50 Infuriating Horror Movie Characters We All Secretly Wanted To Die
Horror movies always bring out your inner psychopath...
Horror stories revolve around the darkest aspects of life, and inevitably, you can usually find at least one hateful character in any horror movie. That's not just limited to the villains, though, as sometimes, the people being chased by the monster are arguably even more monstrous in their own way.
As rich and varied as horror cinema is, unlikable characters are a constant. Having said that, another constant is death; horror movies where no-one dies do exist, but they are uber-rare. As such, you can be sure many characters in any horror flick will perish before the end, and there are some deaths you might not be able to resist wishing for, try though you might. Some horror movie characters are just too hateful to root for.
The following characters vary heavily, but they are all good examples of this. They range from skin-crawling perverts to disgusting bullies, from abusive authority figures to genuinely monstrous psychopaths, and what unites them is that most viewers will cross their fingers for their demise. So, if you wanted any of these characters to die, don't feel bad - you won't have been the only one!
Regrettably, not all of these characters actually do die, though...
50. Night Of The Living Dead - Harry Cooper
Kicking off the list, we've got Harry Cooper (Karl Hardman) from George A. Romero's awesome, ground-breaking zombie classic Night of the Living Dead. If a zombie outbreak occurs and you're holed up somewhere, this is exactly the kind of guy you wouldn't want to be stuck with.
Throughout Night of the Living Dead, Harry stubbornly believes that he knows best and antagonizes everyone else in the farmhouse that he and his family end up in. The main target of his vitriol is Ben (Duane Jones), who's notable as being one of the very first African-American leads for a horror movie. It seems like that racial prejudice motivates Harry's aggressive attitude towards him, and he tries to leave Ben outside to die late in the film, his lowest moment for sure. Sadly, it was easy to predict given what we'd already seen of him.
George A. Romero was always one for creating some particularly detestable horror characters (this isn't the last time you'll see his work on this list), and they were useful vehicles for the stinging, misanthropic social commentary that rings throughout his movies. Rather thoughtfully, he tended to give such characters particularly brutal deaths. In this case, Cooper is shot dead by Ben, and his zombified daughter proceeds to feast on his corpse.
Staying on the subject of zombies...