10 Horror Movies That Chose The Wrong Survivor
We all wanted Helen to survive in I Know What You Did Last Summer, right?
Almost all horror movies end with the murderous force vanquished - if perhaps only temporarily - while a character or two lives to fight another day.
Picking the right survivor is key to most horror movies' success - get it wrong and audiences will be left totally deflated, especially if there was a far more interesting and likeable character who was killed off earlier on.
That's certainly the case with these 10 films, which picked the wrong main survivor - more often than not a "final girl" - in favour of an infinitely more compelling character who was unceremoniously killed off.
Whether these survivors actively irritated audiences with their behaviour, were just a bit dull, or simply couldn't measure up to far better characters elsewhere, they clearly shouldn't have been the ones to make it to the end of the movie in tact.
In some cases the outcome tainted the entire film, while in others it simply left an asterisk of disappointment over an otherwise quality horror flick.
Either way, one suspects the decision to have many of these characters survive was made by a studio head rather than a storyteller...
10. Chris Higgins - Friday The 13th Part III
Now, you have to give Friday the 13th Part III's final girl some measure of credit - Chris Higgins (Dana Kimmell) holds her own against Jason in the film's prolonged finale and exhibits a fair degree of resourcefulness throughout.
However, she's also annoyingly hysterical and pretty cold as final girls go, such that she simply can't hold a candle to her franchise predecessors, the easy-to-root-for, thoroughly likeable Alice (Adrienne King) and Ginny (Amy Steel).
It would've been far more satisfying to see the series' goofball prankster, Sheldon "Shelly" Finkelstein (Larry Zerner), survive along with the nonreciprocal object of his affection, Vera Sanchez (Catherine Parks).
They were both warm, likeable characters who would've made for an unconventional survivor pairing. Sadly it wasn't to be, as Shelly gets his throat cut and Vera catches a speargun to the eye