10 Horror Movie Characters Who Didn't Know They Were The Victim

Tim Burton's genre-bending fantasy-horror-comedy Beetlejuice may be considerably more lightweight than every other movie on this list, but it nevertheless features a pair of characters who have to quickly come around to the fact that they're no longer living.

The film opens with husband and wife Barbara and Adam Maitland (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) driving home when they swerve to avoid a dog and end up careening into a river.

Though the car is quickly submerged, Burton abruptly cuts to Barbara and Adam returning home, soaked of course, with Barbara complaining that she feels "frozen."

Things soon enough get much weirder: Barbara's fingers catch alight like candles, Adam disappears into a desert planet for two hours, and neither of them have reflections.

Their fate is confirmed a few moments later, though, when they find a book in their home entitled "Handbook for the Recently Deceased."

The couple are dead, and spend the rest of the movie trying to have their home's new occupants (Catherine O'Hara, Jeffrey Jones, and Winona Ryder) scared away, courtesy of the "bio-exorcist" Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton).

Unlike most movies on this list, however, Barbara and Adam at least didn't have to wait until the end of the story to figure out their fate: they clocked it in less than five minutes.