5 Smartest Horror Movie Protagonists (& 5 Dumbest)

5 Smartest Horror Movie Protagonists (& 5 Dumbest)

From Scream to Saw, horror movies have given us some of the big screen’s smartest protagonists (and some of its dumbest).

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Horror movies are built on dumb decisions. How else do we expect a group of teenagers to go into a sketchy haunted house? Throughout the 80s, it became a staple of the genre to have multiple characters make stupid calls, which allowed whichever slasher to easily slice and dice them up.

While this can be entertaining in its own right, some of the best horror films have protagonists that are just as smart and cunning as the villain. This way, the match-up doesn’t feel one-sided, making for a more intense viewing experience. That being said, there are some horror movie protagonists that are infuriating to watch since they just keep making one bad decision after another. Here are the five smartest horror movie protagonists, as well as the five dumbest.

10 (Dumbest) Micah – Paranormal Activity

It’s understandable to not believe in ghosts. However, Micah literally gets multiple forms of proof that there is some sort of entity haunting his and Katie’s house in the original Paranormal Activity. This includes footage from his camera and unknown footprints outside their room.

Instead of maybe moving out or going to a hotel, Micah decides to continue toying with this thing throughout the movie, against the wishes of a seemingly terrified Katie. Turns out, this entity is, in fact, a demon who only gets more agitated as the movie progresses, leading to a grim ending for Micah in the movie’s final moments.

9 (Smartest) R.J. MacReady – The Thing

John Carpenter’s The Thing is a claustrophobic horror classic filled with dread and paranoia throughout. Each character is suspicious of one another as the movie’s alien creature can take the form of any living organism. Enter Kurt Russell’s R.J. MacReady character, who is as cool as he is clever. Once all the men are in one room, MacReady comes up with a brilliant plan to expose whoever the alien has taken the form of.

He has everyone tied up and gets a sample of their blood, he then pokes that sample with hot copper wire. As he realized in an earlier scene, this alien creature doesn’t appreciate heat very much, which means that any sort of hot object will surely get a reaction. It’s a very smart strategy that ends up working out in the end, for better and for worse.

8 (Dumbest) Louis Creed – Pet Sematary (1989)

The original novel by Stephen King does a good job of explaining how the titular Pet Sematary takes a hold of his small Maine town. The 1989 adaptation, however, doesn’t have the same effect. Much of this can also be attributed to Dale Midkiff’s wooden performance as Louis Creed. Earlier in the movie, Louis buried their dead cat, Church, in the Pet Sematary to bring it back to life. This technically works, but even Louis can see this cat is something more sinister. Therefore, he knows that bringing something back to life is dangerous.

After the tragic loss of his son, Gage, he makes the boneheaded move to still bury the body and bring it back to life. After this, the resurrected Gage kills his mother, Rachel and their neighbor, Judd. To top it all off, Louis then takes Rachel’s body and buries it in the Pet Sematary as well.

7 (Smartest) Sidney Campbell – The Scream Franchise

The Scream franchise is known for its meta-commentary on horror movie tropes and it takes place in a world where all of the characters have seen these types of films. Throughout the series, the main protagonist, Sidney Campbell, becomes the perfect adversary for each of the killers who don the Ghostface mask.

She may not be the most physical threat to them, but she always been able to outwit the killers in the end. This includes destroying an entire college theater stage to have everything crumble down on the killer in Scream 2.

6 (Dumbest) Jeff – Saw 3

When it comes to Jeff in Saw 3, it’s not so much the decisions that he makes that are stupid, but his lack of decision-making in general. As Jeff makes his way through Jigsaw’s house of horrors, he keeps entering rooms with brand-new traps containing someone who was somewhat involved with his son’s accidental death.

As these helpless victims are trying to escape, Jeff has pretty much no sense of urgency. As one might expect from a Saw film, none of these poor victims make it out alive thanks to Jeff’s lack of motivation or problem-solving. He’s probably the most frustrating character in the whole series, which is saying a lot.

5 (Smartest) Chris Washington – Get Out

Meeting your girlfriend’s family is awkward enough, but the Oscar-winning Get Out takes that situation to an even darker and sinister place. Chris Washington is an awesome horror movie protagonist because he rarely makes the stupid decisions that every viewer is yelling at him not to make.

In fact, he makes last-second decisions that even the audience couldn’t have thought of. We’d say his defining moment was when he was strapped to a chair and decides to take cotton from it to put into his ears, allowing him to not hear the hypnotic clink that is used to knock him unconscious and into the “sunken place.”

4 (Dumbest) Darry – Jeepers Creepers

Here’s a tip: if you’re driving down the countryside road and you see a mysterious figure dumping what looks like a body down a chute, maybe you should just mind your own business. Well, Darry from Jeepers Creepers clearly does not have any common sense. As he and his sister, Trish, are on a road trip for spring break, Darry decides it would be a wise idea to investigate whatever was thrown down that chute.

Unsurprisingly, this then puts Trish and Darry on The Creeper’s radar directly after. It’s one thing to investigate a strange noise, but investigating a potentially dead body in the desolate countryside is a whole other level of stupidity, especially by horror movie standards.

3 (Smartest) Erin – You’re Next

Adam Wingard’s You’re Next takes the “final girl” trope and flips it on its head, then continually smashes it with a meat tenderizer. Our main character, Erin, is going to her boyfriend’s parent’s house for an anniversary/family reunion. As one might expect in the home invasion genre, things go wrong very quickly as they are terrorized by a group of masked killers.

What these killers aren’t aware of, however, is that Erin was raised on a survivalist compound. She’s calm, calculated, and just plain badass. Her resourcefulness allows her to use just about anything around her to take out these masked assailants. It almost becomes a horror movie for them as they become the hunted instead of the hunters.

2 (Dumbest) Liz – Wolf Creek

Despite the realistic and gritty nature of Wolf Creek, it has one of the dumbest decisions in film history. The main protagonist, Liz, is trying to rescue Kristy from Mick Taylor, a psychotic serial killer. She’s able to hold Mick at gunpoint with his rifle. Suddenly, she shoots him in the neck and he falls to the ground.

Instead of maybe finishing him off with multiple shots to the head, she makes the idiotic decision to just drop the gun and run away with Kristy. Unfortunately, Mick was still alive and is able to catch up to them by the end of the film, with a tragic ending for both girls.

1 (Smartest) Ellen Ripley – Alien

Ellen Ripley is one of the greatest heroines to ever grace the big screen. She was definitely the smartest of the bunch in the original Alien, which unsurprisingly made her the sole survivor on the Nostromo spaceship. Ripley understands how to get out of a sticky situation, and is able to somehow defeat the unstoppable and terrifying Xenomorph monster by using her brains instead of her brawns.

It’s clear that this alien creature is not easily defeated, so Ripley decides that her best course of action is to send it into deep space. While the subsequent sequels would turn her into more of an action icon, it was Ridley Scott’s original masterpiece that showed a horror protagonist relying on their intelligence more than anything else.

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Link Source : https://screenrant.com/smartest-horror-movie-protagonists-dumbest-mistakes/

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