10 Horror Movie Survivors Everyone Forgets About

Scream 2's cameraman Joel is one of the smartest horror characters ever.

By Jack Pooley /

The sheer nature of horror movies dictates that the body counts are high and survivors are few and far between. After all, how can we believe the masked murderer as a viable threat if they're letting people get away left and right?

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And while there's always the Final Girl or Guy who makes it to the end, and perhaps a close friend or two in tow, every so often a more minor character manages to squeak their way to the finish line in tact.

But in many cases this is easily forgotten, either because the character didn't end up returning for the sequel or because their survival was simply implied off-screen.

Whatever the reason, though, fans have largely blanked on these low-key horror movie survivors, who often had the good sense - or good luck! - to sheer clear of the villain, get the hell out of dodge, and ensure they weren't prime for the killing.

Granted, when any horror series get large enough there's no way fans can keep track of every spare character and dangling narrative thread, but these 10 survivors feel especially sidelined in their respective franchises...

10. Jeff Ridenhour - Saw

The Saw franchise has generally circled back to those few victims lucky enough to survive a Jigsaw trap, with the seventh movie even introducing a support group for Jigsaw survivors.

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But there's one survivor rarely discussed in all but the most hardcore quarters of the fandom, and that's Jeff Ridenhour.

He was the man who Detectives Tapp (Danny Glover) and Sing (Ken Leung) rescued from having his neck drilled to death in the very first Saw movie.

We know that Jeff survived the trap, but beyond that we know nothing about him - neither what happened to him post-rescue or why he was even targeted by Jigsaw in the first place.

Some fans have speculated that he may have been the dentist who "liked to play with kids too much" mentioned by Tapp earlier in the film, given that the chair he's strapped to could indeed be a dentist's chair, but this hasn't ever been officially confirmed.

Nevertheless, Jeff was originally supposed to return in an early draft of Saw IV's script to spectate the game being unwittingly participated in by FBI agents Peter Strahm (Scott Patterson) and Lindsey Perez (Athena Karkanis), but for reasons unknown this was scrapped.

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