Editorials
5 Of The Dumbest Plans In Horror!!!
Let’s get something out of the way up front, I’m not necessarily condemning all of these movies. A few of them are great! But even great horror films are filled with characters who have ill-conceived plans (to out it mildly). Still, without the plans – there’d often be no movie!
So I come here to celebrate dumbness – not condemn it. Head below for 5 Of The Dumbest Plans In Horror!!!
I flat out love this movie, it’s my favorite Friday The 13th. That being said, Tommy’s plan at the beginning is jaw droopingly stupid. If your entire plan is to dig up the corpse of the guy who tried to kill you just to make sure he’s dead, head directly back to the mental institution. You’re not done yet.
A notorious serial killer gets out of the mental hospital and your plan is to live with him and f*ck with his head? Congratulations genius! Considering everything that could have gone wrong, she got off easy by just getting shot by the cops.
Roman is actually a pretty smart guy in a lot of ways. After all, he’s talented enough to be the hottest young director in Hollywood. And he’s patient, I’ll give him that. His stupidity actually lives inside his predilection for convoluted plans. He goes through all that just to try to kill Sidney? I mean there’s got to be an easier way than upending all of tinseltown right? Extra dumb points are allocated here because he dragged the Scream series to its unquestionable low point.
Jack needs to finish his script so he locks himself away. That part’s fine. But he locks himself in a freezer. That part’s pretty f*cking stupid. The proof is sort of in the pudding with this one, since the screenwriter for this film actually locked herself in a freezer to write the script. It didn’t turn out as bad as could be expected I guess, but there’s one fatal flaw – the film still has a protagonist who locks himself in a freezer.
Hey bro, I know you can technically kill anyone you want during “The Purge.” But, even if you hadn’t wound up dead, did you really think that was the way to your girlfriend’s heart? Killing her father before her very eyes? You’ve got a lot to learn about life, women and love sir. Congratulations on your plan!
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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