10 Pointless Characters In Horror Movie Sequels

Sometimes we root for the killers.

Alien Covenant James Franco
Fox

Horror movies are filled with expendable characters - it comes with the territory. When your movie franchise revolves around a masked killer murdering teens in increasingly complex ways, there needs to be plenty of them to be axed.

Most horror franchises are good at this. They have a clear set of core main characters that are essentially death proof, being able to consistently and often times inexplicably avoid the killer. This plot armour is annoying but necessary, as without the central characters, the story runs into a dead end.

Alongside these main characters are those who have their fate already laid out for them: to be murdered in an extremely gruesome way. Think of the characters in the opening of a Scream movie.

However, when it comes to horror movie sequels, there are often characters that have no purpose whatsoever. They fail to impact the plot in any meaningful way, even if they are there to just be slaughtered.

This pointlessness isn't helped by studios hyping up characters in marketing campaigns. These empty hype machines only help to worsen the blow when it's revealed that there is nothing to the character.

Sometimes, we root for the killer.

10. George Lanter - The Final Destination

Alien Covenant James Franco
New Line Cinema

The Final Destination series has more worthless characters than any other horror franchise, seemingly by design. Unimportant characters are necessary when the whole point of the franchise is for people to be killed in elaborate and gruesome ways.

However, some characters in the series are far more trivial than others, with the fourth movie in the franchise, The Final Destination, having many of these.

Now, The Final Destination is not a good movie. In fact it's probably the worst in the series, so having a pointless cast of characters is the least of its issues. Despite this, one character stands out from the others, mainly as he seems to initially be anything but inconsequential.

We're introduced to George early in the movie, but it's close to the final act in which we meet him again and find out his backstory. From learning this we begin to believe that he will play a major part in the conclusion of the movie. It's just at this point, when the character is being developed, that he is swiftly and unceremoniously killed, rendering his inclusion meaningless.

He ends up having no impact in the story. Although, he is heavily impacted by an ambulance.

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