Top Ten Hardest Classic Horror Movie Villains to Survive (and How I Would Attempt To Survive Them.) Part Two.

Hello and thank you for coming back for part two! This is where things start to get harder and your chances of survival are much lower. As always, there will be spoilers and my biased opinion will be included. Let’s get into some villain slashing shall we?

CONTENT WARNING: Mature content, reader discretion is advised. 

5. Michael Myers (Halloween)

This man has so much plot armor it’s almost impossible to escape him. On the surface, you might think that Michael is the easiest to avoid because of his speed, but that is simply not true. This series has been going on for over 40 years and NOT ONCE has anyone found a way to defeat this masked serial killer. We have a couple options to work with here. You can escape or you can try to fight back. If you’re not related to Michael, you have it easy. Just stay out of his way and he won’t come for you. If you are, he is already coming for you and won’t stop until one of you is dead. Let’s look at our opponent first though. Michael has some downsides as do most villains. He is slow-paced, he only uses weapons as if they were a knife. (He once picked up a gun and then used it as if it were a knife, funny right? No. Not if you’re the one getting stabbed with a gun) and he grows old just like everyone else. On the other hand, he is downright unstoppable. He has gotten shot over and over and he hasn’t died yet. He has survived stab wounds, being burned alive, long falls, and has even been beaten with a lead pipe. This man is still alive and no one knows why. The second thing he has going for him is super strength. If you have seen any of the movies or scenes you can just TELL that this dude’s second home is the gym (of the mental institution.) Now, how do we defeat something that has super strength and has some sort of amazing healing ability? Let’s look at the escape option first. Earlier I mentioned that he does indeed grow old like every other human being. In the first movie, he is seen as a six-year-old when he commits his first murder, then later on we see him get older and continue these crimes. The solution to escape is to simply live your life on the run until his time runs out or someone else ends up killing him. This isn’t the best life to live, but it’s better than being dead am I right? Yes, I am. The second option, fighting back. This option is not the one that we would try to go for, but if we have no other choice, fighting back is a viable option. You can’t shoot him, you can’t stab him, and you can’t burn him. What do you do? As Thanos once said, “you should have gone for the head.” Cut this dude’s head clean off. Even if he does heal, what is he gonna do without a head? Nothing. No head equals no eyes and no eyes equals no sight. He cannot even hear you. Now you’re probably thinking about how hard it would be to cut someone’s head off. You’re right to assume that, so let’s go through two options to cutting his head off. Canonically, Michael can be forced into unconsciousness. If we can get him to pass out, that is our chance to cut off his head. Ideally, we want to get it off of his body as clean and quick as possible. For this, we would have to use something super sharp and use a lot of force. A knife or an axe would be the best option for melee, but if you happen to have a chainsaw on hand, pull a Leatherface and push it into his neck. Let’s say that you can’t get him unconscious, DO NOT try to manually decapitate him and go for the escape option instead. If neither of these work, you’re done for.

Chance of survival: 20%

4. Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th)

This is another guy that just won’t die. The plot armor is strong with this one as well. I think these are the hardest types of villains to defeat. I’ll begin by speaking out the obvious solution. Don’t go to Camp Crystal Lake. Don’t be dumb and go somewhere without doing research on its past. If you don’t go to the camp, you will most likely not run into Jason. As we should always do, and as I will always advise, assess your opponent and understand the risks you might have to take.  Little spoiler alert here; in the first movie, the killer is none other than Jason’s mother, who is now dead, so we will be ruling out the possibility of her being our opponent. Anyways, let’s get back to Jason. He doesn’t talk and just like Michael Meyers, he has trouble dying. On the other hand, he has one HUGE downside that we can and will take advantage of. Jason is deathly afraid of the water. He will not go in it despite knowing how to swim. Our first and best option is to escape. You might be thinking impulsively and just try to swim, but that is a terrible idea seeing that Jason also knows how to shoot a bow. You are leaving yourself vulnerable in the water.

Now if we look at this map, we can see that Crystal Lake is connected to a river that we can use to escape. Here is the hard part though, you have to arm yourself with a weapon, get a boat that is strong enough to protect yourself with, and you have to get it into the water all while trying to avoid Jason who is also known for setting traps around the camp. Be careful. If you do get away with this, I would have SO much respect for you. Okay, now lets say that Jason was ready for us and destroyed all the boats. What do we do now? Well, Jason is also known for how much he loves his mother. This was used against him in one of the movies when one of the survivors put on his deceased mother’s sweater and started to sweet-talk him into kneeling down in front of you. Jason is dumb enough to fall for this again, so it’s worth a try. The one mistake the other survivor made was not finishing him off when they had the chance. Like I’ve said in other blogs, you have to have a weapon on hand otherwise everything you do is for nothing. Since he is kneeling in front of you, you have the PERFECT chance to stab him right in the eye socket. Don’t be weak and just barely put it in there, like really shove that knife down in there until it hits the brain, killing him. You have to have a strong stomach for this too, you can’t just start throwing up when he could still be alive. After the initial stab, don’t stop there. I am a very dedicated believer in double-tapping or even quadruple-tapping. They teach you in CPR and first aid classes that if you’re impaled with something you should keep it in your body to stop from bleeding out, this is why we take the knife out and keep wacking at him until you have had enough and you are SURE that he is gone. If we don’t kill him with the stab wounds, he will surely bleed out and die that way. Keep your weapon on you and carefully make your way out of the camp to find help. Keep in mind that his traps are still activated and if you get stuck, all your hard work will be for nothing.

Chance of survival: 35% (if you’re okay wearing a dead lady’s sweater) 

3. Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street)

Imagine you just got home after a long day of exams, and as soon as you go to sleep you find yourself in a steamy boiler room with an ugly burnt weirdo in a striped sweater and fedora hat chasing you. Let’s not forget the iconic glove with knives for fingers. Our enemy is none other than the dream demon, Freddy Krueger. His only downfall is that when you bring him into the physical world using lucid dreaming he is mortal and cannot use certain powers of his. When he is in the mortal world, you can kill him just like any other human being. Though, it will be a small problem since he prefers to be in the dream world, solidifying his chance of killing you and his chances of staying ‘alive’. Anatomically, we are set up for failure here. Escape is OUT of the question since our bodies have to sleep otherwise we will die of organ failure. If you sleep, you die. If you don’t sleep, you die. So what DO you do? Well, you’re gonna have to get really smart. Since escape is not something we can do, what is our other option? That’s right, say it with me now. We fight back. First of all, you need to get over your fear of this guy. When I watched the movie I was like “man this guy is ugly,” and that kind of helped me get over it because frankly, this guy is actually really ugly. His mannerisms and the way that he runs like a titan from Attack On Titan, make him seem less serious and more like a goofy freak. This will help us when we decide to face him. We need to be prepared for anything here. Remember earlier when I mentioned bringing him into the real world? Yeah, that’s right, let’s bring him onto our turf instead. This is our homecourt. This is where we have the advantage. Since we barely have to sleep, there is less chance that we will die in our dreams and it gives us more time in the real world to prepare for the final showdown with Freddy. You have to be super careful when you’re asleep though. In the movies it shows us that if we cause enough harm to ourselves that it will wake us up. That is our only way out (if we’re alone) when Freddy gets a bit too close for our liking while we’re asleep. DO NOT do damage that will severely burden you because those wounds will carry over into the real world when you wake up. Now, when we bring him into the physical world, Freddy can be harmed just like any other human being. This is what we will use to beat him. While we’re awake we can arm ourselves with many many weapons. If your family owns any type of gun, that’s the best option for you. If not, that’s alright, there is always something else we can use. Creativity is crucial for survival. If you can’t find a gun, go grab a knife and hold onto it. We can also pull a Kevin McAllister from Home Alone and set up traps for Freddy (this also happens in the movie.) We have many options if we choose to go with the traps. Some ideas are electricity, fire, sharp objects, and explosions. I would prefer the gun, but if you can’t get your hands on that, set up some traps with the time that you have before you sleep, and arm yourself with a knife so you can make sure that he is dead. Now here is the hard part. To bring Freddy into the real world, you’ll have to grab onto him and wake yourself up. This is much harder than you might assume. He literally has knives on his hand, so getting that close to him and waking up has to be done in a matter of milliseconds. This is where you enlist a friend or someone else you can trust. Instruct them to wake you up as soon as you start freaking out in your sleep, or you can depend on yourself and do the method I said earlier. When you wake you up you need to be immediately ready to fight, because Freddy will be. Now is the time to use our previously mentioned methods and kill him. After you do that, burn all of the evidence that he was ever in existence. If no one knows about Freddy, he cannot manifest into people’s dreams, thus reviving himself. 

Chance of survival: 14% 

Mwuahahaha! (evil laugh) Thank you for reading, and if you want to figure out the top two hardest villains to defeat and how I would attempt to survive them, you’ll have to come back next week! I am doing this because I realized that this blog would be way too long, and I like to cause suspense. See you next week! 😛

Author: Locklyn Wilchynski

Locklyn Wilchynski (She/Her) is a poet, writer, and musician. She is also a senior literary arts student at Mississippi School of the Arts. Her writing has been published in Co-Lin Refractions Literary & Art Magazine and The Phoenix Literary Journal. She won two gold keys, a silver key, and two honorable mentions in the 2021 Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards. She has also won an honorable mention in the 2021 Ephemera Prize. She is a lover of all things crafted in darkness and finding the beauty within that. She believes that storytelling is one of the most powerful forms of communication to open up new conversations and ideas. View all posts by Locklyn Wilchynski