10 EXACT Moments Horror Movies Self-Destructed

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