The 10 Most Shocking Character Deaths In Horror Movies

The 10 Most Shocking Character Deaths In Horror Movies

In horror classics like The Shining and Psycho, these characters met terrifying fates that shocked audiences.

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Content warning: the following article contains images of violence and murder.

Unlike the characters of other genres, characters in horror movies are rarely protected by plot armor. Whether there’s a masked killer on the loose or more demonic, supernatural forces at play, the protagonists of horror movies tend to die left, right, and center.

Since the aim of the horror genre is to disturb and terrify the audience, the more shocking a death scene is, the better. From chestbursters to shower stabbings to telephone pole decapitations, horror movies have some truly unnerving character deaths to offer.

10 Big Bob Carter In The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

When the Carters run off the side of the road in The Hills Have Eyes, the patriarch Big Bob offers to walk back to the gas station. On his way back through the desert, the sun goes down and Papa Jupiter and his family of cannibals emerge from the shadows. After being crucified by them, Big Bob is then burned alive to get his family’s attention.

In one of Wes Craven’s best films, this heinous, prolonged murder tells audiences that there’s no line these sadistic cannibals won’t cross. Craven takes his time to portray Big Bob as the typical American so when the audience witnesses his graphic slaughter, they quickly realize that no one is safe in the movie.

9 Charlie Graham In Hereditary (2018)

The trailers for Ari Aster’s Hereditary put the Grahams’ youngest child, Charlie, front and center to imply that she would be the movie’s main character. While she’s sticking her head out the car window to get some air, her brother Peter swerves out of the way of a deer and accidentally decapitates his little sister against a telephone pole.

The most unsettling thing about this scene is the abrupt nature of Charlie’s death. Billed as the film’s co-protagonist, Charlie is summarily executed without any buildup or fanfare. Unlike other horror movies, the scene doesn’t linger on any gory details. Instead, Aster focuses on the unsettling silence that results from the child’s sudden death, which allows the audience to register the shocking moment they just witnessed.

8 Christine Baxter In Don’t Look Now (1973)

The opening scene of Don’t Look Now contrasts John and Laura sitting in the house with their kids Christine and Johnnie playing outside by the pond. The cross-cutting creates a sense of dread that something bad is going to happen to the kids playing outside. Then, John has an ominous premonition and rushes outside to find Christine drowning.

Nicolas Roeg opens his iconic supernatural thriller with a very real, very harrowing fear. Losing a child – and, what’s more, being unable to protect them – is every parent’s worst nightmare. Opening a movie about ghosts and séances with a little girl drowning in a pond anchors the far-fetched speculative premise in an unspeakably awful reality.

7 Damien’s Nanny In The Omen (1976)

One of the early signs that little Damien in The Omen is really the Antichrist is when his nanny locks eyes with a Hellhound and cries out, “Look at me, Damien! It’s all for you!” before jumping through the window and hanging herself in front of a densely populated garden party.

This death is particularly horrifying because it establishes the disturbing power of Damien’s sinister influence. This little boy can get someone as sweet and innocent as his young nanny to take her own life in front of a crowd of people.

6 Pam In The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Despite the title of Tobe Hooper’s pro-vegetarian horror classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Leatherface kills most of his victims in the movie with a sledgehammer to the head. One unfortunate soul, Pam, is mounted onto a meat hook and left to writhe around for a couple of excruciating minutes before passing on. She desperately tries to pull herself off the hook in her painfully prolonged final moments.

This killing demonstrates the main villain’s dehumanization of his victims. To Leatherface, Pam and her friends are just pieces of meat to be hung up like livestock. Hooper uses this to highlight the amorality of the meat industry, especially since it’s established that the Hardesty family has profited from slaughterhouses for years.

5 Dick Hallorann In The Shining (1980)

Throughout the second act of The Shining, there are a bunch of long, drawn-out scenes of Dick Hallorann getting a “shining” signal that the young child Danny is in danger. When he finally reaches the Overlook hotel just in time to save Danny and Wendy from an ax-wielding Jack, he meets a shockingly anticlimactic end as Jack jumps out and swings the ax into his chest.

This jump scare is brought to life by Jack’s shriek piercing through the silence followed by the sharp clattering sounds blaring from Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind’s eerie musical score. Dick doesn’t die immediately as Kubrick agonizingly drags out his death when the ax gets stuck in his chest and Jack swings him around the room.

4 Sgt. Neil Howie In The Wicker Man (1973)

While Nicolas Cage’s “Not the bees!” remake played more as a comedy than a harrowing horror movie, Robin Hardy’s original The Wicker Man is one of the most haunting movies ever made. Edward Woodward stars in The Wicker Man as Sgt. Neil Howie, who’s sent to investigate the disappearance of a girl on a mysterious island where he unwittingly uncovers a sinister cult.

As with all such stories, he only realizes he’s being targeted by a cult when it’s far too late. In the movie’s chilling final scene, Howie is encased in a giant wicker statue and ritualistically burned alive, one of the worst ways to go. What makes this scene truly unsettling is that Howie is the only one who finds it horrifying. For all the cultists, his death is a joyous occasion.

3 Marion Crane In Psycho (1960)

Alfred Hitchcock pulled off a masterful bait-and-switch in his 1960 masterpiece Psycho. In the first half of the movie, Psycho is a film noir about Marion Crane embezzling money from her boss and going on the lam. Marion is set up as the main protagonist and she’s played by Janet Leigh, who was one of the biggest movie stars in the world at the time.

So, audiences were shocked when, in the middle of the movie, Marion was stabbed to death in the shower. Bernard Herrmann’s piercing violin screeches punctuate the terror of the situation. After Marion has been butchered, the camera scrambles to find a new focus and eventually settles on the chilling sight of the Bates house up the hill. That a star of Leigh’s stature could be killed so early, and so graphically, signified that nobody was safe in the world of Psycho.

2 Kane In Alien (1978)

Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror opus Alien is a masterclass in pacing. The first big jump scare arrives when Kane is attacked by a facehugger. Since he survives the ordeal, the crew celebrates his survival back on the ship. And then, in the middle of the party, a baby extra-terrestrial suddenly starts pushing its way out of Kane’s chest.

This blood-soaked payoff is worth the slow burn of the film’s opening scenes as the genial camaraderie of the crew is shattered by Kane’s disturbing death. What makes this scene so shocking is the graphic detail of Kane’s demise. The audience sees everything as the alien punctures through his stomach and moves around in the office’s intestines.

1 Pat Hingle In Suspiria (1977)

Dario Argento’s Suspiria establishes in its iconic opening scene that the prestigious dance academy that Suzy Bannion is about to attend is more sinister than meets the eye. Suzy’s bright-eyed arrival at the ballet school is contrasted with Pat Hingle’s harrowing escape. She flees from the school and races to her friend’s apartment, where she sees demonic eyes in the window and gets stabbed repeatedly by a shadowy figure. This figure then drags her up to the roof, puts a noose around her neck, and tosses her through the skylight.

Within seconds, Argento has the audience on the edge of their seats by contrasting an over-the-top stabbing-and-hanging murder in the context of a classy ballet academy. The hauntingly beautiful visuals of bright red blood soaking through Pat’s white dress evoke the Italian horror giallo movement, which Suspiria represents with its many gory deaths.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/most-shocking-character-deaths-in-horror-movies/

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