1. 'David Drayton' in The Mist
Topping my list is a character whose actions have no doubt made many movie lists since the film's release in 2007 - the finale of the Mist has gone down as one of the most shocking and controversial movie endings of all time. (And if you haven't seen The Mist yet, you might want to skip reading and look for yourself, because it's a doozy. Consider this a major spoiler warning). The plot - adapted from a Stephen King novella - sees father and son stranded in a large convenience store on a routine trip to buy supplies. An an eerie funk envelops the immediate area, out of which emerge some seriously unpleasant creatures. A seige state soon emerges, with survivors falling into two camps: those who believe the place needs barricading up until help arrives, and those who think the creatures are demonic heralds, sent by god to punish the unbelievers. It's a great premise, and director Frank Darabont embraces all the implied B-movie tropes to great effect - there's great bug-eyed monsters, tough guy heroics and gristly human sacrifice. Most of it plays out the way you'd think, right down to the moment when the good guy makes a break for it, taking his son and three others in tow. Certain that normality lies beyond the confines of the mist, they drive through the night, passing many horrors on the way. David - the good guy - even finds the corpse of his wife, strung up in a web. The horror! There's no plan other than to get out of the mist. The idea is that normal life lies beyond the mist. Only the mist doesn't end. So they keep driving, on and on. Finally, the SUV runs out of gas. It's the end of the line. David has the only gun in the group. He checks, and there's four bullets. Knowing that's one round shy of completing a perfect suicide pact, they instead agree that David will shoot each one of them and then face the monsters alone - where he will have a horrible death, just like everyone else did in the movie. There's an exterior shot of the SUV. Four flashes go off. Does junior get it first, or last? We will never know the order he executes them in. He staggers out and in mere seconds looks in the direction of a low rumble. Something emerges through the mist, something big and heavy and powerful and it's... ... the US military in convoy; a battalion of tanks, supplies, troops with specialised weapons and worse - truckloads of rescued survivors, including people we saw right at the start of the film, who turned out to be entirely right in doing nothing and just waiting. David collapses under the weight of sheer idiocy, just moments away from salvation. He's just murdered his fellow survivors, including his son... for a reason that turned out to be entirely baseless. And for that, he gets top spot in this list of protagonists who turn out to be monumental idiots.