10 Famous Movie Villains With Lame Motivations

7. Lori (Happy Death Day)

Happy Death Day Jessica Rothe
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 over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!