10 Horror Movie Characters Everyone Hated (But Survived)

It's basically an unwritten rule of horror movies that characters the audience loves to hate will be dispatched in grisly fashion before film's end.

It's always tremendously satisfying to see a cartoonishly awful character get shish-kebabed by the knife-wielding killer, as if to validate our hatred of everything they stand for.

Yet as common as this trope is throughout the horror genre, it's certainly never a guarantee, and every so often a movie might decide to surprise viewers by sparing intensely hateable characters from the expected death.

That's absolutely the case with these 10 horror movie characters, who despite being cruel, obnoxious, perhaps villainous, and above all else just plain annoying, all reached the end credits with their lives still very much in tact.

Perhaps the filmmakers underestimated how much viewers would hate them, or maybe they were intentionally trying to subvert expectations by avoiding the obvious choice.

Whatever the reason, horror fans were left dumbfounded, crestfallen, and deeply disappointed that these easy-to-loathe characters all reached the end of their movie with their hearts still beating and their heads still attached to their bodies. Too much? Nah...

Though children understandably tend to get cut a little slack in the hate department, every so often a horror movie Youth will prove so thoroughly detestable that it's absolutely morally correct to expect - nay, even outright wish - for their death.

To that point, The Boogeyman soon enough introduces us to high schooler Sadie's (Sophie Thatcher) friends - a term we're using loosely here - including the needlessly catty Natalie (Maddie Nichols).

Rather than be sympathetic to Sadie, who is traumatised by the recent death of her mother, Natalie questions why Sadie wears her mother's clothes to school, and when Sadie calls her out for it, Natalie shoves her into a locker.

Later on, Natalie cements the audience's disdain for her when she compares not seeing her father in over a year to Natalie losing her mother forever, and then has viewers outright baying for her blood when she calls Sadie "dramatic" after the Boogeyman locks her in a closet where a man hanged himself.

Despite Natalie being blatantly set up to be preyed upon by the Boogeyman, the only punishment she gets for her toxic-ass behaviour is a hard slap from Sadie, which while satisfying in the moment doesn't quite cut it.

Given that Stephen King hasn't ever shied away from killing children in his stories, it was surprising to see this adaptation pull its punches with its most imminently awful human character.