10 More Devastating Horror Movie Deaths You Couldn't Look Away From
2. Charlie Graham - Hereditary
There is perhaps no greater pain in this world than losing a child.
Therefore, it is hardly surprising that Charlie Graham's abhorrently tragic death in 2017's Hereditary is one of the most devastating deaths cinema has ever been unfortunate enough to play host to.
Not one iota of the sequence depicting the young girl's death is not abjectly soul-destroying. After their mother Annie forces her brother Peter to take her to a party, Charlie is exposed to walnuts and goes into anaphylactic shock. The sight of a 13 year old girl pawing at her throat, struggling to breathe while her brother frantically drives her to the hospital is traumatic enough, but things haven't even gotten started.
Desperate for air, Charlie sticks her head out of the car window. Her brother swerves to avoid a dead deer in the road with the most horrendous of consequences; the maneuver brings the car within range of a telephone pole which decapitates his sister. Annie's agonized screams on discovering her headless daughter's corpse the next day are enough to send one to therapy alone before the aftermath's true nightmarish extent is hammered home.
The image of Charlie's decapitated head, lying in the road and swarming with ants, is the single most disturbing sight this writer has ever witnessed in a horror film. It quite literally freezes viewers with horror, unable to look away no matter how much they might want to.