Three of The Best: Shocking Death’s

Death’s in horror films are virtually mandatory. Depending on how the victims meet their end however can make all the different between praying for them to be bumped off and genuinely being caught off-guard. Here are three which fulfil the latter category.

*SPOLIERS*

 

Ben – Night of The Living Dead (1968)

Duane Jones played the very resourceful Ben in George A. Romero’s survival horror classic. The fact he was a black man stood out as it still wasn’t that common to have a black lead, but he more than proved his acting chops, showing his ability to keep cool and strategize while the hordes of the rotting dead attempted to flood a derelict house. What’s shocking is that, after bravely battling to be the last one standing, after earning that right, Ben accidently gets taken out by the police who are on the same side. Bodies burn and the credits roll. It is a truly hopeless ending.

 

Casey – Scream (1996)

I’m no fan of the franchise – one that spawned a lot of 90s tosh – but you have to applaud the fact you didn’t see Drew Barrymore dying within the first ten minutes. She did, after all, take up the biggest spot on the official poster. You will have probably forgotten she played a character called Casey Becker (I just had to look it up), and after having a ditsy call with some random she is subsequently threatened and killed. The death itself isn’t bad with a stab and some strangulation, though I don’t think it was good enough to pardon all the rom-coms that followed.

 

Charlie – Hereditary (2017)

This much-hyped horror film which some claimed was a combination of The Exorcist and The Shining (does that even make sense?), had oodles of potential but ultimately fell flat. There was a moment in which it could have gone for greatness, and that was when the youngest in the film, the odd-natured little Charlie (played by Milly Shapiro), is accidentally decapitated after sticking her head out of a speeding car while having an allergic reaction to a cake she should not have eaten at a party. Nobody saw that one coming, especially in such a brutal manner. You could hear a pin drop in the cinema…and then follows a lovely close-up of the evidence the next morning – a realistic prosthetic head, covered in ants.

Beautiful.