10 Awesome Recent Horror Movie Death Scenes
The most memorable death scenes from 2024's gnarliest horror movies.
What would horror movies be without death scenes? Pretty damn short, that's what.
But in all seriousness, the horror genre is, among other things, an exploration of our collective fascination with death - the great equalizer that will come for us all eventually.
It's incredibly rare for a horror film to not feature even a single death scene, and of course, slasher movies packed with gory kills are basically the genre's literal lifeblood.
But it's tough for filmmakers to come up with death scenes that actually stand out from the many hundreds, even thousands, that horror fans will likely see every single year.
When audiences have already seen so much, directors really need to go the extra mile to deliver a memorable movie death that doesn't blur into the pack.
But these 10 films all absolutely pulled it off, delivering deaths that were instantly iconic and unforgettable, due to either their jaw-dropping practical gore effects, uncommonly disturbing method, or even the unexpected emotional resonance they mustered.
Whether nasty, hilarious, or even genuinely affecting, these 10 horror movie death scenes rank among the very finest from recent films...
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!
10. Samira - A Quiet Place: Day One
A Quiet Place: Day One makes it clear from its establishing scenes that there's going to be no happy ending for protagonist Sam (Lupita Nyong'o), a terminally ill cancer patient who simply wants to live long enough to revisit the jazz club where her late father played and grab a slice of pizza.
Sam fulfills that wish before film's end, but rather than die a predictably sacrificial death to help her new pal Eric (Joseph Quinn) get to safety, things go in a slightly different direction.
Having achieved her goal and content that Eric is now safe, Sam walks through the New York City streets while listening to Nina Simone's anthemic "Feeling Good" on her iPod.
Fully accepting her death, she unplugs her earphones, causing the song to blare loudly in the vicinity, and attracting the attention of the alien creatures.
Though we know that Sam's about to be duly torn apart by the monsters, director Michael Sarnoski smartly ends the film on a shot of Sam taking back control of her own life and preparing to die on her own terms, cutting to black before the grisly outcome occurs.