These final girls deserved to die first: we ranked horror’s worst survivors from Friday the 13th, Night of the Living Dead, and more.
Not all survivors are created equal. Some final girls claw their way through hell with resourcefulness, courage, and determination, earning their place in horror legend through blood, sweat, and sheer force of will. Others? They coast on dumb luck, terrible writing, or mind-numbing blandness, somehow stumbling to the finish line while more deserving characters get picked off around them. This ranking celebrates the latter—the final girls who made such spectacularly poor decisions, showed such complete lack of survival instincts, or caused so much carnage through their own actions that they deserved to die first. Ranked from bad to worst, these are the ones who should have been zombie chow, slasher bait, or eaten by birds before anyone else.
10. Rennie Wickham
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1988)
Terrified of water? Sign up for a senior class cruise! Jensen Daggett’s Rennie boards a boat to Manhattan despite her crippling aquaphobia, which is like signing up for skydiving when you’re afraid of heights. Rob Hedden’s much-maligned eighth installment gave us a final girl who spends most of the film having PTSD flashbacks about machete-wielding killer Jason Voorhees’s soggy child corpse while literally surrounded by her greatest fear. She hallucinates drowning scenarios, screams at perfectly safe situations, and generally makes everyone’s graduation cruise miserable with her unresolved aquatic trauma. When she finally reaches Manhattan, she manages to get someone else killed by checking out Times Square. The most passive final girl in the most ridiculous Jason sequel should have drowned on day one.
9. Alice Hardy
Friday the 13th (1980)
Adrienne King’s Alice feels like a substitute teacher who wandered into Sean Cunningham’s slasher by mistake and just happened to outlive everyone else through dumb luck rather than skill or determination. The original final girl of Camp Crystal Lake is low-key, passive, and somehow manages to decapitate killer Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) without breaking a sweat. However, her survival is less about fighting and more about timing. She shows more determination winning strip Monopoly than surviving the massacre. You struggle to remember her name before the credits roll, and she barely fights back throughout the ordeal. Then in Part 2? Jason literally shows up and puts an icepick in her head within the first 10 minutes. Even the franchise recognized the mistake and killed her off immediately.
8. Chris Higgins
Friday the 13th Part III (1982)
Dana Kimmell’s Chris spends Steve Miner’s 3D-heavy third installment either crying, screaming, or running—and when she does fight, it’s often one blow before she appears too exhausted to continue. She has a weirdly vague “trauma backstory” with Jason that never pays off and should give her motivation for revenge, but instead she just stumbles through the chaos like she wandered into the wrong movie. While other characters show genuine grit trying to survive, Chris lands a hit then immediately gives up, embodying every annoying final girl trope without the backbone that makes you root for survival. She somehow ends up the last one standing when you’ll wish it had been literally anyone else with actual stamina.
7. Ángela Vidal
REC (2007)
Manuela Velasco’s late-night TV reporter starts covering a routine firefighter ride-along and ends up locked in a quarantined building crawling with infected zombie-like horrors. At first, you’re with her, until she insists on continuing the broadcast even when people are getting eaten on camera. Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s found-footage masterpiece gave us a final girl whose professional curiosity and journalistic drive overrides basic survival instincts. When authorities seal off a building due to a mysterious infection, normal people evacuate. Ángela sees a career opportunity and drags everyone deeper into danger for better footage and the sake of a segment. Her stubborn denial gets half the building killed, proving that journalistic integrity doesn’t matter when you’re dead.
6. Kristen Parker
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 & 4 (1987-1988)
Patricia Arquette’s Kristen had the coolest power in the Elm Street franchise: she could pull people into dreams and fight Freddy on his own turf. Chuck Russell’s Dream Warriors set her up perfectly with one of horror’s most innovative final girl abilities, but instead of using it strategically against Freddy, she just drags her friends into more danger. By Renny Harlin’s Dream Master, she’s recast with Tuesday Knight, reduced to a whiny shell, and unceremoniously burned alive after passing her powers to Alice, who actually uses them effectively. It’s like being handed a lightsaber and using it as a flashlight. Kristen peaked early, coasted hard, and the dream powers deserved better than her wasted potential.
5. Melanie Daniels
The Birds (1963)
Tippi Hedren’s wealthy San Francisco socialite rolls into quiet Bodega Bay with a pair of lovebirds and a high-maintenance attitude. Within 24 hours, flocks of birds are dive-bombing schoolchildren and gouging out eyes. Coincidence? Maybe. But the second the feathers fly, Melanie falls apart completely. Alfred Hitchcock’s animal horror classic gave us a final girl who follows a man to town on a whim, breaks into his house, can’t handle children, gets trapped in a phone booth, and generally acts entitled throughout the escalating bird crisis. She treats the natural disaster like a minor inconvenience disrupting her social plans, and ends up catatonic by the finale. The birds aren’t the only ones flapping around uselessly.
4. Bonnie Williams
Hide and Go Shriek (1988)
The late Bunky Jones plays the token “sexy” girl of the group—the slasher movie death cliché that somehow didn’t die. Skip Schoolnik’s department store slasher gave us a final girl who exists to wear a crop top that barely covers the goods, find three different beds to copulate in, and whimper in the dark while treating a night locked in a store with a killer like a fun sleepover. The bigger Bonnie’s hair gets throughout the film, the more zoned out she looks, arriving at full frizz and complete zombie-like detachment by the end. She’s clueless to the point of parody, missing every red flag and horror movie survival rule. When the killer starts picking off her friends, she still acts like she’s in a perfume commercial. Total dead weight with no character arc.
3. Justine
Raw (2016)
Garance Marillier’s sheltered vegetarian enters veterinary school and leaves as a full-blown cannibal after accidentally eating her sister’s finger during a waxing mishap (yes, really). Julia Ducournau’s breakout horror gave us a final girl who discovers cannibalistic urges and instead of seeking help, telling someone, or even doing basic research, just makes it everyone else’s problem. You’d think after the first taste of human flesh, you’d at least Google “why do I want to eat people” or call a therapist. Instead, Justine starts snacking on her roommate, blames it on peer pressure, and acts like developing a taste for human flesh is a normal college phase. You don’t get to be the final girl when you’re starting a family cannibal dynasty.
2. Barbra
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
“They’re coming to get you, Barbra!” And they do. Judith O’Dea’s character goes into complete psychological shutdown the moment her brother gets attacked in the cemetery, then stays basically useless for George Romero’s entire zombie masterpiece. While Ben (Duane Jones) boards up the house, fights for survival, and makes actual plans, Barbra stares blankly into space like she’s in a trance. There’s a certain irony in watching a white woman sit idly by while a Black man does all the work during a crisis. She’s basically furniture until the last ten minutes, and then still doesn’t contribute much. In a crisis that requires quick thinking and teamwork, she offers nothing but worried expressions and the occasional scream. Classic movie, but she was a zombie almost from the start.
1. Jackie Peters
Jaws 2 (1978)
Donna Wilkes’s Jackie is the teen who suggests the sailing group head out into shark-infested waters in hopes of catching Michael Brody’s romantic attention, then spends the rest of Jeannot Szwarc’s sequel screaming hysterically while her friends get eaten one by one. Jackie has achieved meme-icon status for her constant shrieking, but her real crime is being completely self-centered when survival matters most. She instigates the deadly water trip for purely romantic reasons, then offers zero help during the crisis—just ear-piercing hysteria that probably attracts more sharks. In the finale, when she’s alone on a boat with young Sean Brody, she doesn’t try to protect him in any way; she just screams like a banshee while he faces the shark alone. Jackie’s the friend you’d throw overboard as shark bait to save everyone else.
