10 Dumbest Decisions Ever Made In Horror Movies

Characters in horror movies are often little more than cattle for the slaughter, but that doesn't excuse some of the hair-brained decisions they've made over the years.

From tripping over everything in sight while running away, to investigating creepy sounds in dark places, these errors of judgement are even less acceptable in a post-Scream world, and yet they keep on happening.

Although Wes Craven's 1996 slasher classic and its sequels provided Hollywood with a foolproof set of rules for surviving horror films, those who successfully follow them and live to see the end credits are a rare and lucky breed.

Occasionally, terrible decision making can be overlooked. When a masked killer is hot on your heels or a ghost has materialised out of nowhere, the stress and adrenaline hit alone are probably enough to addle your mind, but characters getting exactly what they deserve seems to be a long-running theme in the genre.

Stupidity of epic proportions is a prerequisite for most scary films, necessary to further the story, but sometimes, horror characters end up looking like natural selection in action. And the further away they are from the gene pool, the better, by the look of it.

The worst thing about the Australian Outback isn't getting lost in its vast, unforgiving expanse, it's running into the sadistic psychopath known as Mick Taylor. The Aussie serial killer racked up a sizeable body count in Wolf Creek, its sequel and its recent spinoff TV series, but his rein of terror could have been stopped in its tracks early on if it wasn't for the stupidity of one of his victims.

In the original movie, the character Liz is captured by Mick, only to escape fairly quickly. The psycho killer ends up in hot pursuit, the pair clash and Liz shoots him in the neck with his own sniper rifle.

This is pretty impressive stuff from the young backpacker, but what she does next defies logic. Instead of triple checking that the gunshot actually killed Mick and putting an extra bullet between his eyes for good measure, she discards the firearm right next to his apparent corpse and leaves.

Of course, Mick isn't dead and the rest of the movie is basically him taking out Liz and her friend Kristy with that very rifle. Maybe she didn't have the stomach to deliver a headshot, but why give the psychopathic killer his gun back?