10 Horror Movie Characters You Thought Were Dead For Sure
6. Michael Myers - Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
This list contains only a single horror movie villain for damn good reason - they have a tendency to stay alive or be resurrected for the sequel, so audiences rarely believe they're genuinely out for the count.
Yet there is one major exception, and that's Michael Myers (Chris Durand) in the seventh Halloween film, Halloween H20.
After years of declining box office receipts, H20 was mounted as a big hurrah for Myers and the franchise, as Jamie Lee Curtis returned to play Laurie Strode for the first time since Halloween II 17 years prior.
And H20's ending certainly lived up to the hype, with the movie's final scene having Laurie "finally" put Michael down for the count, lopping his head off with an axe.
There was no ambiguity about it whatsoever - Laurie just murdered Michael for good, without any possibility of him coming back outside of supernatural shenanigans.
Yet behind the scenes, franchise producer Moustapha Akkad wouldn't legally allow anyone to kill off Michael, and so a setup for an eighth film was concocted where, as angered most fans, it was revealed that Michael secretly switched places with an injured paramedic at the last minute. Basically, Laurie just killed a totally innocent man.
Halloween: Resurrection used this lousy twist to bring Michael back into the fold, even though for a while it legitimately seemed like H20 brought the series to a genuine, satisfying close.