10 Smartest Decisions In Recent Horror Movies

Because not every character in a horror movie is a total idiot these days.

Barbarian Tess Mother
20th Century Studios

How many times have you been left screaming at your TV or a cinema screen at the utterly baffling decisions made by certain horror characters? Likely too many to count, we're sure.

It may not be as prevalent these days - largely thanks to something like Scream poking fun at such idiocy - but for the longest time, horror movies were overflowing with total fools. Thankfully, not everyone in one of these pictures is a total tool, and it's on those smarter folks that the spotlight shines today.

Where that "shines" is concerned, it's time to put some focus on the figures who made quite the genius decisions in recent horror films.

In terms of recent, that's a word that can absolutely be open to interpretation. To some, recent would maybe mean the last 12 months, while for others that word would relate to the past decade. As such, we'll go with the last five years as a nice middle ground for what classifies as recent where it pertains to the films featured here - meaning anything from 2018 onwards is fair game.

With that in mind, then, here are ten extremely wise characters who have been served up by horror across these past five years.

10. The Faked Suicide - Halloween Ends

Barbarian Tess Mother
Universal Pictures

Halloween Ends was nothing if not opinion-splitting when it sliced its way to the silver screen last year, but one of the things most viewers could agree on, was that Laurie Strode was positioned as extremely smart.

Granted, the biggest gripe about Halloween Ends is that it features such minimal Laurie vs. Michael Myers action - with Rohan Campbell's Corey Cunningham taking centre-stage on the villain front - but the way in which Strode tricks Corey was fantastically done.

To be fair, this whole situation tricked a fair few moviegoers upon a first watch, with Jamie Lee Curtis' iconic character seemingly at such a low point that she was about to take her own life. Of course, Laurie's daughter Karen was murdered by Michael in Halloween Kills, Laurie's granddaughter Allyson had now distanced herself from Strode as she looked to runaway with Corey, and Laurie even called 911 to report her impending suicide before putting a gun to her head.

So, when we hear a gunshot and see a splatter of something, it's easy to see why the lurking Corey would presume Laurie had shot herself. Only she hadn't, and instead it was Cunningham who was soon shot by the wily veteran.

Also, y'know, it was also extremely smart of Laurie, Allyson and the people of Haddonfield to put Michael's dead body through a shredding machine at the film's close.

Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Chatterer of stuff, writer of this, host of that, Wrexham AFC fan.