10 EXACT Moments Horror Movies Self-Destructed

For any movie, it's obviously a tough task to deliver a strong start, an engaging middle act, and then stick the landing and pull off a fabulous finale. Even more so, this is something that's particularly prevalent in the horror genre.

So often in horror, we've had countless films brimming with endless promise and potential, which start things off on a stunning front foot, but that ultimately stumble and disappoint somewhere along the way. For such pictures, it may happen towards the end of the first act, it may happen within the first hour, or it may happen towards the feature's conclusion... but somewhere, these offerings couldn't help but implode in on themselves.

Said implosion may be one single scene which immediately loses a viewer, or it may be a sequence that's the culmination of a number of questionable moments; the straw that back from the camel's back, if you will. Either way, there was no way back once these films delivered their idiotic, baffling bombshells.

With that in mind, then, here are ten horror movies which unfortunately self-destructed, and the precise moments that they did so.

Part of the eerie appeal of Bryan Bertino's The Strangers, was the sense of unrelenting, inescapable dread that surrounded our protagonists Kristen and James. Regardless of whatever tricks they tried, these troubled lovebirds were in a situation the audience was well aware wouldn't end well for them.

The trio of Man in the Mask, Dollface and Pin-Up Girl had a mystique and aura around them; a sense of invincibility that forever had them one step ahead of their targets.

Unfortunately, The Strangers: Prey at Night, despite starting promisingly, stripped away that mystique and aura by opting to kill off two - or possibly three? - of its trio of killers.

The first of these deaths is that of Pin-Up Girl, which itself is admittedly part of a hugely memorable neon-lit pool sequence that's soundtracked by Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart. Still, once Pin-Up Girl is hit with a golf club and stabbed numerous times by Luke - one of a family of four in these murderous sorts' crosshairs here - the bloom is somewhat off the rose.

No longer does the threat of Prey at Night feel unrelenting and inescapable. Instead, this death humanises our villains and removes that sheen of invincibility that made their presence so ominous in the first Strangers picture.

Of course, all of this is only amplified once Dollface is killed shortly after Pin-Up Girl's demise, which is likewise followed by the purported death of Man in the Mask, too.