The Most Unnecessarily Brutal Deaths in Horror Movies

Horror movies are full of death and violence, that’s part of their charm. We’re all used to watching characters be stabbed, shot, and ripped to shreds without blinking an eye. But every now and then there’s a character death which feels unnecessarily brutal. Some deaths that don’t blend well with the plot or the character and are a different kind of disturbing than the rest of the film. If you enjoy violent horror it may be hard to understand what I mean so here are some key distinctions as to what makes a death unnecessarily brutal. First is that the brutality doesn’t add anything to the plot. In some instances a death is more violent than others because the filmmaker is trying to highlight something in particular or change the tone of the film. These deaths are brutal without reason i.e. unnecessary. Second is when an overly violent death happens to a character who doesn’t deserve it. Audiences love to watch a character who has been evil or just generally annoying die in a violent way befitting their behavior. The characters I am talking about are ones who did nothing to deserve their awful fates, no joy is gained from watching them suffer. Finally, the last difference between a regular death and an unnecessarily brutal one is that the scene doesn’t make sense in the plot, so much so that it may distract you from it.  Some deaths will cause you to look away because of the gore or violence, but these deaths took me out of the story because they don’t make any sense for the movie, or they go on too long, or are generally so brutal that you question the filmmaker’s intentions. Oh and imagine my surprise putting this list together and realizing that all the unnecessarily brutal deaths happen to women!

Spoilers ahead for: Final Destination 3, Thanksgiving, Scream, and Fear Street Part One.

Final Destination 3 (2006): Ashley and Ashlyn - Tanning Bed Malfunction  

Final Destination 3 is my favorite installment of this beautifully chaotic movie series. Instead of the typical Final Destination tone, it has the style of an early 2000s slasher film. And of corse, like many early 2000s slashers there is quite a bit of sexism resulting in some hard to watch scenes. Case in point  is the tanning bed explosion scene involving the characters Ashley and Ashlyn. These are the unnecessarily brutal deaths that inspired me to write this list. This scene takes me aback no matter how many times I have rewatched the movie. If you are unfamiliar with the scene let me paint you a little picture: two high school girls strip down to their underwear (no bras of course as it is a 2006 horror movie you need to show some boobs) and climb into tanning beds. Unfortunately, because these lovely young ladies avoided a rollercoaster of death earlier in the movie, they are now doomed to die, thus the tanning beds erupt into flames killing them. Well, they eventually kill them, but not before two minutes of watchingAshley and Ashlyn being burned by the slow rising heat of the beds, getting blisters on their skin, emitting horrible and gutwrenching screams of pain, having glass explode in their faces, becoming disfigured with third degree burns, and then being swallowed by flames. All of this while topless of course. Now this movie is overall pretty gory, with most of the main characters dying in elaborate and gruesome ways, but this scene is by far the most violent. There is absolutely no reason that these two characters deserved to die in this horrible way. Ashley and Ashlyn are introduced as two stereotypical high school girls who value their looks and popularity. The audience might expect them to be the mean girls who make fun of the nerdier main character, but they are actually depicted as very sweet in the limited screen time they have. On the other hand, there is a major asshole character, Frankie, who uses his limited screen time to make inappropriate jokes and harass women. I would have been totally fine with him being slowly burned alive in a tanning bed, but his death takes only thirty seconds and he seems to feel very limited pain. So was the movie punishing Ashley and Ashlyn for being women? Wanting to get tanned? Or did the filmmaker just want to look at their breasts a little while longer?

Thanksgiving (2023): Kathleen - Slow Cooking in the Oven

I have to preface this by saying Thanksgiving is an insanely violent and disgusting movie to begin with, it is after all written and directed by Eli Roth. All the deaths in this movie make me a little queasy, but there is one in particular that makes my skin crawl everytime I watch it, and that is the oven scene. In this scene the main character’s stepmother, Kathleen, awakens in a warehouse after being kidnapped to find the killer in a Pilgrim mask slathering her with oil and seasonings and preparing to cook her. She attempts to run away but is unfortunately caught, stabbed with a pitchfork, and shoved into an oven to be burned alive. I rewatch this movie every Thanksgiving and the part never gets easier to watch. Similar to the Final Destination scene the audience watches as a woman is slowly cooked alive while screaming in pain for an uncomfortable amount of time. Kathleen’s body is shown one final time presented as a turkey: headless, fully cooked, and carved in front of her husband. There are two major reasons this scene stands out to me in a movie full of outlandish gore. Reason one is the fact that Kathleen is mostly a nothing character. She has a few bitchy moments here and there, but for the most part she blends into the background with very limited screen time before her death. So why is she deserving of one of the most upsetting and visceral death scenes? Why is so much time spent on her horrible demise when she barely had any screen time prior? Again like Final Destination there are many other characters whose violent deaths were somewhat gratifying to watch as punishment for their bad behavior, but I was left with no satisfying feeling watching Kathleen burn, only an upset stomach. The other reason this death is so hard to sit through is because of the way in which Kathleen begs for her life as the oven cooks her. At first she screams as she realizes the oven is on. As she sees the killer through the class, she yells "help me." The killer opens the door and she heartbreakingly begs and pleads for him not to kill her, only for him to stab her in the arm with a meat thermometer. This is the only time we see a character in the movie literally beg for their life and for an upsetting amount of time. We can only watch as the oven door is slammed in her face and as she continues to scream until she is fully cooked into a shriveled version of herself before being served as a literal piece of meat. 

Scream (1996): Tatum - Crushed in the Garage

Scream is one of the most universally loved horror movies of all time, and for good reason. However this does not save it from landing on my list for the death scene of beloved character, Tatum Riley. Prior to Tatum’s death the kill scenes in Scream are pretty straight forward; stabs or slashes that don’t drag out or show an obscene amount of gore. The only other deaths that are fairly violent are Casey and Steve in the beginning, but even then the goriest parts of their kills happen off screen and the audience only sees the aftermath. Tatum, on the other hand, has a more elaborate and upsetting death scene where,  after being sliced by Ghostface, she attempts to crawl through a doggy latch in the garage door and gets stuck. The killer takes this opportunity to push the button activating the garage door. The music grows as the audience watches Tatum be raised up followed by a close up shot of the crushing of her head before cutting to her limp dangling body. This scene may not seem as excessively violent as the others, but it is still more brutal than many of the other death scenes. Tatum is the first of the main characters to be killed. The audience has gotten to know and love her and yet she is treated with no dignity whatsoever. While she does initially fight back against Ghostface, she spends a majority of the scene crawling around on the floor, getting stuck in a doggy door and then flailing in the air. It feels like the filmmaker, not the killer, is the one humiliating the character, showing her trying to wiggle her way out before crushing her head like a watermelon. Her body is then shown from behind (not even focusing on the part of her that was mutilated) from a low angle, almost looking up her mini skirt. There is no real reason for Tatum to die at all, especially not in such a severe way. The scene does not add to the audience’s understanding of the killer’s motives or brutality. It doesn’t add anything to Sidney’s mentality or actions either. When Sidney eventually finds Tatum (her lifelong best friend), she is already deep in battle with the killer and the movie barely gives her any time to react. It does however give the audience another look at the mutilated corpse. There is no depth added to the story by killing off Tatum. Some argue that Tatum died because of her protectiveness of Sidney, but then why isn’t she given a more heroic death? Why do we have to watch one of the more badass female characters crawl around on the ground and try to squirm her way out of a tiny door made for dogs? Was that really the ending she deserved?

Fear Street Part One: 1994 (2021): Kate - Bread Slicer to the Brain

This death really pissed me off the first time I watched the Fear Street series. Maybe it’s because my name is also Kate or maybe it's because, similar to Tatum, I hate seeing powerful female characters being humiliated in their final moments. Kate dies during the final climax of Fear Street Part One: 1994 when the main group of characters is being chased through a grocery store by multiple killers. Kate hides behind a bakery counter, but is unfortunately found pretty quickly by a killer in a skull mask. She is then pulled out of hiding by her hair, slammed into a cake that is sitting on the counter, choked, and stabbed before eventually being pinned onto a table and pushed head first into a bread slicer, all while having cake plastered on her face. When I first watched this movie I was truly shocked by this scene, because I thought Kate was going to live. Not only is she one of the main characters who evaded death at many other times throughout the movie, but she fights her killer off in this scene a couple times to the point where I was convinced she was going to win. At one point she is stabbed in the stomach and still manages to get a kick in, only to be body slammed again and slowly pushed into the slicer while she screams. The audience then gets a nice long look at her mushed up skull and brains that have been pulverized by the device and then again when her friends find her. Again this is a violent movie throughout, but this is certainly the most visceral scene. And one may argue she has a more intricate death scene because she is one of the main characters, but the other best friend character in this dies with a quick axe to the skull. No fighting, no terrible knowledge of his impending doom as he watches the blade get closer, just quick and easy lights out. But the real thing that annoys me about Kate’s death and makes it unnecessarily brutal is the choice to slam Kate’s face into a cake and have her die with her face covered in icing. What does that add other than humiliation for the character? Once again it feels like a lack of respect for a character the movie spends so long building and making the audience fall in love with. Screaming in terror, face covered in icing while being slowly pushed to your doom (a supermarket bread slicer) is not the ending this character deserved.