Horror fans are spoiled with an abundance of films to choose from. The genre sees an endless outpour, from psychologically compelling stories of trauma to silly monster movies that poke fun at what it means to be scared. Horror movies cover diverse ground, but one of the biggest trends in these movies is that there’s usually a high body count by the time the credits roll.
Within these films, deaths can be emotionally taxing or truly terrifying acts of violence. These traumatic acts don’t always stick to the landing, and certain film fatalities are more likely to evoke laughs than screams.
10 Vegetables Become A Worrisome Murder Weapon
Sleepwalkers
1992's Sleepwalkers takes advantage of the fact that Stephen King is responsible for the original movie's story, but it's hardly indicative of the genre storyteller's best work. Sleepwalkers looks at a mother and son, the last two surviving members of a shape-shifting demonic species.
Charles and Mary's attempts to blend in and retain their vitality are extremely sloppy. Horror films are full of creative murder weapons, but Sleepwalkers turns a piece of corn on the cob into an instrument of death. This is just a regular piece of corn, and there's no explanation for why it can impale someone's back like a razor-sharp blade.
9 Billy’s Trip To The Bathroom Is Interrupted By Bee Sting Brutality
Sleepaway Camp
There’s a fine line between a horror movie that’s embarrassing on all levels and one so bad that it turns into satisfying entertainment. Sleepaway Camp has become a cult classic because of its beyond-ambitious twist and the haunting final image. Sleepaway Camp’s finale includes its best moments, but the film is full of ridiculous deaths courtesy of Camp Arawak’s mysterious killer.
Billy, one of Angela’s many bullies, meets his end when a beehive gets dropped through the window of the camp’s bathroom. Billy is inexplicably unable to escape this simple predicament, and it’s revealed that he dies due to excessive bee stings.
8 Camping Couture Turns Into A Claustrophobic Deathtrap
Prophecy
John Frankenheimer's Prophecy is a bewildering horror movie that's both a creature feature and a cautionary indictment of humanity's abuse of the environment. A mutated grizzly bear runs amok, and Prophecy's campy nature makes any of its deaths challenging to take seriously.
However, the strangest of the lot involves an unsuspecting victim bundled up in a sleeping bag. This camper attempts to hop away, only for the mutated bear to smack him through the air. The impact of this attack leaves feathers from the sleeping bag everywhere, but it's even more jarring to see the velocity at which this person flies through the air.
7 A Hypnotized Janitor Impales Himself On A Broom
Village Of The Damned
John Carpenter is one of the horror genre's greatest filmmakers, and movies like Halloween and The Thing are quintessential classics. Some of Carpenter's '90s contributions leave much to be desired, and his Village of the Damned remake fails to connect. The movie deals with a small community held in terror by a brood of their psychically-powered children.
These kids’ eerie look compelling, but many of their psychically-motivated deaths are disasters. The most perplexing of these deaths is when the children force a janitor to jump off the roof of a building while he holds a broom so that it impales him on impact.
6 Poor Reflexes And A Heavy Tombstone Are A Poor Combination
Creepshow
The horror anthology, Creepshow, has recently found new life as a television series on Shudder. Still, the original movie features an all-star collaboration between George A. Romero and Stephen King, with the pulpy sensibilities of EC Comics. The first Creepshow is the strongest of the movies, and while the introductory "Father's Day" segment is probably the film's weakest, it does at least include a ridiculously memorable death.
Ed Harris' character, Hank Blaine, goes out after he's crushed by a tombstone that's dropped upon him after he falls into an open grave. It feels like a fate that could have been avoided if Hank had been quicker on his feet.
5 Private Kowalski Faces An Unexpected Purge
Leprechaun 4: In Space
Any horror movie where the killer dispels rhyming limericks is bound to be more silly than scary. There are diminishing returns across the Leprechaun movies, and the fourth entry decides to send the tiny terror into outer space. Leprechaun 4 goes for broke with its injection of science fiction into its horror sensibilities.
One of the more ridiculous deaths involves the Leprechaun’s agile use of a lightsaber, but Private Kowalski’s execution is even more ridiculous. The Leprechaun is expelled from Kowalski’s body after he’s intimate with a fellow crewmate, and the painful process results in Kowalski exploding like something from out of The Boys.
4 A Cringeworthy Tattoo Cuts Through Its Canvas
Velvet Buzzsaw
Dan Gilroy's Velvet Buzzsaw is a Netflix horror movie that also operates as a pitch-black satire of the contemporary art scene. Jake Gyllenhaal disappears in the slimy Morf Vandewalt, and some particularly grisly visuals throughout the film become their own art pieces in a way.
One of the more ludicrous examples of the loose rules that govern Velvet Buzzsaw is when Rhodora's circular saw tattoo seemingly "comes to life" and burrows through her body, killing her. Each of the kills in Velvet Buzzsaw plays by its own rules, but this one is especially unexpected and forced.
3 Unfortunate Phrasing Leads To A Man’s Embarrassing End
Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies
The Wishmaster movies turn to a classic "be careful what you wish for" structure where a malevolent Djinn grants people's wishes, but always with a macabre twist. Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies begins with its Djinn in jail, but content to have a whole penitentiary of oblivious souls to steal. The complicated cause-and-effect nature of most of the film's deaths is on the sillier side.
However, one murder involves a disgruntled prisoner using some choice language about what his lawyer should do to himself. These crude words come to pass, and the lawyer commits a biologically impossible act that ends with his bones broken and his body destroyed.
2 Leatherface Smashes That Like Button And Takes Out A Bus Of Influencers
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)
Legacy sequels have dominated this generation of horror, and 2022’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel unabashedly rips off 2018’s Halloween. This late-in-life version of Leatherface has made many questionable decisions. For example, a pivotal setpiece involves Leatherface storming a bus of vapid social media influencers.
Rather than initially panic, the passengers Livestream the attack and attempt to “cancel” Leatherface through his poor social cues. This is a mass execution that’s clearly meant to feel like a criticism of influencer culture, but the transparent bloodbath falls flat and turns into the very type of sequence that the cynical film tries to mock.
1 Candice Hooper Doesn’t Stick Her Landing
Final Destination 5
There are dozens of disturbing fatalities across the five Final Destination films where characters meet their ends through unexpected and implausible series of events. Most Final Destination deaths wouldn't be out of place here, but Final Destination 5's gymnastics fatality is especially extreme.
Candice Hooper is working out her gymnastics routine when faulty equipment and impaired visibility lead to an ill-fated launch that doesn't go as planned. What makes Candice's death so absurd is that the broken pile of bones she's left in resembles the state of someone thrown hundreds of miles by a tornado, not a few feet from a faulty dismount.