Character whose fate is worse than death: David Drayton

At the end of director Frank Darabont’s 2007 film The Mist, it seemed as if David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and his small group of survivors were doomed.

First their town of Bridgton, Maine, was overrun by Lovecraftian creatures that emerged from the thick mist that surrounded the burg. Then they had to escape the paranoid townsfolk that took refuge in a supermarket with them.

At the end, David, his son Billy, teachers Amanda and Irene, and Dan find themselves trapped, sitting ducks in an out-of-gas car while facing down a monster the size of a small building. With nothing else to do, David takes it upon himself to mercy kill the small group, choosing to face the beast head on while the others are granted the benefit of a peaceful death.

But after shooting his group, including his own son, the mist begins to clear. It is then that the military rolls in. Had David waited a few more minutes, he would have realized that they were saved.

David now has to live with the consequences of his actions for the rest of his life. In the final shot, he falls to his knees, screaming in anguish and heartbreak at the realization of his folly.  

Characters whose fates are worse than death: Caroline Ellis and Luke Marshall

In director Iain Softley’s 2005 film, hospice nurse Caroline (Kate Hudson) is lured to a remote plantation by Violet Devereaux (Gena Rowlands) and her attorney Luke (Peter Sarsgaard) to take care of Violet’s aging and paralyzed husband Ben (John Hurt).

While there, Caroline discovers the dark history of the house, including urban legends regarding two hoodoo practitioners named Mama Cecile and Papa Justify, who met their untimely demise at the hands of a lynch mob. As she cares for the incapacitated Ben, she begins to suspect foul play. And she's right.

As it turns out, Mama Cecile and Papa Justify are body thieves on the hunt for new, young husks for their souls. Papa found one in attorney Luke, and now Mama found one in Caroline. After drugging the young caregiver, Mama takes her body, leaving Caroline to rot in Violet's now-paralyzed shell, but like Luke/Ben. Unable to communicate the atrocities and violations against them, the duo are trapped in the bodies of an elderly couple on the brink of death, unable to move or talk, while others enjoy their youth.

Character whose fate is worse than death: Wade Felton

This 2005 film, from director Jaume Collet-Serra, continues the “house of wax” tradition that older viewers fondly remember from the 1953 Vincent Price version, which was the first major 3D-movie production.

While visiting the deadly tourist trap Trudy's House of Wax, Wade Felton (Jared Padalecki) is caught by one of the caretakers and turned into art by having his entire body covered in molten wax. By the time his friend Dalton (Jon Abrahams) finds him, he is already a display, propped for visiting rubes. Only able to move his eyes, Wade pleads to his friend for help, hoping he can find a way to free him from his waxy prison.

But as Dalton attempts to peel off the wax, chunks of Wade's skin are removed, causing him to cry in pain. At that moment, it is clear he can feel everything and his existence is pure hell. Before Dalton can get any real help, museum caretaker Vincent arrives to remove the unwanted guest from destroying his new installation. As he attempts to decapitate Dalton, he slashes into Wade, slicing his face in half, thus killing him and finally ending this horrific existence.

Character whose fate is worse than death: Adam Faulkner-Stanheight

Director James Wan’s 2004 horror set the long-running series in motion by introducing audiences to Adam (Leigh Whannell) while he is in a bit of a pickle: The swarthy photographer is chained to a dingy bathtub by the ankle alongside Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) and a corpse.

While trying to figure out the mystery of how they got there and what is happening, the two men find tapes with instructions. Adam is told to survive while the good doctor is told to murder Adam if he wishes to save his family. Realizing they are both the victims of the Jigsaw Killer and that this is one of his "games," the duo spend the rest of the film attempting to solve their dilemma.

After a series of events including Gordon's refusal to kill Adam, Adam being shot by "Jigsaw," Adam's murder of a man he thought was his captor, and Gordon sawing off his own foot to escape, Adam is left alone in the dingy bathroom with the corpse.

And that is when the corpse decides to stop playing dead. The body was actually Jigsaw, and as it turns out, the key to Adam's freedom was in the tub with the photographer, before he pulled the plug and he washed away his chances of escape. As Jigsaw/John Kramer (Tobin Bell) exits the room, he glances back at Adam, who looks shocked and terrified, and screams, "Game over!," before he locks and closes the door, leaving the photographer to die alone in the dark.

Character whose fate is worse than death: Oh Dae-su

Director Park Chan-wook’s 2003 film has a grim series of recurring events in store for protagonist Oh Dae-su, but on the bright side, the character gets to enjoy plenty of fresh octopus. After the man is kidnapped, taken from his toddler daughter and wife, and forced to live in a seedy motel room for 15 years, Dae-su is suddenly released into society -- but with no answers as to who took him, and for what reason? During his imprisonment, he discovers that his wife was murdered and he was blamed, causing his daughter to be adopted by strangers.

News of his shattered family and his experiences over the last 15 years causes Dae-su to go on a bloody revenge-fuel mission to find the answers he requires. His methods are vicious and brutal, but while looking for suspects in his kidnapping, Dae-su falls in love with a young sushi chef Mi-do (Kang Hye-jung), who helps him rediscover his humanity. She is one of the points of good in the film.

During his crusade to find answers, Dae-su discovers he was imprisoned for "talking too much," which leads him to a former classmate Woo-jin. As a teen, Dae-su caught Woo-jin having relations with his sister, who then took her own life due to the shame. For revenge, Woo-jin had Dae-su kidnapped and imprisoned, but that was not the punishment. The purpose of the kidnapping was so Dae-su would forget the face of his own child... Mi-do is actually Dae-su's daughter.

The shock of the revelation causes Dae-su to cut out his own tongue in penance, begging Woo-jin to keep the secret or else it would destroy Mi-do. Haunted by their actions and roles they had to play in the destruction of innocent lives, each man takes their own fate into their hands. Woo-jin takes his own life, while Dae-su opts to see a hypnotist, having the true knowledge of Mi-do's  identity erased so they can continue to be happy as a couple. When Mi-do reunites with Dae-su, he smiles at the sight of her, but it is implied that he still might know the truth of their relationship.

Character whose fate is worse than death: Ben Carson

Based on the South Korean 2003 horror film Into the Mirror, director Alexandre Aja’s 2008 update follows Ben, a suspended cop-turned-security guard. Ben begins having visions when he comes in contact with the mirrors stored in a burned-up department store called the Mayflower. Soon, the hallucinations begin to grow, as does Mirrors’ body count, so Ben begins investigating the mysterious, malignant mirrors.

After discovering that the previous security guard blamed the mirrors for deaths in his family, Ben investigates further and discovers that the Mayflower was built on top of an insane asylum that housed a patient named Anna, who was possessed by a demon whose soul was later trapped in the mirrors.

After the demon captures Ben’s son, he forces Anna to return to the Mayflower for a reverse-exorcism, which causes the demon to leave the boy's body, but destroys Anna, the mirrors, and the Mayflower, falling down around Ben.

Ben's son survives, but Ben dies in the destruction and is now trapped forever in the mirror world, as the demon has collected his soul. Forced to watch the world from outside reality, the only proof of his existence are the handprints he leaves when he touches his reflection.

Character whose fate is worse than death: Really, all three victims of the mad doctor, but mostly Lindsay, the middle piece

Tom Six's The Human Centipede, from 2009, is more a dare than a moviegoing experience. As Roger Ebert once stated about the extreme body horror film, "It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don’t shine."

The story of a mad doctor who kidnaps two American tourists and a Japanese man for the insane experiment of sewing them together to create a "Siamese triplet" that shares a single digestive system is not for the weak of heart. Or stomach. Or anyone with a fragile disposition. Viewers are in for a rough ride.

It is a tough go for all of the doctor’s victims, but none have it so rough as Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams), the centipede’s center piece. Unable to communicate, mutilated to horrific extremes, sewn to two other people, Lindsay draws the short straw in an already gruesome situation. But her fate is by far one of the worst in all of moviedom.

At the end of the film, Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser) is shot as the final act of a dying police officer  attempting to rescue the trio. Front of the centipede Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura) takes his own life and back piece Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie) dies of septic shock. Lindsay is left alone, trapped between two corpses, unable to scream or stand due to the mutilation done to her, as the audience's final moments are spent watching Lindsay cry as she waits for her nightmare to end.

Character whose fate is worse than death: Anna Assaoui

Part of the French extremism movement of the 2000s, director Pascal Laugier’s 2008 Martyrs was a polarizing watch for many film fans, as it offers themes of existentialism and religious epistemology on what many would classify as "torture p0rn." The result is an exceptional horror outing that influenced a generation of filmmakers, for those who have the stones to watch it.

At the root of the story, the film is about a cult-like organization that is attempting to uncover the secrets of the afterlife through the creation of "martyrs," young women who are tortured to such extremes they receive visions of the world beyond.

In the film, the society attempts this method on young Lucie, who escapes as a child but later takes her own life due to the effect the experience had on her psyche. But later, the group gets their monstrous hands on Anna, Lucie's lifelong friend.

After much degradation and torture, Anna is flayed alive, after which she enters a euphoric state in which she can see the afterlife. Left with no skin on her body in a state of enrapture, Anna's time on Earth is probably limited, but one of the most painful and hellish of any human has ever experienced.

Character whose fate is worse than death: Cheryl

The tale of a fear study gone off the rails, Anthony DiBlasi's 2009 film Dread is an adaptation of Clive Barker's short story from his infamous Books of Blood series. Centered on a group of students who are looking to face their phobias in exchange for cash and school credit, the study goes horrifically awry thanks to the malicious Quaid (Shaun Evans), who decides to take the study "up a notch."

Partaking in the study is Cheryl (Hanne Steen), a vegetarian whose past trauma regarding meat causes her to avert all forms of it. She is eventually kidnapped and forced to eat steaks or face starvation.

After a physical and mental breakdown, Cheryl does as she's told, only to be given a bigger challenge... In the last moments of the film, Quaid gives Cheryl the corpse of his former lab partner and a pocket knife with the caveat, "Let's see how hungry you have to be to get through that."

Leaving her broken and sobbing, Quaid locks the door and Cheryl faces an appalling and awful challenge, as it is only a matter of time before her hunger begins to dictate her actions.

Character whose fate is worse than death: Christine Brown

Let us pause a moment to reflect on poor Christine (Alison Lohman), the ambitious and well-meaning protagonist in Sam Raimi’s 2009 return to his horror roots. She was just a struggling bank manager attempting to prove to her boss that she can be tough when the time called for it.

Unfortunately for Christine, she opted to flex her banker muscle at the wrong time, with the wrong person, when Sylvia Ganush (Lorna Raver) begged for an extension on her mortgage. After pleading for mercy, Ganush is angered for humiliating herself to Christine and curses the young woman with all the powers of hell.

After days of creepy torment, including powerful hallucinations and escaping evil entities, Christine is able to retrieve the stolen button that had set the curse in motion. Christine’s plan is to return it to Ganush, ending her nightmare.

However, in the final moments of the film, her loving, coin-collecting boyfriend Clay (Justin Long) reveals he found an envelope containing the button (which got mixed up with a rare coin) in his car and returns it to Christine, unknowingly concluding the curse.

In the last moments of the pic, Christine falls onto train tracks, and in a flash, demonic hands from hell reach up and grab her, pulling her down the depths of the fiery underworld as she screams for help. Christine's fate is sealed, as she is doomed to spend eternity in a hellscape, all while her loving boyfriend looks on, unable to save the woman he loves.