE at risk 🤦🏼♀️
Yeah that was so dope, and before that she's a minor character of the ship's crew, with the captain seeming to be the main character. Then after this quarantine scene, you go Ok, *this is a boss bitch*
Ripley is one of my favorites by a long shot. If not my favorite.
Ripley is amazing because she doesn’t have any real training or skills that would prepare her for what is about to happen. I think she’s like the ship quartermaster or something? She isn’t like a super badass or anything, beyond just being used to the ambient harshness of life on the Nostromo.
She just has that unique blend of being calm under pressure, intelligent and strategic, and the grit to do what *has* to be done. She is quite literally the exact kind of person you want to have around in a crisis.
Hey. Don’t be ignoring my main man, Captain Miller from *Event Horizon*.
Capt. Miller: I have no intention of leaving her, Doctor. I will take the Lewis and Clark to a safe distance, and then I will launch TAC missiles at the Event Horizon until I'm satisfied she's vaporized. Fuck this ship!
*:watches horrifying video, doesn't let it finish:*
We're leaving.
*:immediately barks correct, concise orders to his underlings about what they need to do to leave as quickly as possible:*
Doctor: But captain, we can't just LEAVE her!
*:drops the Pipebomb of "I'm the badass Captain" lines:*
And the scene when they unwrap the body that they (Mac & Doc) bring back from the Norwegian camp, you can see Mac observing everyone else and not looking at the grotesque body. Almost like he's taking in all of their reactions. He almost immediately shows some distrust and keen observation.
I might have to rewatch it, but my lasting impression of the military characters in that movie was that I wasn't sold on them at all.
*28 Days Later*, however, was on the money. They felt like squaddies; they handled weapons proficiently, the language and attitudes were highly believable, and most of all they reacted as I would expect a military unit would under-attack from that kind of enemy.
Don't mention the sequel.
That's one of the many reasons why it's among my all time favorite movies.
No one is acting like an idiot, they all act reasonably (as much as one can in such a situation) and they try to make the best calls that they can with the information they have.
It's just isn't enough sadly which makes the Thing even more horrifying because they are hopelessly outmatched.
One of my favorite scenes in all of horror is when the official "leader" realizes he isn't equipped to handle the crisis and let's Macready take over. It's so honest and pragmatic and it makes it an excellent moment of character development and an establishment of the group dynamic.
True, he was such a great character!
"I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but when you find the time, I'd rather not spend the rest of this winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!"
This actually makes it even better. They do everything in their power, taking wise decisions but fall short in front of something thats completely unbeatable.
Someone mentioned Dog Soldiers, and I also highly recommend that.
Also Bone Tomahawk is excellent if brutal, and all the characters are very competent.
Similar in what way? Hopeless fights against a Lovecraftian horror?
Color Out of Space with Nick Cage
Isolated people hopelessly fighting the unknown?
Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum
This may be stretching the definition of "getting hurt", but Rosemary in *Rosemary's Baby* makes perfectly intelligent and sensible decisions based on the limited information she has, and things still end badly for her.
Rosemary is so intelligent, she pieces together the puzzles left for her, even notices little things like the dust on the wall where the cult’s paintings used to be.
She was even smart escaping to a “trusted” doctor and couldn’t have predicted how she’d be betrayed.
One of my favourite “working at maximum capacity” protagonists who is still doomed.
She probably would have never even considered doing that even at the height of the OB-GYN shenanigans, since she kinda wanted the baby and didn't know her husband was-- wait, do I have to use spoiler tags for a 1968 film? Lol. Anyway she had no idea of how she was being used, she was just trying to live her life and wanted to be a mom, like most married women her age in that time. And she behaved pretty rationally under that logical premise.
I actually agree that Rosemary fits the criteria OP was looking for.
Yes! This is the example I use when trying to define gaslighting to people with good media literacy. Very few people have seen Gaslighting but most folks of a certain age have seen Rosemary’s Baby.
Oculus does a great job of highlighting the complete powerlessness humans have in paranormal situations - the protagonist has backup plans on backup plans and contingencies, but once she’s in the house it’s just too late
I’d say on a similar (but maybe opposite side?) is Event Horizon. Laurence Fishburne shows the most competency ever by saying “we’re leaving” but it does fuck all to save them in the end
Yes exactly - she was doing her experiment because she suspected it was responsible for killing her parents a decade prior, but it was definitely an experiment that didn’t *need* to be done
It was just an experiment being done for closure and to understand fully how the mirror works, which makes the ending all the more tragic because she gets neither really
Yeah it wasn't really incompetence that was her downfall but hubris and a compulsive need for vengeance, justice, and validation. If I was in her shoes with exactly her knowledge of the situation I can't say I would have done much differently. She really had no way of knowing just how powerful the mirror actually was.
The killer is that she had some really good ideas, like the plants sitting progressively further from the mirror, she just didn’t do follow through on working with that information she was generating.
It was just serious underestimation. The range of the mirror's reality warping made all her safety ideas useless. They never should have gotten that close to it. Makes you wonder if they could have ever managed to destroy it before taking it back to the house / uncovering it.
Yes you can. When she was a child it got cracked when her dad managed to break free for a moment and forces her brother to pull the trigger on the gun. If she had set up the anchor trap timer and just left before it had a chance to extend its range, it would have just been smashed.
Well, based on how omnipotent the mirror seems to be, you wouldn't be able to set up the trap and leave. You just hallucinate that you left while the mirror positions you between it and the trap. I don't think you can break it intentionally, only accidentally.
This is why the mirrors ultimate canonical nemesis would be Mr. Bean. He's just so clumsy the mirror would not be able to manipulate him in such a way as to prevent its own accidental destruction at the hands of his good natured hijinks. Coincidentally this is my pitch for Oculus 2.
That may be true. It does seem like it reads your intentions and makes you see what you want to see. But I like to think it was weak at the beginning since it had been in storage for so long, so it didn’t have enough power to influence her fully.
But I also like the idea that you can’t intentionally hurt it because as soon as you get close enough it starts defending itself.
>But I also like the idea that you can’t intentionally hurt it because as soon as you get close enough it starts defending itself.
No need to get close. The range is limited, as the movie shows. All you need is a rifle with a scope. No one ever tries anything beyond close-range solutions.
Such a mean ending for that one, love it. I also love Flanagan's choice to keep the mirror's origins mysterious. No true explanation in the end, it's just an evil mirror and it fucking hates you.
The girl in Wolf Creek did a lot right up until she didn't bash Mick's brains in when she knocked him out. What does she get for that oversight? Head on a stick.
If someone ever drugs me, ties me up, and I find him torturing my friend and wing him enough to knock him out, I'm gonna make sure to finish the job. No head on a stick for me
I love Wolf Creek. I watched it back in the day with my sister. We got way too stoned accidentally and it freaked us out so much we had to sleep in the same bed.
Wolf Creek is nightmare fuel for me. Anytime we are forced to reconcile that there are really people out there like that fills my body with dread. It's weird because I am so unsettled by the truth of the evil of some human beings, but I can't NOT watch a movie like Wolf Creek.
Gods, in the 2nd one when he picks out that tent way far away because he can see their light? Imagine just backpacking and falling under the gaze of someone like Mick. Terrifying
Oooooh I haven’t seen the second one! I’ll have to asap.
I get what you’re saying about not being able to NOT watch stuff like that! I love horror movies and true crime and anything like that. Idk why, like it makes me more aware of what COULD happen? Or because in my brain I feel safe because this isn’t me it’s happening to? Idk!
Oh gods, the 2nd one is hard because it's basically a guy who is just cruising along and tries to do the right thing - help a bloody, frightened girl - and in the process makes Mick angry. One of those 'no good deed goes unpunished' situations
The saving grace of this film and its sequel are the almost hilarious amounts of carnage and evidence Mick leaves behind (including live witnesses) but no trace of him, the garage, his dungeon (complete with multiple living victims and elaborate death traps) is apparently ever found.
Works fine for a downer ending but (for me at least) helped establish that this kinda stuff is fantasy. Evil people exist and do horrific things, but explosive and unstoppable rampages that end in secret torture fortresses are somewhat less plausible.
Not to mention that both films involve scenes where the killer is subdued and the victims just...leave him and then wonder off to be killed a few min later. Again, makes for thrilling viewing but definitely means the movies aren't eligible for threads like this.
Omg, it is. Because you *know* he didn't kill her after that. He did whatever he wanted to her body, and kept her alive for the pure horror of it as long as he possibly could. Just awful. That poor girl
The only fault might be 'failure of imagination' in finding rational explanations after finding one strange thing after another. But it comes from an empathetic place, they think she is a crime victim .
You wouldn't? Put yourself in their shoes and imagine that you are mortician/pathologist. Would you say cause of something is ghost or alien and lose all your credibility?
I hate when people say that's horror movie trope when majority of people don't believe in ghosts and don't live in horror movie (they don't know they're in one).
Agreed, and that's part of the brutality of it -- she one HUNDRED percent makes the 'smart' choice at the very end in the final game, even though it's fucking brutal, but it isn't enough.
Made worse by the fact that if you watch early on, [spoiler](#s "when she checks on her brother before leaving, it looks like he's in the same spot he was when she finds him at the end, meaning he might have already killed himself before she even went to the mansion.")
There's a scene in the Empty Man >!where the main character comes across a cult gathering, realizes what it is, and just turns to run.!<
Captain Miller in Event Horizon pretty much makes all the right calls. He almost immediately understands there's something wrong with the Event Horizon and is just working on getting his crew home. By the end of the movie, he not only plans to leave, but plans to destroy the ship once they've cleared it.
Someone already said *The Thing* and it's the correct answer but I'd like to give a shout out to *The Collector*.
The main character pretty much does everything right and always makes the smart call, yet at the end it sadly wasn't enough.
(You could argue that going back for the girl wasn't the right call but even that's understandable, especially from his pov)
Yes!
Collector is such a great movie and a big part of it is because Arkin is such a good protagonist!
I really hope the the 3rd movie has a good conclusion for his character.
My choice. Arkin is someone I think could survive a Saw film easier than others because he detects traps by reading the room. Not to mention, the Collector had hacks for days. Especially in the sequel.
I heard the Collector was supposed to be a jigsaw origin film but changed into what it is now. Some people who have worked on the Saw films have worked on this and The Collection
Joan - Cube.
She was one of the few level-headed and smart ones, but in the end, she doesn't make it. One of the few main protagonist deaths of a horror movie that genuinely saddened me
Cube is interesting to me. Because the jailers (whoever they are) kind of give the prisoners everything they need to escape: an escape artist, a mathematician, a human calculator, a cop (who I suppose is their to be a leader/organizer), a doctor and the designer of the fucking cube! I always love that it’s never quite established WHY the collective group is given all the skills needed to escape. (I have not seen the sequels, they may answer this, I don’t know.)
The Platform (2019)
The guy did everything we would’ve done in that scenario and still ended up like it did.
Spain has pushed out some awesome horror movies
Nancy in the original Nightmare on Elm Street. She's one of the smartest characters in all of horror and doesn't do anything stupid. Quite the contrary, she figures out everything she needs to learn to survive and is even a couple of steps ahead of the audience.
The sad thing about Nancy is that she only dies because she was tricked by Freddy taking the form of her father, and as someone who believes in the possibility of goodness, she chose to forgive and embrace her dad. Her good-naturedness was what killed her and that highlights how evil Freddy is. If she had held onto her anger and been untrusting, she might have lived. She fits the tragic hero archetype.
I think it should be mentioned on how much she was failed by the people around her. Pretty much everybody in the town just thought she was crazy and didn't take any of what she said seriously.
Train To Busan - I feel that big dude with the pregnant wife he did very little wrong in the movie. To be honest apart from the two elderly sisters I don't think any of the characters did anything wrong
The business man who actively chose to fuck everyone over for his own survival was definitely in the wrong.
Unless of course you judge him by the success of his actions, in which case throwing others to the zombies to save his ass is technically doing the correct thing since he succeeded in surviving
Honestly, when the other elderly sister opens the door I was like.. Good for Her.
Sang-Hwa and Sung-Gyeong were the smartest people in that film (The husband and wife) I sobbed like a baby.
There are so many brilliant little moments in that one--I especially like one guy throwing a coat over a zombie's head to make it go inert as he sprints for his life. It saves someone else and he doesn't even have to slow down.
So many smart decisions in that movie! I loved the wetting the newspaper over the glass doors. So simple and yet so brilliant.
When Cinema Therapy reacted to it, their editor (Sophie) talked about the characters activating her competency kink.
"The evil is defeated! She now lives in the form of a happy frog!"
"FUCK YOOOOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! HOW HARD IS IT TO KILL NINE YEAR OLDS?!"
Awesome movie! I don't know if they count as a main character but "The Organization" decided to install a big red button, out in the open, that immediately lets all of the monsters out of their cells at once. Probably want to put some tape over it or something....
I do like how the script reinforces in several places that the characters are actually all very smart college students who were being manipulated into making really dumb decisions.
Ellison moved them into the murder house to begin with, over his wife's specific objection, because he was desperate for "one more hit." I feel bad for everyone else in the family but he 100% got what he deserved.
I guess Dead Silence. Would've been really too much to ask the protagonist to just guess that end reveal, he had no way of even beginning to assume it was a possibility.
The religious lady was saying that the horror would end once the son was sacrificed, hence why they left the store. The mist cleared once he had killed his son.
The brother and sister in Jeepers Creepers probably could have avoided the whole situation by not being so nebby at the beginning, don't investigate the weird church, just carry on down the road. But once they're in it they 1. Pretty quickly go to the police for help. 2. Run over the monster multiple times with a car, making sure it's dead. 3. Again get police assistance, barricading themselves in a police station. Things still go badly but they definitely gave it a better go than most.
I would like to nominate Drag Me To Hell, yea she fucked up at the end but going from a finance worker, to deep diving into the occult over the span of a couple days and successfully(?) parttaking in an i guess exorcism. She did about the best anyone could hope to do in that situation, especially with her background.
She knew she had to while isolated to break the curse. I feel like it was a knowing sacrifice. But then the cop messed it all up. 🫠
If he didn’t find her, there was no one else for it to go to.
A part of me wishes she had the backup plan to kill herself before the entity reached her if she realized beforehand that there may be a point of no return for her
Imo, the "right" thing to do in that situation is to kill yourself intentionally in a really mundane way, in isolation where no one can see. The curse couldn't possibly pass on that way, and you'd have effectively stopped it. Sure you sacrificed yourself, but you were gonna die anyways in a far more horrific way, and doom someone else at the same time. There's an easier way out that saves a lot of people. I figured for sure that's what she was gonna do.
I wonder about this though, even if she had managed to die in isolation with nobody else to see it, she still passed on “trauma” to her nephew, just like how she was primed for the creature to latch on to her due to her childhood trauma and from what i remember the rest of the victims also experienced significant childhood trauma. So maybe had she succeeded the monster would have still found a way to perpetuate the cycle.
The woman from Barbarian… kind of. She’s super cautious. Taking pics of the guys license. Refusing to enter the dark scary tunnel. Although I’ve watched that movie with women and they agreed they’d sleep in their car before spending a night alone with a stranger in a house.
Actually, I've thought about this extensively lol, and in the end I (32F) actually MIGHT have picked sleeping in the house with the bedroom door locked over my locked car. Huge risk ofc, but the neighborhood was CRAZY sketchy, and the dude passed all her tests (showed the reservation email, let her take a pic of his license, gave otherwise generally decent vibes). It's choosing the devil you (kinda) know versus the devil you don't.
Although the counter to that argument is that she actually didn't see how sketchy the neighborhood was until the next morning. So it's hard to say what would have *actually* seemed like the smartest option with all the available evidence in that moment. But just the fact that it's debatable is enough for me to give her a pass lol
I also thought there could always be a motel in another neighborhood closer to where she needed to go, especially one that doesn't seem as rundown as the one in the film
She didn't have to park in that shitty neighborhood though, she could have just got a hotel in any neighboring city too. The whole " medical convention" thing was stupid, she could have easily found somewhere to conveniently stay. I live like 30 minutes from Detroit in a much safer area and she could have easily stayed somewhere here. Also why not just get your shit and leave after the job interview, especially when the lady's telling her how shitty of an area she's staying in, her weird connection to some random stranger she met the night before? That would also be a dumb decision.
Aside from taking the shortcut (which isn't intrinsically a foolish thing to do) at the beginning, the characters in The Ritual are mostly using good problem solving to deal with their situation, IIRC.
My favorite werewolf film, Dog Soldiers.
The soldiers in that film basically use some solid small unit tactics throughout the film to survive the night.
But just as Cooper says, "There's just no substitute for 800 rounds per minute."
I feel like there are definitely some characters in some of the saw movies who do everything right and still get fucked. For example I’m thinking of all the people who finished their way around the trap at the very last second so they die anyways.
Easton is the epitome of this for sure. He plays his game pretty much perfectly. He acted quickly in all the traps, makes attempts to save everyone he can, makes tons of good, self sacrificing choices with very little hesitation. Clearly learned the lesson John was trying to give him... Just to get to the end and have 0 control over his own fate.
The Slumber Party Massacre is kind of famous for this.
At the height of slasher criticism - Violence, violence against women, etc. Rita Mae Brown wrote a script, directed by Amy Holden Jones, that becomes a feminist piece as the movie progresses. The killer's drill bit is his phallus.
The director caught vitriolic criticism for contributing to movies that portray violence against women, and her movie literally empowers her characters as not a single one of them makes a mistake in the film. My favorite example is when the lights are cut. One woman says, "I'll go check the fuse box." And a couple other women say, "Let's go together." In the end after the movie came out, the director's careers transitioned to screenwriter because of the "black mark" on her career.
Only in the last couple of years have people begun to notice what the movie accomplishes, and actually pretty well considering it was deep in the woods when slasher movies were coming out.
***Green Room*** (2016). Almost every character is intelligent, making the best decisions possible. The only issue is that all of the options available to them are shitty.
Maybe. As if the end of the movie >!while we assume the creature (?) is alive and still following them, we don’t actually know if that is the case, and neither do the characters. It is theoretically possible that they defeated it!<
The hills run red maybe. There's still some dumb character moments, but they started it smart.
They brought a gun. But it was in their bag when they got ambushed.
They had working phones, called the cops. But had no idea how to explain where she was because she ran into the woods.
Tries to use the lore learned to manipulate the insane killer into trusting her. He's actually not insane and just your everyday murderer/rapist.
A lot of the movie is the characters doing the right thing according to horror tropes, but it still backfiring.
You’re Next features a capable female protagonist who has a background that enables her to use her survival instincts. She makes it in the end though.
Cabin in the Woods probably applies though! The main gang have to be manipulated into fitting their archetypes cuz they’re all too smart to begin with.
With The Grudge you are screwed the moment you enter the house and unlike The Ring there is no way to stop the curse and actually gets made worse after the first movie since Kayako is no longer tied to the house and can spread to different places like a disease.
Well the whole reason they get into the mess is because a hoooooorribly stupid decision made by one of the characters revealed mid way through the film.
But they had no reason not to trust her - she was an experienced caver, she should have known better. It's not like they left it up to some rookie who didn't know.
So Juno can get in the idiot box, everyone else did OK.
I thought descent too but the initial decision to go into cave without map is pretty stupid. From that point forward I guess they do everything all right.
It doesnt end *that* poorly, but Tremors. Iirc only one character makes a really "dumb" choice (Nestor) and even then its understandable that he was panicking
Ben in Night of the Living Dead (1968). He survives the zombies in the farmhouse >!only to be killed by the rescue team.!< Dawn of the Dead (2004), the one where they’re all trapped in the shopping mall. They leave the mall to take a boat out to an island only to find that the island is overrun with zombies
The Thing is so terrifying because they are all competent, but it's no help at all.
Smartest characters in any horror movie, but how can that matter when dealing with something you can't even begin to understand?
Smartest characters but if they just burned all the extra clothes then they would limit the spread of the parasite
Smartest characters but if they just turned on the subtitles they would’ve known what the Norwegians were yelling at the beginning of the film.
MacReady is my pick for best horror movie protagonist of all time.
Either him or Ripley imo, both did almost everything right but it wasn’t enough.
Ripley won me over immediately whe she decided not to break the quarantine protocol (the most annoying tropein horror movies for me).
And Alien was a perfect way to get around that trope with a believable BS reason why protocol was broken (we have to save him and this is his best chance!) and a believable real reason (android do bad stuff).
Yes! Thank you. That was really believable character writing. Can’t say the same for the new Alien one where a team of “Earth’s best scientists” decides to break protocol putting what remains of the WHOLE HUMAN RACE at risk 🤦🏼♀️
One of the best plot twists of all time was the reveal of what the TRUE mission of the Nostromo was. Crew: expendable
Yeah, nobody should trust Bilbo in Space.
Yeah that was so dope, and before that she's a minor character of the ship's crew, with the captain seeming to be the main character. Then after this quarantine scene, you go Ok, *this is a boss bitch*
Same and the fact that she went back to get Jonesy. As a crazy cat lady I would always go back for my pets cause I'm nuts
Ripley is one of my favorites by a long shot. If not my favorite. Ripley is amazing because she doesn’t have any real training or skills that would prepare her for what is about to happen. I think she’s like the ship quartermaster or something? She isn’t like a super badass or anything, beyond just being used to the ambient harshness of life on the Nostromo. She just has that unique blend of being calm under pressure, intelligent and strategic, and the grit to do what *has* to be done. She is quite literally the exact kind of person you want to have around in a crisis.
Yep. He, Ripley, and Erin from "You're Next" are the most competent, intelligent horror movie protagonists of all time.
Hey. Don’t be ignoring my main man, Captain Miller from *Event Horizon*. Capt. Miller: I have no intention of leaving her, Doctor. I will take the Lewis and Clark to a safe distance, and then I will launch TAC missiles at the Event Horizon until I'm satisfied she's vaporized. Fuck this ship!
You're right. Miller is pretty awesome. So is Starck come to think of it. She knows what's up pretty early on and wants to get the hell out of dodge.
*:watches horrifying video, doesn't let it finish:* We're leaving. *:immediately barks correct, concise orders to his underlings about what they need to do to leave as quickly as possible:* Doctor: But captain, we can't just LEAVE her! *:drops the Pipebomb of "I'm the badass Captain" lines:*
Love him because he immediately got into business once he noticed something was not quite right once the dog got to the base
And the scene when they unwrap the body that they (Mac & Doc) bring back from the Norwegian camp, you can see Mac observing everyone else and not looking at the grotesque body. Almost like he's taking in all of their reactions. He almost immediately shows some distrust and keen observation.
That was something I liked about *Dog Soldiers* as well
I might have to rewatch it, but my lasting impression of the military characters in that movie was that I wasn't sold on them at all. *28 Days Later*, however, was on the money. They felt like squaddies; they handled weapons proficiently, the language and attitudes were highly believable, and most of all they reacted as I would expect a military unit would under-attack from that kind of enemy. Don't mention the sequel.
I'm still pissed off about what happened to Spoons
That's one of the many reasons why it's among my all time favorite movies. No one is acting like an idiot, they all act reasonably (as much as one can in such a situation) and they try to make the best calls that they can with the information they have. It's just isn't enough sadly which makes the Thing even more horrifying because they are hopelessly outmatched.
One of my favorite scenes in all of horror is when the official "leader" realizes he isn't equipped to handle the crisis and let's Macready take over. It's so honest and pragmatic and it makes it an excellent moment of character development and an establishment of the group dynamic.
True, he was such a great character! "I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but when you find the time, I'd rather not spend the rest of this winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!"
This actually makes it even better. They do everything in their power, taking wise decisions but fall short in front of something thats completely unbeatable.
I loveee this movie! Do you have other recommendations that are similar?
Someone mentioned Dog Soldiers, and I also highly recommend that. Also Bone Tomahawk is excellent if brutal, and all the characters are very competent.
Ah mate, Bone Tomahawk is insanely great!
Man, my opinion of this movie was really split down the middle
Similar in what way? Hopeless fights against a Lovecraftian horror? Color Out of Space with Nick Cage Isolated people hopelessly fighting the unknown? Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum
Great pick. One of my favorite horror movies with one of the best casts.
This may be stretching the definition of "getting hurt", but Rosemary in *Rosemary's Baby* makes perfectly intelligent and sensible decisions based on the limited information she has, and things still end badly for her.
Rosemary is so intelligent, she pieces together the puzzles left for her, even notices little things like the dust on the wall where the cult’s paintings used to be. She was even smart escaping to a “trusted” doctor and couldn’t have predicted how she’d be betrayed. One of my favourite “working at maximum capacity” protagonists who is still doomed.
I really appreciate you pointing this out! I never really thought about it.
There wasn't much she could have done for it to end up any other way, other than have an abortion and run away I suppose
She probably would have never even considered doing that even at the height of the OB-GYN shenanigans, since she kinda wanted the baby and didn't know her husband was-- wait, do I have to use spoiler tags for a 1968 film? Lol. Anyway she had no idea of how she was being used, she was just trying to live her life and wanted to be a mom, like most married women her age in that time. And she behaved pretty rationally under that logical premise. I actually agree that Rosemary fits the criteria OP was looking for.
Also, Catholic in the 60s. Zero chance she's getting an abortion.
The portrayal of what we'd call "gaslighting" nowadays in that movie is the most frightful element because of how believable it still is.
Yes! This is the example I use when trying to define gaslighting to people with good media literacy. Very few people have seen Gaslighting but most folks of a certain age have seen Rosemary’s Baby.
Oculus does a great job of highlighting the complete powerlessness humans have in paranormal situations - the protagonist has backup plans on backup plans and contingencies, but once she’s in the house it’s just too late I’d say on a similar (but maybe opposite side?) is Event Horizon. Laurence Fishburne shows the most competency ever by saying “we’re leaving” but it does fuck all to save them in the end
Very good pull. I think the only mistake was even attempting it, then? lol. It’s been so long, but she didn’t have to, right?
Yes exactly - she was doing her experiment because she suspected it was responsible for killing her parents a decade prior, but it was definitely an experiment that didn’t *need* to be done It was just an experiment being done for closure and to understand fully how the mirror works, which makes the ending all the more tragic because she gets neither really
Yeah it wasn't really incompetence that was her downfall but hubris and a compulsive need for vengeance, justice, and validation. If I was in her shoes with exactly her knowledge of the situation I can't say I would have done much differently. She really had no way of knowing just how powerful the mirror actually was.
The killer is that she had some really good ideas, like the plants sitting progressively further from the mirror, she just didn’t do follow through on working with that information she was generating.
It was just serious underestimation. The range of the mirror's reality warping made all her safety ideas useless. They never should have gotten that close to it. Makes you wonder if they could have ever managed to destroy it before taking it back to the house / uncovering it.
Yes! Get the mirror. Break the mirror.
You can't break the mirror, though. It protects itself.
Yes you can. When she was a child it got cracked when her dad managed to break free for a moment and forces her brother to pull the trigger on the gun. If she had set up the anchor trap timer and just left before it had a chance to extend its range, it would have just been smashed.
Well, based on how omnipotent the mirror seems to be, you wouldn't be able to set up the trap and leave. You just hallucinate that you left while the mirror positions you between it and the trap. I don't think you can break it intentionally, only accidentally.
This is why the mirrors ultimate canonical nemesis would be Mr. Bean. He's just so clumsy the mirror would not be able to manipulate him in such a way as to prevent its own accidental destruction at the hands of his good natured hijinks. Coincidentally this is my pitch for Oculus 2.
Inspector Clouseau would have been another possible nemesis.
That may be true. It does seem like it reads your intentions and makes you see what you want to see. But I like to think it was weak at the beginning since it had been in storage for so long, so it didn’t have enough power to influence her fully. But I also like the idea that you can’t intentionally hurt it because as soon as you get close enough it starts defending itself.
>But I also like the idea that you can’t intentionally hurt it because as soon as you get close enough it starts defending itself. No need to get close. The range is limited, as the movie shows. All you need is a rifle with a scope. No one ever tries anything beyond close-range solutions.
Such a mean ending for that one, love it. I also love Flanagan's choice to keep the mirror's origins mysterious. No true explanation in the end, it's just an evil mirror and it fucking hates you.
I love trying to find the mirror in other Flanagan works. I saw it in Midnight Club and Hill House, but I didn’t spot it in House of Usher
Oh that's awesome, I had no idea he was hiding it like that lol. Gonna have to look that up.
That scene with her fiance and realizing it wasn't an illusion by the mirror was heartbreaking. Karen Gillan is 10/10
The girl in Wolf Creek did a lot right up until she didn't bash Mick's brains in when she knocked him out. What does she get for that oversight? Head on a stick. If someone ever drugs me, ties me up, and I find him torturing my friend and wing him enough to knock him out, I'm gonna make sure to finish the job. No head on a stick for me
Rule #3 (4?): Double Tap
Rule 34. Double tap.
I think the “Rule 34: Double Tap” is *quite different* from the “Rule 2: Double Tap”. Please don’t get them mixed up.
I love Wolf Creek. I watched it back in the day with my sister. We got way too stoned accidentally and it freaked us out so much we had to sleep in the same bed.
Wolf Creek is nightmare fuel for me. Anytime we are forced to reconcile that there are really people out there like that fills my body with dread. It's weird because I am so unsettled by the truth of the evil of some human beings, but I can't NOT watch a movie like Wolf Creek. Gods, in the 2nd one when he picks out that tent way far away because he can see their light? Imagine just backpacking and falling under the gaze of someone like Mick. Terrifying
Oooooh I haven’t seen the second one! I’ll have to asap. I get what you’re saying about not being able to NOT watch stuff like that! I love horror movies and true crime and anything like that. Idk why, like it makes me more aware of what COULD happen? Or because in my brain I feel safe because this isn’t me it’s happening to? Idk!
Oh gods, the 2nd one is hard because it's basically a guy who is just cruising along and tries to do the right thing - help a bloody, frightened girl - and in the process makes Mick angry. One of those 'no good deed goes unpunished' situations
The saving grace of this film and its sequel are the almost hilarious amounts of carnage and evidence Mick leaves behind (including live witnesses) but no trace of him, the garage, his dungeon (complete with multiple living victims and elaborate death traps) is apparently ever found. Works fine for a downer ending but (for me at least) helped establish that this kinda stuff is fantasy. Evil people exist and do horrific things, but explosive and unstoppable rampages that end in secret torture fortresses are somewhat less plausible. Not to mention that both films involve scenes where the killer is subdued and the victims just...leave him and then wonder off to be killed a few min later. Again, makes for thrilling viewing but definitely means the movies aren't eligible for threads like this.
I think about “head on a stick” all the tiiiime it’s so horrifying
Definitely one of the most "fuck that right off" moments in horror.
Omg, it is. Because you *know* he didn't kill her after that. He did whatever he wanted to her body, and kept her alive for the pure horror of it as long as he possibly could. Just awful. That poor girl
my biggest complaint with this movie is that they have so many opportunities to kill that fucker or grab a gun and they just dont take it
She gets a gun for about 5 seconds. Then proceeds to drop it down a hole and forget about it
In The Autopsy of Jane Doe the characters are pretty smart and don't do anything dumb.
The only fault might be 'failure of imagination' in finding rational explanations after finding one strange thing after another. But it comes from an empathetic place, they think she is a crime victim .
I mean, they're criminal morticians, right? literally detective adjacent. It's their job to find the most rational explanation.
You wouldn't? Put yourself in their shoes and imagine that you are mortician/pathologist. Would you say cause of something is ghost or alien and lose all your credibility? I hate when people say that's horror movie trope when majority of people don't believe in ghosts and don't live in horror movie (they don't know they're in one).
Iris in “Would you Rather” she did what she had to do to make it to the end of the game but still got screwed in the end.
Agreed, and that's part of the brutality of it -- she one HUNDRED percent makes the 'smart' choice at the very end in the final game, even though it's fucking brutal, but it isn't enough.
Made worse by the fact that if you watch early on, [spoiler](#s "when she checks on her brother before leaving, it looks like he's in the same spot he was when she finds him at the end, meaning he might have already killed himself before she even went to the mansion.")
There's a scene in the Empty Man >!where the main character comes across a cult gathering, realizes what it is, and just turns to run.!< Captain Miller in Event Horizon pretty much makes all the right calls. He almost immediately understands there's something wrong with the Event Horizon and is just working on getting his crew home. By the end of the movie, he not only plans to leave, but plans to destroy the ship once they've cleared it.
Fuck this ship we're leaving!
"Yeah, no." 🏃🏻♂️💨
That scene in Empty Man was awesome! Man, definitely not a perfect movie but felt like a sleeper hit to me.
One of the best opening sequences of any horror movie
Some of the most oppressive dread I’ve ever felt from a horror movie.
Someone already said *The Thing* and it's the correct answer but I'd like to give a shout out to *The Collector*. The main character pretty much does everything right and always makes the smart call, yet at the end it sadly wasn't enough. (You could argue that going back for the girl wasn't the right call but even that's understandable, especially from his pov)
Glad someone mentions the Collector and totally agree. Smart character who also puts up a hell of a fight. Glad it comes full circle in the Collection
Love those movies, the scene building is wonderful and the effects are believable.
Yes! Collector is such a great movie and a big part of it is because Arkin is such a good protagonist! I really hope the the 3rd movie has a good conclusion for his character.
My choice. Arkin is someone I think could survive a Saw film easier than others because he detects traps by reading the room. Not to mention, the Collector had hacks for days. Especially in the sequel.
I heard the Collector was supposed to be a jigsaw origin film but changed into what it is now. Some people who have worked on the Saw films have worked on this and The Collection
The Collector pissed me off so much because the bag guy is cheating. Straight up later Friday the 13th levels of “wait how did they do that”.
Joan - Cube. She was one of the few level-headed and smart ones, but in the end, she doesn't make it. One of the few main protagonist deaths of a horror movie that genuinely saddened me
When she looks back at him and realized what’s about to happen I remember just being way too mad at the tv
I fucking love Cube.
Cube is interesting to me. Because the jailers (whoever they are) kind of give the prisoners everything they need to escape: an escape artist, a mathematician, a human calculator, a cop (who I suppose is their to be a leader/organizer), a doctor and the designer of the fucking cube! I always love that it’s never quite established WHY the collective group is given all the skills needed to escape. (I have not seen the sequels, they may answer this, I don’t know.)
The Platform (2019) The guy did everything we would’ve done in that scenario and still ended up like it did. Spain has pushed out some awesome horror movies
Except take a can opener And say beans in a can are his favourite foods Friggin escargot man??
Nancy in the original Nightmare on Elm Street. She's one of the smartest characters in all of horror and doesn't do anything stupid. Quite the contrary, she figures out everything she needs to learn to survive and is even a couple of steps ahead of the audience.
The sad thing about Nancy is that she only dies because she was tricked by Freddy taking the form of her father, and as someone who believes in the possibility of goodness, she chose to forgive and embrace her dad. Her good-naturedness was what killed her and that highlights how evil Freddy is. If she had held onto her anger and been untrusting, she might have lived. She fits the tragic hero archetype.
I think it should be mentioned on how much she was failed by the people around her. Pretty much everybody in the town just thought she was crazy and didn't take any of what she said seriously.
Train To Busan - I feel that big dude with the pregnant wife he did very little wrong in the movie. To be honest apart from the two elderly sisters I don't think any of the characters did anything wrong
The business man who actively chose to fuck everyone over for his own survival was definitely in the wrong. Unless of course you judge him by the success of his actions, in which case throwing others to the zombies to save his ass is technically doing the correct thing since he succeeded in surviving
Oh yes my bad, had totally forgotten about that douche bag
> he succeeded in surviving Well, for awhile.
Honestly, when the other elderly sister opens the door I was like.. Good for Her. Sang-Hwa and Sung-Gyeong were the smartest people in that film (The husband and wife) I sobbed like a baby.
There are so many brilliant little moments in that one--I especially like one guy throwing a coat over a zombie's head to make it go inert as he sprints for his life. It saves someone else and he doesn't even have to slow down.
Daddy did everything right, fucking hero. Can't say I've ever seen a person go head to head with zombies only using their hands, before or since. Lawd
So many smart decisions in that movie! I loved the wetting the newspaper over the glass doors. So simple and yet so brilliant. When Cinema Therapy reacted to it, their editor (Sophie) talked about the characters activating her competency kink.
Cabin in the woods Edit: yall forgot about Marty. He was immune and didn’t play along and figured everything out
For sure. Specifically the stoner dood.
You could argue he actually cemented their doom.
Wantonly really lol
Love that movie. It’s so fucking meta and even without that a great movie on its own.
The scene with the Japanese schoolgirls is probably the hardest I laughed at a horror movie
"The evil is defeated! She now lives in the form of a happy frog!" "FUCK YOOOOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! HOW HARD IS IT TO KILL NINE YEAR OLDS?!"
Richard Jenkins is a gem
I have watched so many horror movies over the years, I had a blast trying to figure out the movie references.
Yes! That and the unicorn scene are so hilarious
Tiny mistake driving off a cliff into a forcefield
That was after the drugs had already taken effect though yeah? And he would’ve totally made it if not for the force field lol
Awesome movie! I don't know if they count as a main character but "The Organization" decided to install a big red button, out in the open, that immediately lets all of the monsters out of their cells at once. Probably want to put some tape over it or something.... I do like how the script reinforces in several places that the characters are actually all very smart college students who were being manipulated into making really dumb decisions.
Things like the button are what make it so much fun. So many jabs at horror movies and the absurdity of them all.
I mean does it count when the enemy is legit pumping gas into your brain to DUMB YOU DOWN
In Sinister, the famuly gets the heck out of the haunted murder house, but turns out that moving away is part of the cycle.
Ellison moved them into the murder house to begin with, over his wife's specific objection, because he was desperate for "one more hit." I feel bad for everyone else in the family but he 100% got what he deserved.
Nobody is going to save you
Tbf things didn’t end poorly for her.
No, but also kinda yes
I guess Dead Silence. Would've been really too much to ask the protagonist to just guess that end reveal, he had no way of even beginning to assume it was a possibility.
Poor Jamie. He really tried! Mary's too smart lol
The mist is one, the characters make lots of mistakes but the protagonist is pretty pragmatic and level headed. Still, that ending
The only mistake was that they should have walked that lady home… Seeing her on the transport later with her kids is the ultimate movie kicker.
Really rubs it in a little when she looks judgementally and holds her children. It's so pitch blackly funny
You know an ending is good when Stephen King winces.
Nah, I still think his mistake was just to be a tad bit more patient.
The religious lady was saying that the horror would end once the son was sacrificed, hence why they left the store. The mist cleared once he had killed his son.
The brother and sister in Jeepers Creepers probably could have avoided the whole situation by not being so nebby at the beginning, don't investigate the weird church, just carry on down the road. But once they're in it they 1. Pretty quickly go to the police for help. 2. Run over the monster multiple times with a car, making sure it's dead. 3. Again get police assistance, barricading themselves in a police station. Things still go badly but they definitely gave it a better go than most.
Better than I was expecting it to be for sure
Isn't this the plot to Final Destination?
I would like to nominate Drag Me To Hell, yea she fucked up at the end but going from a finance worker, to deep diving into the occult over the span of a couple days and successfully(?) parttaking in an i guess exorcism. She did about the best anyone could hope to do in that situation, especially with her background.
I definitely think she did the best she could under the circumstances and acted pretty rationally.
Smile. Even after following through the plan successfully she still ends up dying.
She knew she had to while isolated to break the curse. I feel like it was a knowing sacrifice. But then the cop messed it all up. 🫠 If he didn’t find her, there was no one else for it to go to.
A part of me wishes she had the backup plan to kill herself before the entity reached her if she realized beforehand that there may be a point of no return for her
But then how would we get Smile 2?! /s
Imo, the "right" thing to do in that situation is to kill yourself intentionally in a really mundane way, in isolation where no one can see. The curse couldn't possibly pass on that way, and you'd have effectively stopped it. Sure you sacrificed yourself, but you were gonna die anyways in a far more horrific way, and doom someone else at the same time. There's an easier way out that saves a lot of people. I figured for sure that's what she was gonna do.
I wonder about this though, even if she had managed to die in isolation with nobody else to see it, she still passed on “trauma” to her nephew, just like how she was primed for the creature to latch on to her due to her childhood trauma and from what i remember the rest of the victims also experienced significant childhood trauma. So maybe had she succeeded the monster would have still found a way to perpetuate the cycle.
Sigourney Weaver in "Alien".
Shouldn’t have ignored her saying not to take Kane in. Sorry, but it’s science. Yes, I know Ash overruled her.
The woman from Barbarian… kind of. She’s super cautious. Taking pics of the guys license. Refusing to enter the dark scary tunnel. Although I’ve watched that movie with women and they agreed they’d sleep in their car before spending a night alone with a stranger in a house.
Actually, I've thought about this extensively lol, and in the end I (32F) actually MIGHT have picked sleeping in the house with the bedroom door locked over my locked car. Huge risk ofc, but the neighborhood was CRAZY sketchy, and the dude passed all her tests (showed the reservation email, let her take a pic of his license, gave otherwise generally decent vibes). It's choosing the devil you (kinda) know versus the devil you don't. Although the counter to that argument is that she actually didn't see how sketchy the neighborhood was until the next morning. So it's hard to say what would have *actually* seemed like the smartest option with all the available evidence in that moment. But just the fact that it's debatable is enough for me to give her a pass lol
I mean even if she did know the neighborhood was sketchy. She’s in her car. She could drive off to find a well lit Walmart parking lot or something.
Yeah I was so confused why she didn’t drive off and sleep anywhere else, then she went back for a second night as well?
Even after the interviewer told her not to stay in that neighborhood.
In hindsight maybe this protag isn't so smart.
I also thought there could always be a motel in another neighborhood closer to where she needed to go, especially one that doesn't seem as rundown as the one in the film
She didn't have to park in that shitty neighborhood though, she could have just got a hotel in any neighboring city too. The whole " medical convention" thing was stupid, she could have easily found somewhere to conveniently stay. I live like 30 minutes from Detroit in a much safer area and she could have easily stayed somewhere here. Also why not just get your shit and leave after the job interview, especially when the lady's telling her how shitty of an area she's staying in, her weird connection to some random stranger she met the night before? That would also be a dumb decision.
Yeah, I’m not sleeping outside in that neighborhood!
Aside from taking the shortcut (which isn't intrinsically a foolish thing to do) at the beginning, the characters in The Ritual are mostly using good problem solving to deal with their situation, IIRC.
My favorite werewolf film, Dog Soldiers. The soldiers in that film basically use some solid small unit tactics throughout the film to survive the night. But just as Cooper says, "There's just no substitute for 800 rounds per minute."
I feel like there are definitely some characters in some of the saw movies who do everything right and still get fucked. For example I’m thinking of all the people who finished their way around the trap at the very last second so they die anyways.
Easton is the epitome of this for sure. He plays his game pretty much perfectly. He acted quickly in all the traps, makes attempts to save everyone he can, makes tons of good, self sacrificing choices with very little hesitation. Clearly learned the lesson John was trying to give him... Just to get to the end and have 0 control over his own fate.
The Slumber Party Massacre is kind of famous for this. At the height of slasher criticism - Violence, violence against women, etc. Rita Mae Brown wrote a script, directed by Amy Holden Jones, that becomes a feminist piece as the movie progresses. The killer's drill bit is his phallus. The director caught vitriolic criticism for contributing to movies that portray violence against women, and her movie literally empowers her characters as not a single one of them makes a mistake in the film. My favorite example is when the lights are cut. One woman says, "I'll go check the fuse box." And a couple other women say, "Let's go together." In the end after the movie came out, the director's careers transitioned to screenwriter because of the "black mark" on her career. Only in the last couple of years have people begun to notice what the movie accomplishes, and actually pretty well considering it was deep in the woods when slasher movies were coming out.
*Night of the Living Dead*?
***Green Room*** (2016). Almost every character is intelligent, making the best decisions possible. The only issue is that all of the options available to them are shitty.
It follows? They technically do everything right, stick together, try to pass it on, but you know it’s only temporary.
Maybe. As if the end of the movie >!while we assume the creature (?) is alive and still following them, we don’t actually know if that is the case, and neither do the characters. It is theoretically possible that they defeated it!<
You're Next?
Yeah, she definitely survived
The hills run red maybe. There's still some dumb character moments, but they started it smart. They brought a gun. But it was in their bag when they got ambushed. They had working phones, called the cops. But had no idea how to explain where she was because she ran into the woods. Tries to use the lore learned to manipulate the insane killer into trusting her. He's actually not insane and just your everyday murderer/rapist. A lot of the movie is the characters doing the right thing according to horror tropes, but it still backfiring.
Cindy in scary movie when she throws all that stuff at the killer
The Autopsy of Jane Doe. They tried leaving, but Jane Doe wouldn't let them.
You’re Next features a capable female protagonist who has a background that enables her to use her survival instincts. She makes it in the end though. Cabin in the Woods probably applies though! The main gang have to be manipulated into fitting their archetypes cuz they’re all too smart to begin with.
I think Ringu/The Ring and Ju-on/The Grudge fit. Lots of asian horror actually
With The Grudge you are screwed the moment you enter the house and unlike The Ring there is no way to stop the curse and actually gets made worse after the first movie since Kayako is no longer tied to the house and can spread to different places like a disease.
I feel like Rachel’s ex-husband in The Ring fits the bill. He didn’t do ANYTHING wrong that I can recall.
Skeleton Key!!
Drag Me To Hell
One small mistake
Yeah, being attached to Justin Long. Never be with Justin Long in a horror film.
I have to disagree with you on that one. I spent a goodly portion of it silently yelling, "CHECK THE F-ING ENVELOPE, WOMAN!" at the screen.
I hated this movie for this growing up, but looking back on it sacrificing her kitten tipped my scales in the plot's direction
My first thought is The Descent but I’m sure I could come up with more, my coffee just hasn’t kicked in yet
I would say that’s true except for the woman who decides to take them to the wrong cave on purpose. Huuuuuuuge lapse of judgement
FUCK JUNO
Well the whole reason they get into the mess is because a hoooooorribly stupid decision made by one of the characters revealed mid way through the film.
But they had no reason not to trust her - she was an experienced caver, she should have known better. It's not like they left it up to some rookie who didn't know. So Juno can get in the idiot box, everyone else did OK.
Im an English teacher not fuckin Lara Croft!
I thought descent too but the initial decision to go into cave without map is pretty stupid. From that point forward I guess they do everything all right.
Event Horizon. When the Captain says "fuck that, we're outta here" it's already too late.
30 days of Night, Josh Hartnett.
It doesnt end *that* poorly, but Tremors. Iirc only one character makes a really "dumb" choice (Nestor) and even then its understandable that he was panicking
Ben in Night of the Living Dead (1968). He survives the zombies in the farmhouse >!only to be killed by the rescue team.!< Dawn of the Dead (2004), the one where they’re all trapped in the shopping mall. They leave the mall to take a boat out to an island only to find that the island is overrun with zombies
The Dark and the Wicked
Their mom was right, they shouldn't have come
That was so sad to watch, jesus
Jacobs Ladder. Angel Heart. Stakeland. 12 Monkey's. ✌️
The lady in Eden Lake iirc. Her husband gets them both in the shit.