Top 10 Times The Crazy Guy Was Right in Horror Movies

Unlike the first “Cloverfield,” this sequel derives much of its tension from brilliant character work. Rather than a violent and destructive alien attack, this movie quietly focuses on the drama between “normal” people Michelle and Emmett and the “crazy” survivalist Howard. While Howard claims that he is keeping the two safe from the toxic outside air and dangerous alien creatures, Michelle and Emmett suspect that he’s just a cuckoo psycho imprisoning them for his own amusement. Emmett saw a bright red flash in the distance before entering the bunker, but nothing concrete. It’s not until Michelle kills Howard and escapes the bunker that she learns the devastating truth – the aliens are in fact real, and they are very, very dangerous.

“Scream” is very satirical and meta, so much so that it repeatedly comments on its own clichéd plot. This most often takes the form of Randy, the wacky movie nerd who knows all the tropes of the horror genre. No, he’s not crazy in the traditional sense, but he is often treated as the weird outsider. Randy has a lot of theories – he immediately points the finger at Stu, and in the video store he blames Billy, states that Sid’s dad is a red herring, and predicts that Billy’s motive is simple and easy to understand. Turns out, he is correct on all fronts! Both Stu and Billy were the killers, Sid’s dad WAS a red herring, and Billy’s motivation was simple: old fashioned revenge and jealousy.

Burt Gummer is your traditional crazy survivalist – he is paranoid and firmly anti-government, he’s concerned about some type of impending, cataclysmic World War III, and he owns a bunker stocked to the gills with provisions, food, weapons, and ammunition. The people of Perfection treat him like the resident nutcase…that is, until the graboids come a-callin’. Suddenly Burt is everyone’s best friend, as he’s the one with the weapons and homemade bombs necessary to stop the (sure enough) cataclysmic invasion of the graboids. Maybe it’s not quite World War III, seeing as how the problem is isolated to Perfection, but it certainly feels like it to the citizens of the town!

How much faith do you put in dreams and so-called precognition? Maybe you believe in it, maybe you don’t. That’s the question that kickstarts the plot of “Final Destination.” High school student Alex has a premonition that the plane he and his classmates will be flying in will blow up, and when he attempts to save everyone, he causes quite the commotion. Sure enough, the plane explodes shortly after takeoff. As if that’s not enough, he later tries to convince everyone that they cheated Death and that it will claim them in the order they were meant to die on the plane. Ms. Lewton doesn’t believe him. And sure enough, she is quickly skewered. Needless to say, everyone believes him after that.

2018’s “Halloween” took a surprisingly honest look into how a traumatic experience can permanently affect someone’s life and mental well-being. Forty years after the events of the first movie, Laurie is now a paranoid, alcoholic recluse who suffers from PTSD and is entirely devoted to defending herself and her family from another possible attack. Of course, this causes an enormous strain on her personal relationships, and she is ostracized from her family as a result. Everyone urges Laurie to seek help and move on because there’s no way Michael will return. That is until Michael returns and kills countless people. And who’s there to protect her family? None other than crazy ol’ Laurie Strode.

The “crazy guy in some backwoods location warning the protagonist about a killer” is an old horror movie trope. But it’s perhaps best embodied in the first “Friday the 13th” by the aptly named Crazy Ralph. As you can probably tell by his loving nickname, Ralph is seen as mentally unstable by the citizens and tourists around Crystal Lake. He continuously warns people about the “curse” of Camp Crystal Lake, and they in turn ignore his drunken ramblings. Well, Camp Crystal Lake isn’t “cursed” per se, but it is the home of a particularly violent and vengeful mother who isn’t above burying axes in people’s faces. Just think of all the lives he could have saved had anyone bothered to listen!

Let’s be honest: this is a rare example of the crazy ones genuinely sounding too crazy to be believed. After all, would you take someone seriously if they told you they were being hunted and killed in their dreams by a man with finger knives? Rod is implicated in the death of Tina, and Glen’s parents understandably want to keep him away from the kooky girl who claims the scary dream man is killing her friends. It’s later revealed that most of the town people know who Freddy Krueger is; they just don’t believe he is a vengeful ghost haunting the kids’ dreams. Well... he is in fact a vengeful ghost haunting the kids’ dreams. So there. Nancy was right.

“Get Out” is another highly intelligent horror movie that knows the tropes, its audience, and their expectations. And so we got Rod, a comical black man. This is essentially a death sentence in horror movies, as people well-versed in the genre will tell you that both black and funny characters NEVER make it to the end. Well, not only does Rod make it to the end, but he also ends up saving the day thanks to some well-realized paranoia and diligent research. But this only comes after he was literally laughed at for his theory that the Armitage family were kidnapping and brainwashing black people to use as sex slaves. He wasn’t quite on the money, but he certainly got the gist of it!

This is yet another brilliant subversion of expectations, as the funny stoner guy not only survives the whole ordeal (well, to a certain point anyway), but his weird ramblings actually turn out to be right. Right from the offset, Marty is logically paranoid and cautions the group against a lot of stupid things, like reading creepy Latin phrases out loud. He also finds surveillance equipment and correctly assumes that he’s on some sort of reality TV thing. Heck, he even discusses being controlled by mysterious “puppeteers.” As we later find out, he and the group ARE being manipulated by puppeteers in a control room. It all sounds like typical stoner paranoia, but in this case, the stoner has a point. Many points, in fact.

One could certainly make an argument that all three protagonists of “Jaws” are seen as the “crazy” ones. Brody encounters many obstacles on his path to protect the citizens of Amity Island, including a wishy-washy coroner and a mayor hellbent on protecting the town’s economy above all else. No one seems to believe Brody or Hooper’s claims about an abnormally large great white shark (especially once a tiger shark is caught), and everyone actively ignores their warnings. And when it comes to hunting the shark, Quint gets no respect and is dismissed for asking for way too much money. It’s not until the fatal Fourth of July incident that the trio are FINALLY taken seriously.