5 Terrifying Horror Movies That Actually Don’t Make Any Sense (& Some Still Started Franchises)

The horror genre has been built on the simple yet brilliant concept that some audiences want to be scared. Delivering stories that are chilling, haunting, and downright terrifying is the bread and butter of horror movies, and horror filmmakers are always looking for new and innovative ways to scare the pants off of fans everywhere. While there have always been film fans too scared for horror movies, those that love the genre will often actively seek out the most frightening titles available. If there’s one thing that a horror movie absolutely needs to do, it’s give the audience a good scare. Ultimately, being scary is the main attribute of any decent horror movie.

Unfortunately, being scary doesn’t always mean a movie makes perfect sense. In fact, over the history of the genre, there have been many terrifying horror movies that totally fall apart with just the barest application of real-world logic. As making their stories truly frightening often requires facilitating a suspension of disbelief, examining the following movies’ respective stories in the cold light of day highlights some serious leaps of logic in their premises. Once the lights are on and we’ve stopped hiding behind our couch pillows, these horror movies actually make very little sense.

5) Smile (2022)

2022’s Smile was something of a breakout hit, and it spawned an excellent horror movie sequel. It centers on a psychiatrist who is haunted by a mysterious entity that transfers itself to each victim by forcing them to commit violent acts against themselves or others, then passing into the nearest witness. Smile quickly establishes how the entity turns its victims’ minds against them, effectively making its protagonist an unreliable narrator. While Smile is packed with great scares on both a visceral and psychological level, its story can easily be picked apart with even basic logic. For starters, the general rules it sets out are predicated on incredibly convenient circumstances, which adds an increased air of implausibility right off the bat. What’s more, it seems absolutely unthinkable that nobody would have detected the pattern sooner, with witnesses suddenly turning violent shortly after seeing the most recent tragedy the entity causes. The entity leaves a clear trail in its wake, and while it is obviously difficult to beat, containing its power is something that shouldn’t be anywhere near as impossible as the movie makes out.

4) A Quiet Place (2018)

There have been many great sci-fi horror movies over the years, and A Quiet Place manages to brilliantly combine the two genres into its post-apocalyptic story. The movie concerns the emergence of creatures that hunt using their incredibly sensitive sense of sound, forcing humanity’s survivors to live without making a noise in order to avoid sudden and gruesome death. While this makes for an incredibly tense viewing experience, it doesn’t really add up, because A Quiet Place tries to have its cake and eat it too. Logic would dictate that the creatures’ hearing should either be sensitive enough to pick out even tiny sounds like breathing or human heartbeats, or that they aren’t quite as alert as they seem. A Quiet Place allows its characters to get away with only the barest of sounds when the plot calls for it, but doesn’t present loud noises as a weakness, which should, theoretically, overload the creatures’ sensitive hearing. The rules are ill-defined and seemingly contradict themselves, and while A Quiet Place is excellent, it doesn’t entirely make sense.

3) Sinister (2012)

Scott Derrickson’s Sinister is often considered a horror movie so scary, it needs only a single viewing to burrow its way deep into the viewer’s memory. In fairness, that’s true, because its creepy central mystery and shocking resolution make for a truly terrifying movie. However, looking a little deeper at its story, cracks begin to appear in the premise that are hard to ignore. Bughuul’s whole modus operandi revolves around a family moving into the home, allowing him to corrupt the children into committing violent and murderous acts against their families. However, the movie doesn’t explore what would happen if the family that moved in had no children. Additionally, the whole idea of the home movies being Bughuul’s method of controlling the kids doesn’t work perfectly, either. What if nobody had found the box of movies, or bothered to watch them? It’s certainly hard to imagine Ellison would have done so had he not been a true crime writer. In many ways, Sinister‘s story only works because of a mixture of convenient plot points and characters repeatedly ignoring major red flags, meaning that no matter how scary it is, it really isn’t all that logical.

2) Final Destination (2000)

The Final Destination movies have given us many iconic moments, but the franchise’s entire premise, which originated in the first movie in 2000, really doesn’t make any sense at all. The general idea of the franchise is that each story starts with a character somehow cheating death, only for fate to come back for them, claiming their lives in grisly and elaborate accidents. There are two ways in which this premise is utter nonsense. The first is that while the complex Rube Goldberg-esque death scenes are great ways to seed irrational fears in the audience, they aren’t at all necessary. If Death can cause accidents, it could cause simpler deaths that aren’t likely to be questioned in the same way. Secondly, and more importantly, if Death can affect the physical world in so tangible a way, why can’t it simply stop people from surviving in the first place? Keeping the intended victims on the plane is surely an easier task than stalking them and picking them off one by one. While Final Destination traumatized a whole generation with its horrific death scenes, we really should have been asking tougher questions of the franchise.

1) The Blair Witch Project (1999)

For many, The Blair Witch Project is the quintessential found footage horror movie. Its handheld mode of storytelling puts audiences directly in the characters’ shoes, and its more ambiguous elements build a creepy and atmospheric mythos that’s truly chilling. While almost everything about the movie is terrifying, including its subtle yet unforgettable ending, it’s also another example of a horror movie that really doesn’t make sense. Much of its story is predicated on the characters getting lost in the wilderness, but they fail to make use of even the most basic survival premises. Simply following the river in a single direction or tracking the path of the sun across the sky could have helped them escape the forest, but instead, they choose to wander aimlessly through the trees. There’s also an argument for how ridiculous it is to set out into the wild to film a documentary without properly planning it all out, but The Blair Witch Project has probably earned the benefit of the doubt on that front. While it’s undeniably a terrifying movie, its subtle leaps of logic are incredibly frustrating when it’s watched with a more critical eye.