10 Famous Movie Villains With Lame Motivations

7. Lori (Happy Death Day)

Amazing Spider Man 2
Universal

The Motivation: Tree was having an affair with a man she liked.

In the original Happy Death Day, protagonist Tree Gelbman somehow ends up living through the same exact day over and over, and each night, she's killed by a knife-wielding maniac wearing a baby mask. The movie follows Tree as she attempts to crack the mystery of her nightly murder: who's beneath the mask, and why are they doing it?

Eventually, we learn that her housemate and fellow sorority member Lori is the one responsible, which leads to Tree killing her "friend" in self-defence. Lori's evil turn comes out of nowhere (which is kinda the point, since it's meant to be a big twist), so we don't get enough time to properly understand her motivation, but even worse, said motivation is quite a feeble excuse to brutally knife Tree without displaying a shred of mercy, with Lori overreacting to a ridiculous degree.

It's revealed that she's only trying to kill Tree because they both fancy the same man: Gregory Butler, a professor at their university. Lori grew jealous upon discovering that Tree was seeing Butler, so she decided to kill Tree to get her out of the way. Disproportionate revenge, much?

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.