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From promising beginnings to spectacular failures, we're breaking down the exact moments where horror movies lost their way. See which films made terrible choices they couldn't recover from.
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00:00In the horror genre, we've had so many films brimming with potential which start things
00:05off on the right foot, but that ultimately stumble and disappoint along the way. Whether
00:10it's at the end of the first art, somewhere in the middle, or maybe even towards a movie's
00:14conclusion, these pictures couldn't help but implode. With that in mind then, I'm
00:18Andrew from What Called Your Horror, and here are exact moments horror movies self-destructed.
00:23The Death of Pinup Girl, The Strangers Pray At Night
00:27In Brian Patino's The Strangers, the trio of Man in the Mask, Dollface, and Pinup Girl
00:32had a magnificent mystique and aura around them, a sense of invincibility that forever
00:37had them one step ahead of their targets. Unfortunately, The Strangers Pray At Night,
00:43despite starting promisingly, stripped away that mystique as soon as it killed off Pinup
00:48Girl. Admittedly part of a hugely memorable neon-lit pool sequence, soundtracked by Bonnie
00:53Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart. Pinup Girl is hit with a golf club and stabbed numerous
00:58times by Luke, one of a family of four who'd been targeted in this sequel. And with that,
01:03the bloom was off the rose. No longer does the threat of Pray At Night feel unrelenting and
01:08inescapable. Instead, the death of Pinup Girl removes the sheen of invincibility that made
01:14our killer's presence so ominous in that first Strangers picture. The realisation of no physical Jason.
01:20Jason Goes To Hell The Final Friday 1993's Jason Goes To Hell The Final Friday is infamously
01:27the Friday the 13th movie which features an extremely minimum amount of Jason Voorhees,
01:32well, in his physical form. And upon audiences realising that, the film became utterly unappealing
01:38to the masses. Written in just four days and directed by a 23 year old Adam Marcus,
01:43Jason Goes To Hell opens in typical fashion. There's a cabin in the woods, there's a pretty young woman,
01:48and there's Jason Voorhees lurking in the shadows. Unfortunately for Jason, this woman is an FBI
01:53agent and this was all part of a setup for an FBI and SWAT team assault that blows our mass
01:59killer
01:59into a thousand pieces. As audiences wondered how Jason would be reassembled to embark on another
02:05murder spree, the shocking answer was that he wouldn't be. At the 15 minute mark we see a coroner
02:11eat the beating heart of Crystal Lake's most notorious son and it becomes apparent that Jason
02:17Goes To Hell would instead see the spirit of Jason being passed from person to person rather than having
02:23the physical form of Voorhees taking centre stage. Less is very much more, Rawhead Rex.
02:30With a screenplay from Clive Barker and based on his own short story, 1986's Rawhead Rex does so much so
02:37well when it comes to establishing its villainous threat. Where that threat is concerned, Rawhead Rex is
02:42a creature of Irish folklore who rises through a stone column after it's struck by lightning. From there,
02:47there are religious undertone to plenty as Rawhead starts to stalk the locals of his small Irish town.
02:53Initially, Rawhead Rex manages to drum up tension by keeping its creature out of view or in the shadows.
02:59There's the odd shot of his feet here, the odd glimpse of an arm there, or a super brief shot
03:04of
03:04something when Rex is awakened by that lightning. It takes until around the hour mark for the film to
03:09fully unleash the visage of Rex. Oh man is it rough. Like, laughably bad. The Thing, The Exorcist and an
03:16American Werewolf in London all came out years before Rawhead Rex, and all showed how magnificent
03:22the practical effects work of that time could be. Unfortunately with Rawhead Rex, as soon as you get
03:27a good look at Rex, you're immediately taken out of the film. Painting Freddy as a sympathetic figure,
03:32Freddy's Dead, The Final Nightmare. Sure, the Elm Street franchise as a whole had already
03:37self-destructed way before Freddy's Dead The Final Nightmare hit screens in 1991, but if this was indeed
03:43the end of the line for one of horror's most iconic characters, surely Freddy Krueger was to
03:47go out with a bang, right? Eh, maybe not. The Final Nightmare ticks off plentiful Elm Street tropes,
03:53with Tribble Teams Carlos, Tracy Spencer and John Doe the ones tormented by Krueger this time out.
03:58For John Doe, he's suffering from amnesia and winds up in the same youth shelter as the other three
04:02youngsters, and it's soon implied that John Doe is the son of Freddy Krueger. In a swerve, the offspring of
04:09Freddy is actually Maggie, the doctor tasked with looking after these teens. Unbeknownst to Maggie,
04:14she was born Katherine Krueger. Now on a mission to stop her old man, our heroine enters the dream
04:19world and gets treated to the backstory of Freddy. A backstory that bizarrely paints him in a somewhat
04:24sympathetic light. Rather than being evil for the sake of being evil, Freddy's Dead attempts to
04:28humanise Krueger, explaining how he was abused by his stepfather and bullied by his classmates.
04:33It was this troubled upbringing that formed the sinister ways of Freddy,
04:36and being shown this troubled upbringing cemented the final nightmare as a muddled mess of a movie.
04:42The Creeping Shark From The Depths
04:45Rather than focus on a shark chewing up victim after victim, 2020's From The Depths opts to pick
04:51things up in the aftermath of a shark attack. Here, Angelica Briones' Liz is the survivor of an
04:56attack which took the lives of her boyfriend and older sister. Haunted by what she's experienced,
05:01From The Depths centres on Liz as she essentially deals with PTSD in the fallout of this horror.
05:05The first 10 minutes or so of From The Depths features some beautiful ocean-set cinematography,
05:10some genuinely unsettling flashbacks to that shark attack, and throws up plentiful questions of where
05:16this unique premise is going to take its audience. What was initially positioned as a thoughtful,
05:20delicate tale full of possibilities, soon turns into a complete farce where we see Liz is stalked by
05:26horrendously rendered CGI sharks. Like, literally, these monstrosities linger in the hallway of her house,
05:32they hide behind her blinds, and they float across her backyard. Upon seeing that first awful CGI
05:38creation from the depths, well and truly jumps the shark. Leatherface's rampage takes away from a
05:45well-intended message. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022. Oof.
05:50Where to begin with this one? Set 50 years after the event of Tobe Hooper's classic movie,
05:55the first misstep of this most recent Texas Chainsaw Massacre picture is the ham-fisted way in which
06:01attempts to shine a spotlight on the very real issue of gentrification. This massive movie
06:06centers on a group of young investors keen to turn a near abandoned Texas town into a hip,
06:11cool place that could attract similarly wealthy young adults. The aim is to purchase the town's many
06:16broken down buildings on the cheap, then flip these properties to outsiders for a nice bit of profit.
06:21While delivering a message about gentrification is a noble idea, any subtlety or nuance of this
06:26message is butchered by having Leatherface, who lives in the town's not quite abandoned orphanage,
06:31start to slice and dice his way through these would-be property developers. It also doesn't help that
06:36we're made aware that this vibrant spry Leatherface is 80 years of age. Talk about murder grandpa.
06:42Hey, hello there wrestling fans. Once we start to get to see the big guy in action,
06:462022's Texas Chainsaw Massacre's larger message gets lost in the generic chaos and carnage of the
06:52film. The realisation of Leon's role. Resident Evil Welcome to Raccoon City. It may have been
06:59faithful in bringing the settings of the first two Resident Evil games to life, but one major issue,
07:04one of many major issues with Welcome to Raccoon City is how awful its depictions of certain key
07:10Resident Evil figures are. And on that front, nobody's done more dirty than our boy Leon S. Kennedy.
07:16When Leon's introduced to audiences in an early diner scene, he's made out to be an incompetent fool
07:22who shot his former partner and had his old man save his job for him. Oh, and Leon's also got
07:27a
07:27drinking problem. But hey, this is only 15 minutes into the film, so there's plenty of chance for
07:33Kennedy to get his time to shine, right? Skip ahead another 20 minutes and it's hammered home during
07:39a Starz meeting which he interrupts how Leon is a total doofus who his peers have zero respect for.
07:46Rather than the stoic, steely-eyed, badass rookie introduced in the Resident Evil 2 game,
07:51this Leon S. Kennedy is a bumbling, stumbling fool who is constantly mocked by his peers.
07:56Once audiences realised Welcome to Raccoon City couldn't even get Leon right, all enthusiasm was dampened and
08:03out of the window. Bizarrely not finishing the job, Halloween Kills. With Haddonfield having spent
08:09over 40 years reading from the actions of Michael Myers on Halloween night 1978, Halloween Kills
08:14has mob mentality takes centre stage as the town's locals bandied together to finally put a stop to
08:21the shape. Not just did this mob manage to locate Michael, but they actually get the better of him.
08:26With Laurie Stroh's daughter Karen having lured Michael to this group, the locals brutally beat the
08:30rogue with baseball bats, hockey sticks, 2x4s, tire irons and he's shot several times before Karen
08:36then stabs him. Bafflingly and frustratingly, Karen and the mob then start to walk off and leave the
08:41fallen Michael behind. If these Haddonfield residents had already decided that they were going to kill
08:46Michael Myers, surely they'd make sure the job really was finished, no? Of course, Michael would soon
08:51awaken and kill each and every one of his attackers, and it's tough to have any sympathy for these
08:55victims, for it's essentially their own fault. Ellen's psychic connection, Jaws the Revenge.
09:01For the much maligned Jaws the Revenge, this 1987 picture lost its audience the very first time we
09:06see Lorraine Gary's Ellen Brody strike up a psychic connection with a great white shark. Yeah,
09:13but that's the thing. After her youngest son Sean is devoured by a great white in the waters of Amity
09:17in the film's opening sequence, Ellen is convinced to join her eldest son Michael and his family in the
09:23Bahamas. And it's from here where logic starts to go out of the window. The initial head scratcher is
09:28where a great white shark turns up in the waters of the Bahamas, which is traditionally waters too
09:32warm for such creatures. Then, after a couple of teases, we find out that Ellen has a psychic
09:37connection to the shark, as first shown when she senses an attack on Michael and his pal Jake.
09:42From there, Jaws the Revenge never recovers. Before you know it, the shark takes down the seaplane,
09:47Michael Caine's cream outfit is immaculately dry despite he'd fallen in the ocean,
09:52Ellen has crystal clear flashbacks of moments she wasn't present for, and it's revealed that this
09:57shark is the same shark which attacked Sean and has followed the remaining Brody family from Amity
10:02to the Bahamas. Yeah man, it's a tough one with logic here. That twist, Switchblade Romance.
10:09It would be extremely remiss to discuss the list of horrors which self-destructed and not make mention of
10:15horror tension aka high tension aka Switchblade Romance. Alexandra Aziz's 2003 offering is a
10:21phenomenal frenetic feature for approximately 80 minutes of its 95 minute runtime. And then,
10:27well, boy does the film shoot itself in the foot. Plot wise, Switchblade Romance centers on pals Alex
10:32and Marie, who start the movie off by heading to Alex's family home in rural France. As night falls,
10:38this family home becomes the target of a hulking killer who brutally murders Alex's father,
10:42her mother and her young brother. With Alex chained up and thrown into the back of this maniac's truck,
10:47Marie manages to sneak aboard as she looks to a rescue a friend and b escape the deranged lunatic
10:53who has evil intentions on his mind. This is a feature which moves at a breakneck speed,
10:58barely wasting a minute as the terror and tension is amped up, Muses' newborn being an inspired
11:03soundtrack choice to match the energy and ferocity of the film. Frustratingly, Switchblade Romance does
11:09all of its prior brilliance by revealing that Marie is actually the movie's killer. It makes no sense.
11:15The imposing powerhouse figure we've seen carry out the film's atrocities was all just a fabrication
11:20of Marie's mind. And she is in fact the person responsible for all of this bloodshed. While an
11:25initial viewing leaves you in shock at this revelation, you're soon going to realise that
11:29this twist just does not work. It makes zero sense. Most of the things in the film could not have
11:34happened.
11:35It would be impossible if Marie was the killer. Come on, please.