10 Horror Movie Characters Who Were SECONDS Away From Surviving

One of the most legendary scenes in horror movie history is also one of the silliest if you actually break it down.

Lucio Fulci's 1979 classic Zombi 2 (otherwise known as Zombie Flesh Eaters) boasts the all-timer death scene where Paola (Olga Karlatos) gets grabbed by a zombie and forced eyeball-first into a massive wooden splinter.

The tension and gore are great, as long as you can ignore the fact that Paola actually had a pretty decent opportunity to save her own life here by just...using her hands to snap the damn splinter off.

Sure, she'd still have to fend off the zombie, but her chances were a hell of a lot better without a huge sharp hunk of wood mere inches from her face, right?

You can argue that a character as dumb as Paola lacked the self-preservation to affect her own survival no matter how many extra seconds you gave her, but those extra few seconds just might've let her survival instincts finally slam into gear.