Whether they're final girls or final boys, characters in horror moves who employ intelligence or brute force to evade death turn out to be among the most memorable in genre history. They are forced to endure their ordeal until the perfect moment arises for them to break free.
When these characters manage to sidestep their physical and mental restraints, the real fight just begins. This list surveys 10 of the most unforgettable escape scenes in scary features. From Texas to Italy, from underground bunkers to houseboats, these sequences will leave you on the edge of your seat.
10 Sally Hardesty In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
One of the earliest and most iconic slasher films is Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. When a group of college-aged friends crosses paths with a family of crazed cannibals in rural Texas, they are systematically butchered by the youngest member of the family: chainsaw-yielding Leatherface.
After an unsuccessful escape attempt, seminal final girl Sally finds herself tied to a chair and forced to eat dinner with her psychopathic captors. She manages to break free again and jumps into the back of a pick-up truck as Leatherface runs behind her with his chainsaw. Soaked in blood and exhausted, Sally watches as her tormentor grows smaller and smaller in the distance.
9 Chris Washington In Get Out (2017)
In the first half of Jordan Peele's social thriller Get Out, Lakeith Stanfield's character Logan tries to warn Daniel Kaluuya's character Chris what will happen if he remains at the wealthy New York estate of his white girlfriend's family, urging him to "get out!" Little does Chris know he's in the middle of a racialized plot wherein rich white individuals kidnap and auction off black people to the highest bidder.
Once he puts all the pieces of the puzzle together, Chris's self-preservation instincts kick in, and he engages in an epic battle to curtail his subjugation. Chris sabotages the hypnosis designed to send his consciousness to another realm by stuffing his ears with cotton. In one bloody scene after another, Chris takes out his captors, the Armitages, barely making it out alive.
8 Lawrence Gordon In Saw (2004)
James Wan traumatized generations of horror movie fans with this debut feature in the popular Saw franchise. Written by Leigh Whannell, known for his 2020 remake of The Invisible Man, Saw is a tale of psychological and physical terror. Two men, a photographer and an oncologist, find themselves chained in a derelict room. Their captor, the Jigsaw Killer, set up a series of torturous puzzles in the room to help them escape, but unraveling each clue comes with severe consequences.
As the film progresses, the two men, played by Carey Elwes and Whannell, are pitted against each other. Elwes plays the oncologist Lawrence, whose wife and daughter are implicated in the movie's action by the Jigsaw Killer. Lawrence saws his own foot off with a hacksaw in order to flee the room, crawling out just as the gruesome game comes to an end.
7 Pat In Green Room (2015)
Jeremy Saulnier's tense film about a poor punk band that decides to play at a remote Oregon Neo-Nazi club includes some of the most gruesome genre deaths in recent history. It also includes Star Trek's Patrick Stewart as the creepy, unforgiving leader of the Fascists.
After the band stumbles upon the body of a woman in the club's green room, they barricade themselves inside out of the fear the skinhead gang wants them dead, too. Numerous failed attempts at escape later, Anton Yelchin's character Pat is the only survivor from the band. Along with Imogen Poots's character Amber, who is friends with the murdered woman, the wounded Pat dons warpaint and violently shoots and stabs his way toward freedom.
6 Michelle In 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
This second installment in the Cloverfield franchise combines science fiction and horror in interesting ways. A woman named Michelle wakes up chained in a secured bunker after being run off the road in rural Louisiana. John Goodman plays Howard, the man who built the bunker. He claims to have saved her, explaining the world is being ravaged by a biochemical alien invasion.
Michelle tries to make sense of what's really going on. After Howard kills a young man in the bunker with them named Emmett, she realizes something nefarious is going on with her supposed savior, even if aliens are destroying the planet. Michelle steals Howard's hazmat suit and plots her escape, eventually blowing up the bunker with Howard inside. Now, the freedwoman is forced to contend with the alien warships flying overhead.
5 Paul Sheldon In Misery (1990)
This 1990 adaptation of Stephen King's novel is one of the classic hostage narratives in horror. Kathy Bates plays deranged nurse Annie Wilkes, a woman who rescues her favorite romance writer, James Caan's Paul Sheldon, after his car crashes on an icy Colorado Road.
Sheldon recovers at Wilkes's home, only to discover she doesn't want him to leave. Wilkes goes as far as smashing his ankles with a sledgehammer in order to make him immobile. She forces him to rewrite his latest manuscript in his popular Misery Chastain series after discovering he plans to kill off the title character, and Sheldon eventually uses the very typewriter Wilkes gives him as a weapon against his abductor in order to ensure his escape.
4 Christiane Génessier In Eyes Without A Face (1960)
A haunting French film, Eyes Without a Face focuses on a deranged surgeon who keeps his daughter hidden in his home after her face is disfigured in a car crash. Dr. Génessier, obsessed with female beauty, kidnaps and murders a series of young women, intent upon grafting one of their faces onto his daughter's.
His daughter, Christiane, is racked with guilt and suffers extreme mental duress from being kept in isolation. She finally turns against her father, freeing the latest woman he abducted. She also frees the German Shephards and doves that are part of her father's grotesque experiments. As the dogs maul Dr. Génessier, Christiane slowly retreats from her prison with a dove resting on her hand.
3 Red Miller In Mandy (2018)
Panos Cosmatos's psychedelic cult movie Mandy details what happens after a demented cult led by a lunatic kidnaps a local couple played by Nicholas Cage and Andrea Riseborough. The cult leader, Jeremiah Sand, has set his sight on the woman, Mandy. Cage's character Red is chained outside while Sand makes moves on his girlfriend. When she rejects him, Sand and his followers burn her alive in front of Red, who is forced to watch on in anguish.
Red eventually frees himself from his barb wire restraints. After forging his own battle-ax, he goes after every member of the cult, as well as anyone associated with it, in order to rectify the death of his love.
2 The Bowdens In Cape Fear (1991)
Martin Scorsese's remake of the Southern noir movie Cape Fear established one of the creepiest villains of all time: Robert De Niro's Max Cady. Nick Nolte's character Sam Bowden plays Cady's former attorney, who Cady blames for landing him a 14-year jail sentence after Cady assaulted a young woman. When Cady is released, he goes after Sam and his family.
As events escalate, the Bowdens retreat to their houseboat on Cape Fear River. Cady tracks them down and restraints them, but they don't allow him to win so easily. Juliette Lewis, who plays the daughter Danielle, sets him on fire with lighter fluid. She flees with her mother Leigh, played by Jessica Lange, as Sam and Cady fight until Cady finally drowns and drifts away.
1 Suzy Bannion In Suspiria (1977)
Ballet dancer Suzy Bannon thinks she's struck gold when she's offered a spot at a prestigious dance school in Germany. Unfortunately, the school is maintained by a coven of witches who prey upon their students in order to remain powerful and youthful.
The new recruit Suzy, played by Jessica Harper, is their latest target, but she relies upon some stylized methods of self-defense in order to escape. This Dario Argento film reaches its climax when Suzy impales the supreme witch with a decorative glass peacock quill, destroying the coven and the school.
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