10 MORE Horror Movies Where The Hero ALMOST Won
They survived a zombie apocalypse, only to become roadkill. Victory snatched at the final moment.
Mainstream movies are known for their formulaic structure. A key point: your hero doesn’t die. It bums the audience out, unless, of course, it’s some major heroic sacrifice to prove a dramatic point (think Armageddon). Otherwise, it just won’t happen.
Horror movies, though, can play by different rules. From the inception of the genre in early silent films to classic examples like Psycho and Night of the Living Dead, genre directors don’t have to follow the norms like Michael Bay does. In fact, it’s pretty typical to pull a gut-punch moment and take out the character you’ve invested your movie experience in - usually in the name of scares or to prove a thematic point.
However, it’s usually a rare exception when your hero/heroine has made it all the way to the end of the movie, with victory just a hair's breadth away from their grasp, and just like that, it's snatched away. We’ve explored this before with 10 Horror Movies Where The Hero ALMOST Won, and here, we’re going to do it again, with 10 more times the heroes almost won.
10. Terrifier
Love it or hate it, one thing is certain about the Terrifier series: it’s apparently here to stay, at least for one more movie, with Art the Clown gorily etching his spot alongside classic boogeymen. The series is determined to cater to the slasher audience, whilst crudely subverting expectations of the formulaic genre. Things like the Final Girl surviving, and people getting offed swiftly and offscreen, are not on the order of the day. When Art catches up with his victim, get ready for an extensive (and gross) death scene.
While later entries were more polished, there’s no better example for this list than the grimy original, as director Damien Leone manages to have our fleeting heroine(s) fail - not once, but twice.
Tara (Jenna Kanell), who earned her Final Girl spot as she escaped and fought for survival against Art while locked up in an abandoned building, gets unceremoniously shot by the clown midway through the film, with her shock death further accented by him emptying a full clip into her lifeless corpse - just to drive the point home for good measure.
The narrative lets another protagonist take the lead at that point - Tara’s sister Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi) - who picks up the mantle without missing a beat and makes it to the final moments, even escaping the building and police in tow, only for Art to surprise attack and mutilate her beyond recognition in the process.
Uplifting stuff, huh?