Horror movies are known for their convoluted explanations of the killer’s motivations, but some films provide reasons that are so outrageous they fall apart if you think about them for more than two seconds. This can be frustrating, as some horror movies that could have been great ruin their potential with ridiculous plots and nonsensical motivations.

Whether it’s serial killers seeking revenge against teenagers who had absolutely nothing to do with their trauma or supernatural enтιтies following overly specific rules to justify their kills, these films push the limits of horror viewers’ suspension of disbelief to the point of ridiculousness. While all these movies were entertaining in their own way, they trade common sense for scares.

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Pamela Voorhees (Friday The 13th)

While most viewers ᴀssociate the Friday the 13th franchise with the monstrous villain Jason Voorhees, it was actually his camp cook-turned-killer mother, Pamela, who was the original antagonist of this series. As a bereaved mother seeking revenge against innocent camp counselors, Pamela wished to avenge her son’s supposed death by murdering teenagers who had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Pamela’s decision to kill teenagers years after her son was believed to have drowned goes totally against any concept of justice, as she was simply lashing out at anyone unlucky enough to spend time at Crystal Lake Camp. To make matters worse, the sequels revealed Jason wasn’t even actually ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, making her entire rampage absolutely pointless.

7

Jigsaw (Saw)

In a shocking twist at the end of Saw, we learned the former engineer John Kramer was the Jigsaw Killer, who, after learning he was suffering from an inoperable brain tumor, sought revenge against those he deemed were wasting their lives away. Through elaborate death traps, Jigsaw forced his victims to fight for survival and prove they value living.

While Jigsaw considered his traps a type of spiritual test, he consistently breaks his own code and puts victims in traps they cannot survive. As the Saw franchise continued, the logic of Jigsaw and his copycats became increasingly fractured, and his belief that his tests could lead to some type of enlightenment for the victims devolved into pure sadism.

6

The Aliens (Signs)

While the aliens in Signs were presented as a terrifying, potentially world-ending threat, these otherworldly extraterrestrials didn’t think their plan through. Despite being so technologically advanced that they could travel to Earth, these creatures didn’t consider that the planet they sought to invade was 70% water, a substance that was as ᴅᴇᴀᴅly to them as battery acid is to humans.

Without any protective gear, these alien creatures were defeated by glᴀsses of water. However, the truth was that all humanity had to do was wait for a day of heavy rainfall, and the aliens would have been totally obliterated. While these creatures were smart enough for space travel, they weren’t clever enough to check out the planet’s basic chemical composition.

5

Michael Myers (Halloween)

At its core, the Halloween series is about a killer who murders his sister as a child for no clear reason and then returns years later to stalk and kill more teens for no clear reason. While there’s a lot of contradictory and retconned history to the Halloween franchise, the motivation of the babysitter killer, Michael Myers, never felt like it fully added up.

In the original movie, Michael’s fixation on Laurie Strode isn’t explained, as his focus on her after she drops keys off at his old house doesn’t feel rooted in anything other than random chance. Later sequels try to retcon his motivation by making Laurie his sister, but the newer films removed this connection entirely.

4

Samara Morgan (The Ring)

As the ghost of a drowned child, Samara Morgan in The Ring punished people for watching a videotape that she created. While there was a sense of poetic symmetry to the idea that her victims would die after seven days, just as she slowly died while locked away in a well, her motivations just don’t make all that much sense.

Samara supposedly made the cursed videotape because she wanted her story to be told, yet it kills anyone who watches it unless they pᴀss it along. While the whole idea of her character was a tormented spirit seeking closure on her horrid story, the path she chose to achieve this only kept the violence alive.

3

Brenda Bates (Urban Legend)

As the тιтle suggests, Brenda Bates in Urban Legend uses urban legends as the inspiration for her grisly murders. After her boyfriend was killed in a car accident by two reckless teenage girls, Brenda becomes obsessed with revenge and enacts her vengeance by killing the women responsible through ᴅᴇᴀᴅly, elaborate murder plots.

But the problem with this is that Brenda also targets victims totally unrelated to the original accident, turning her revenge plans into a simple killing spree that punishes innocent people to fit into her unusual urban legend-themed killing style. The over-the-top nature of Brenda’s method makes it seem like her killing has more to do with theatricality than actual revenge.

2

Roman Bridger (Scream 3)

Roman Bridger was revealed to be Sidney Prescott’s secret half-brother in Scream 3, and this twist also stated that he was the one who inspired Billy Loomis’s killings in the original movie. Not only did this retroactively change the entire lore of the Scream franchise, but it did so in a way that merely left viewers scratching their heads.

With Roman’s motivations hinging on his feelings of rejection by his and Sidney’s shared mother, his plan to enact revenge against his sister doesn’t make any sense, as she never even knew he existed. While Roman’s revelation felt exciting in the moment, looking back on Scream 3, it was more like a soap opera twist than a satisfying explanation.

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The Fisherman (I Know What You Did Last Summer)

The recent legacy reboot of I Know What You Did Last Summer has brought new attention to just how illogical the series really is. Whether it’s Benjamin Willis, his aptly named son Will Benson, or any other version of The Fisherman, their motivations never quite make sense, and their revenge always seems more driven by plot needs than reason.

The original premise was shaky to begin with, as a man survives a hit and run and plots to kill the teens who mistakenly thought he’d died. It gets sillier in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, with a needlessly convoluted murder plot in the Bahamas. Each sequel pushed things further, turning a simple horror slasher into full-blown absurdity.