10 Horror Movies That Weirdly Made Characters Look Like Idiots

It is absolutely fair to say that most horror movies require at least a small sliver of stupidity on the parts of its characters for the expected body counts to end up so high.

And to a point this is basically fine, especially when we're dealing with fundamentally dumb characters who are earmarked as knife-fodder from the moment they're introduced. It's the natural order of things for the genre.

It gets dicier, though, when we're dealing with characters who are otherwise presented as smart, resourceful, and perhaps even ripe candidates for survival.

Sometimes a character can seem like they're totally primed to make it to the end of the movie, only to do something so fundamentally counter to the human survival instinct that audiences can't help but roll their eyes in disappointment.

And so, these generally smart, sensible, well-trained characters all did something head-smackingly stupid that was so inconsistent with their established personalities.

In most cases it ended up causing their deaths, though a few lucky ones were able to make it to the end in one piece regardless, even if their act perhaps caused the deaths of other innocents...

On paper, there's a fair argument to be made that Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) is the Scream franchise's smartest character - or in the very least, its most genre-savvy.

A horror movie character acutely aware that he's "starring" in a horror movie, Randy fundamentally appreciates the rules for surviving a slasher scenario, yet his horror trivia? It ain't so hot.

In one of Scream 2's opening scenes, Randy attends film class during a spirited discussion about sequels surpassing their predecessors, with James Cameron's Aliens soon enough being mentioned by an unnamed member of the class (played by Joshua Jackson).

The student quotes Ripley's (Sigourney Weaver) iconic line from the movie, "Get away from her, you b*tch!," before Randy jumps in to correct him with the catty put-down, "I believe the line is 'Stay away from her you b*tch.' This is film class, right?"

The class then erupts into laughter, no matter that Randy is actually wrong - his classmate got the line correct.

It's incredibly easy to miss and yet subtly tells the audience that Randy perhaps isn't as flawlessly genre-aware as he seems, in turn teeing up his brutal demise later in the film.

After all, the guy stands next to an unmarked van in broad daylight while talking on the phone with a killer he knows is in his midst. He should've seen this coming, but again, not flawless.