Editorials
Meagan Slices Up the Top 10 Horror Movie Kills of the Decade!
*Keep up with our ongoing end of the decade coverage here*
Of all the many reasons we adore horror, spectacular character deaths rank high among them. One solid, gruesome kill can go a long way in a horror movie. It’s an art form perfected by the slasher, but all horror movies embrace the art of grisly and elaborate death sequences.
It’s been one hell of a decade for horror, not just in emerging new voices and box office records, but in memorable moments of gore. We’re closing out the decade by celebrating the best kills horror had to offer. The most creative, most outlandish, most jaw-dropping kills that seared into our horror-loving skulls.
These are the top 10!
10. Upgrade – Kitchen Killer
If there’s one thing horror has taught us, it’s that anything within grasp can make for a decent weapon. When Grey (Logan Marshall-Green) breaks into the home of one of the assailants that left him paralyzed, a battle breaks out. Grey’s no fighter, though, so he finally gives STEM permission to take over. The fight takes over the small kitchen, and STEM grabs anything and everything he can to use against his opponent. The dishes get destroyed in the mayhem. Then STEM grabs a kitchen knife. A typical stabbing would’ve sufficed, but STEM decides maybe his opponent could use a bigger mouth.
9. Annihilation – Not Your Average Bear Mauling
Everything inside the Shimmer is weird; the alien environment absorbs flora and fauna and mutates it in often unnerving ways. The most terrifying of which is the screaming bear. Its ghastly appearance rivals the haunting way in which it steals the voice of its last victim. It first attacked the base camp and mauled Cass to death off-screen, her mutilated corpse found later. But the bear tracks the core group, following them to strike again. This time it mauls Anya to death, and we get to see every excruciating second. It doesn’t end pretty.
8. Final Destination 5 – Gymnastics Pretzel
The entire Final Destination franchise centers around creative kills made even more visceral by the unbearable tension that builds while we try to guess the how and when. The death of gymnast Candice is an absolute series highlight. The suspense winds tighter and tighter as we watch Candice avoid potential death over and over again during her practice. A sharp screw on the balance beam. A puddle of water on the mat next to a power cord on the fritz. Eventually, all of the ill omens become an unfortunate chain of events that leaves Candice in bone-splitting pretzel form after an unfortunate dismount from the high bar. Brutal.
7. Hatchet II – Swamp Bifurcation
The Hatchet series boasts no shortage of crowd-pleasing kills at the hands of swamp boogeyman Victor Crowley. Yet it’s the final major death of the 2010 sequel that earns a spot on this list. A showdown between Crowley and Rev. Zombie (Tony Todd) results in Zombie getting severed in half. Crowley has always been on to revel in excess, of course, and so he grabs the exposed spine from Zombie’s torso and yanks, effectively skinning him alive. Zombie might have had it coming, but ouch.
6. Apostle – Purification Ritual
Gareth Evans’ 1905-set folk horror tale brings the bloodshed and violence in gratifying ways. The crowning achievement of horrific deaths is the mean-spirited purification ritual of poor Jeremy, who’d just witnessed the aftermath of his lover’s death by forced abortion at the hands of her father. The girl’s father captures Jeremy and straps him to a torture table to perform a soul-cleansing rite in front of the congregation. What makes this one so noteworthy is the way Evans puts the viewer in Jeremy’s perspective as the clamps squeeze his skull so tight that we see blood vessels burst and hear the painful crunch. Then a hand-cranked drill graphically carves out a hole in the crown of his head. It’s unflinching and oh so painfully slow.
5. Hereditary – Self-Decapitation
Ari Aster’s debut offered not one, but two shocking decapitations. For pure shock value, Charlie’s death by telephone pole is the more memorable of the two, bolstered by a glimpse of the decayed aftermath. But it’s the self-garroting demise of Annie that’s far more chilling and vicious. Possessed, Annie hovers in the air, staring her son down as she seesaws piano wire back and forth against her throat. Slowly, at first, growing faster as the flesh gives way. The visual of it would be enough, with her frozen expression and blood spurts, but it’s the repulsive sound that it makes that gets under your skin.
4. Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich – Money Lender
By design, this reboot aims to offend and assault the senses with a slew of endless gory deaths. Many of which plead their case for earning a spot on this list. From the beheading into the toilet bowl to the puppet that carves out his human-sized vehicle to puppeteer, the creativity of kills is a raucous highlight. But none hold a candle to the taboo-shattering death of a pregnant woman by Money Lender. The evil puppet claws his way into her womb and tears its way out of her stomach with her fetus in tow. Killing children, let alone babies, is one of the biggest cinematic taboos, and Puppet Master gave it a blood-splattered middle finger.
3. Saw 3D: The Final Chapter – Reverse Bear Trap
From the very first Saw, the Reverse Bear Trap captured our attention. The cruel nature of it, and the equally punishing way in which Amanda Young escaped it. Jigsaw created endless traps and puzzles for his victims; all brought severe levels of pain and suffering. Yet it was the Reverse Bear Trap that kept popping up again and again, including a harrowing moment in Saw VI that had Detective Hoffman barely escaping it, and not without injury. Finally, in the series’ seventh outing, we got to see the trap claim its first on-screen kill. Poor Jill Tuck didn’t deserve to die that way, if at all, but man was it a seriously satisfying payoff after being teased with this trap for six movies.
2. Evil Dead – Chainsaw meets Abomination
The climactic showdown between Mia and the Abomination is a bloodbath for the ages. Literally. A downpour of blood marks the Abomination’s arrival, and it doesn’t relent for a single second of Mia’s fight for survival against the Taker of Souls in Mia form. It’s an epic battle that sees limbs lopped off with chainsaws and Mia ripping her own hand off to free herself, and it all culminates in Mia taking a chainsaw to the Abomination’s face, slicing it into two. This kill is an insanely bloody and impressive conclusion to one of the decade’s goriest films. Bravo, Mia.
1. Bone Tomahawk -Troglodyte Nutcracker
For much of the runtime, S. Craig Zahler’s feature debut plays like a standard western. Until the cruel final act, that is. No one was prepared for how brutal the cannibalistic troglodyte clan was until they’re captured and made witness to the decade’s most shocking demise of all. To summarize: poor Deputy Nick is pulled from his cage, naked, and scalped. They hammer his scalp into his throat through his mouth. Held upside down with legs spread open, the savages slowly chop away at him from the crotch to the abdomen. He’s pulled apart, like cracking pistachios. All the while, his muffled screams of pain signal that he’s still conscious for most of this.
Honorable Mention: The Collection – Blood Rave
Sorry, Saw franchise, but Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton just decimated your death count with this insane opening kill. The Collector rigged several traps in the club full of unsuspecting partygoers, which are triggered in quick succession. Massive rotating blades mow down the dance floor, while everyone else is maimed or crushed by other traps. It’s excessively bloody, with limbs and viscera splattering the walls and floors. At least 70 people slaughtered in one fell swoop. And to think, this is just the opening scene of the film!
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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