10 Horror Movie Performances That Fell Totally Flat

It goes without saying that many movies will live or die on the strength of their central performances, but the horror genre is a little better-equipped to deal with dodgy acting than, say, a straight drama.

After all, the performances are rarely the primary draw for a slasher flick, and given that low-budget horrors by their nature don't attract sterling casts, genre fans can be a rather forgiving bunch where ropey acting is concerned - especially if the kills and filmmaking elsewhere make up for it.

But as inspired by this recent Reddit thread on the subject, sometimes a wonky performance is bad enough that you just can't put it to the back of your mind and it ends up compromising the entire movie.

Perhaps it's a case of an actor being grossly miscast for the role, or giving such a bland, lifeless performance that you can't even convince yourself to root for their character's survival.

Whatever the reason, these 10 actors all gave totally off performances in huge horror movies, which despite their merits otherwise, got saddled with a total acting bust.

And to make matters worse, most of these actors are playing the protagonist, so there's little escaping the overpowering iffiness of their work...

Alicia Witt has proven herself to be a plenty talented actress in numerous other projects, but her turn as Natalie Simon, the Final Girl of Urban Legend, is a total damp squib.

Now, it doesn't help at all that Natalie is a rather uninteresting protagonist, but Witt's emotionally devoid performance only makes this worse, enough that you'll likely wish the Final Girl were the decidedly more memorable likes of Sasha (Tara Reid) or Reese (Loretta Devine) instead.

Witt's whiff of a performance only compounds how unlikeable Natalie is, and as such you might even find yourself rooting for killer Brenda Bates (a gloriously camp Rebecca Gayheart) to finish her off at the end.

If Witt was trying to portray Natalie - who is on probation for causing a car accident which killed Brenda's fiancé - as guilt-stricken and traumatised, she instead made her come off as though she's been chugging sleeping pills.