30 Horror Movie Survivors Who Probably Wished They'd Died
Surviving a horror film isn't always a blessing.
In a horror movie, there is always so much death and destruction, and in the majority of cases, many characters will end up dying. As such, when someone actually makes it to the end alive, that's usually seen as a happy ending for them. Is it, though?
When you look closer, many horror survivors haven't had a happy ending at all. Yes, they're alive, but they'll have been through a harrowing nightmare, one which will often involve losing people they care about or even becoming a killer themselves.
A lot of horror survivors are never shown again after their escape (and even if they are, many die in the sequel), and, to be honest, that may well be because a believable sequel about those characters would probably be a miserable affair. The harsh truth is, many horror survivors are dealt a life sentence of their own, and it's not cheering to think about their later lives.
The following 30 characters are great examples of this. They may have made it to the end of their movies alive, but, given how bad things will have been for them, they might've wished they hadn't escaped.
30. The Strangers - Kristen McKay
Kicking off, we've got Kristen (Liv Tyler), the sole survivor from cult classic horror The Strangers, a home invasion flick in which three masked killers break into a couple's home and terrorize them for no apparent reason. The malevolent trio kill Kristen's partner James (Scott Speedman), as well as James' friend Mike (Glenn Howerton); Kristen survives, but it's only by pure luck. Her wounds happened to not be fatal, although they probably would've been had two young passers-by not discovered the crime scene.
Kristen hasn't returned in any further Strangers movies, but it can be safely assumed that her road to recovery would've been arduous, to say the least. Alongside the fact that she'll now be living with lifelong trauma and horrible physical injuries, there's also the way things ended with James.
When the couple came home that evening, things were not good between them as James had just proposed to Kristen at a wedding reception and she'd turned him down. Thanks to James being murdered later that night, Kristen never really got the chance to fix things with him. The only particular positive that Kristen could take from any of this is that James and Mike's deaths were eventually avenged. As depicted in 2018's sequel, The Strangers: Prey at Night, a pair of siblings attacked by the trio managed to kill them.