10 Horror Movie Characters Who Knew When To Quit (But Didn't)

More than any other genre, horror will leave audiences screaming madly at the screen as they watch characters who know in their heart of hearts that they should just walk away and yet... don't.

Obviously it goes without saying that most horror movies would be relatively swift, uneventful affairs if the central characters balked at the first sign of trouble, but there are times where they also ignore the reddest and most crimson-soaked of red flags, often to their peril.

And that's absolutely the case with these 10 horror movie characters, each of whom clearly appreciated the dire extent of their circumstances on some level, and yet still stuck around to be terrorised.

While in some instances they were fortunate enough to make it through the night, in others it led to their brutal demise - all because they didn't listen to the voice in the back of their head and cheese it the hell out of there.

These characters all knew that they should pack it up, get away, and let the cops deal with it, but whether a result of their conscience or their morbid curiosity, they ended up having a legendarily awful night...

Dammit, David, your first instinct was the right one.

Early on in An American Werewolf In London, protagonist David (David Naughton) and his pal Jack (Griffin Dunne) are trekking across the North York Moors, against the advice of the locals, when they're attacked by a werewolf.

Well to be clear, Jack is attacked by the werewolf, being brutally mauled all while David's immediate survival instinct has him high-tail it in the opposite direction rather than risk suffering the same fate.

But after running away while listening to Jack's desperate screams for help for a few seconds, David's pesky conscience ends up overpowering his fight-or-flight response, causing him to return to the scene against his better - or at least smarter - instincts.

Yet within moments of discovering Jack's mangled corpse, David is also attacked by the werewolf. Though he's ultimately rescued by the gun-totting locals, the damage has already been done - David has been turned into a werewolf, setting him on a path which leads to his own demise at film's end.

But if David simply kept running, there's a strong chance he would've escaped the moors while Jack was being killed and made it back to the safety of the Slaughtered Lamb pub.