10 Dumbest Decisions In Recent Horror Movies

What is about horror films that attracts the most foolish of individuals?

The pea-brained characters that typically inhabit horror flicks seem to have a disastrous propensity for consistently making the most idiotic of decisions. Indeed, needlessly splitting up with the film's focal group, exploring terrifying areas with no light or weaponry and inexplicably dawdling on the very edge of safety number amongst horror's most prevalent tropes.

This lamentable characteristic has decidedly not let up over the course of the last decade, with horror fans being treated to some spectacularly dumb decisions against the most foreboding of backdrops. More often than not, these calamitous calls of judgment resulted in the gruesome demise of the individual or individuals in question, leaving groaning audiences with their heads in their hands or legitimately laughing with sheer disbelief at the unmatched levels of cretinous behavior unfolding on screen.

There's a reason that the saying "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" exists. One would be hard pressed to find recent horror characters who have exemplified this state of affairs better than the unfortunate (but entirely deserving) inhabitants of this list.

It is not without hyperbole to suggest that Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is quite literally saturated with moronic behavior.

Why any rational human being with a functioning brain thought a sequel to 2019's disastrous offering - that followed a group trapped in an array of deadly "escape rooms" - was a worthwhile endeavor is beyond this writer, but the film certainly provides more than a few superb case studies in cinematic stupidity.

While Nathan's swan dive into a seething lake of quicksand or Zoey and Rachel's plan based on an assumption that the Minos corporation would be foolish enough to leave a literal escape hatch in one of their rooms constitute worthy entries in this category, the Tournament of Champions' pièce de résistance is saved for the film's final room. With her friend Ben trapped in a plexiglass container rapidly filling with water, protagonist Zoey has the wonderful idea to use a gas pipe as a make-shift flamethrower to break him free.

Admirable intentions, but excruciating execution - rather unsurprisingly, the room is devoured by gargantuan tongues of apocalyptic flame. Zoey somehow avoids barbecuing herself, Ben and recently returned from the dead Amanda, but it's worth noting that heating an enclosed container of water in such a haphazard manner could have just as easily boiled him alive like the most unfortunate of lobsters.