8 Exact Decisions That Doomed Horror Movie Protagonists
Decisions, decisions, decisions. Are they bad? Yes. Do we love them? Also yes.
Some of them done with good intent, and some done out of pure stupidity, but there's no denying that the decisions made by some horror movie protagonists leave much to be desired either way.
Choices are a big part of how a plot can unfold within a movie, and in no genre is this more apparent than within horror. One small wrong decision can lead to a cascade of other events that, more often than not, are catalysts for a particular character's downfall.
Most of these decisions are made to further the plot, so in almost all cases they were necessary to a certain degree. From characters who are doomed from the get-go and whose decisions only solidify their gory demises, all the way to those who just happened to make the wrong decision at the wrong time, all of the following made huge errors in their decision making.
We can judge all we want, but in the end it all ultimately begs the question of: what would you have done in that situation?
8. Urinating On The Tree - Mark "Midsommar"
Many, many mistakes can be identified in Midsommar. But the most stupid decision that solidified the fate of Will Poulter's character, Mark, is that of urinating on a sacred tree.
Midsommar is a folk-horror film by Ari Aster that came a year after his directorial debut Hereditary. He took a different angle with Midsommar, deciding to use overexposure and bright lighting to create discomfort and horror. We are invited along on a trip with a group of college friends who are writing their thesis on this particular Swedish community, and immediately a few of the characters are shown to have questionable levels of intelligence.
Mark, the most arrogant and of the group, decides to urinate on a tree on the very first day of the friends being in the community. This angers multiple people, but most specifically one gentleman that later on in the film takes much pleasure in Mark's death.
Of course, Mark and the rest of the group were very much brought to Sweden by their Swedish friends to be sacrifices so their fate was predestined to a certain degree anyway. However, this very much solidified his fate!