Some of the baddies who didn’t make the cut for Best Kill (Credit: Converse/Focus Features/Columbia Pictures)
With this year’s Chainsaw Awards in the bag, we saw plenty of brilliant filmmakers take home the most coveted award in horror, as voted by you, the FANGORIA readers. But the biggest award of the year, Best Kill, is always a write-in, letting you, our dear readers, tell us what impressed you the most on the big screen in the last year.
Since the category is always a write-in, we only ever announce the winner during the awards, rather than the many contenders for the big award of the night — we received countless votes recounting your favorite bloody, vicious, and totally killer horror movie deaths from the last year, but unfortunately, only one can win. (Congrats to the folks behind Terrifier 3, by the way!) But, since you lovely readers are always curious about what ends up in the mix, and we at FANGORIA love to celebrate all things horror, not just the big winners, we wanted to highlight some of our favorite submissions for this year’s category, as written in by you, our lovely audience.
Without further ado, here are some of YOUR favorite kills of the year that didn’t quite make the cut! (Spoilers incoming, obvs.)
Sinners — Remmick’s Final Encore
Jack O’Connell in SINNERS (Credit: Warner Bros. Discovery)
It wouldn’t be 2025 without some mention of Ryan Coogler’s runaway hit Sinners — which took home several awards, including Best Wide Release — and specifically Remmick the vampire’s (Jack O’Connell) death by sunlight. Y’all were particularly obsessed with the piece of guitar that ended up sticking out of his head — a particularly fun piece of makeup design, if I do say so myself. (Or is it prop design? Either way, it rips.)
Nosferatu — Bouncing On It Deadly Style
NOSFERATU (Credit: Focus Features)
Speaking of vamps, I’d be the first person to tell you that horror took a sexy turn this past year, especially when it comes to vampires wanting to bounce on it crazy style. The voters of the Chainsaw Awards seemed to agree, as many of you wrote in to nominate poor Nosferatu’s (Bill Skargård) death in the movie bearing his name, when he perished by sunlight while, and I quote, “making sweet, sweet love” with Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen Hutter. Talk about a bad hookup.
Smile 2 — Gallner’s Gory Demise
Kyle Gallner in SMILE (Credit: Walter Thomson/Paramount Pictures)
When it comes to dying, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention Kyle Gallner, more specifically in Smile 2, where he picks up from where the first film left off, having just inherited the curse of the Smile Entity from Sosie Bacon’s Rose Cotter. In the process of passing on the curse to drug dealer Lewis (Lukas Gage), he bites the bullet, and according to our readers, the Strange Darling star is just “so good at dying.”
Final Destination: Bloodlines — Too Metal For The MRI
FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES (Credit: Warner Bros. Discovery)
The Final Destination franchise has given us some of the best kills in horror history, and this year’s latest entry, Final Destination: Bloodlines, is no exception. As described by one FANGORIA reader, “Poor Erik was hardcore punk a little too close to the MRI machine and got himself crushed into a ball of mush, mixed with granny’s stolen wheelchair and all. Don’t play with overpowered magnetism, kids!”
MaXXXine — Crunched By a Car Crusher
Kevin Bacon in MAXXXINE (Credit: A24)
Mia Goth is one of the greatest scream queens of the twenty-first century, and she cemented her status in horror history in Ti West’s X trilogy, which wrapped up with MaXXXine. The adult film star turned aspiring actress experienced some deadly kills in her rise to glory — including Kevin Bacon’s sleazy private investigator John Labat, as one voter put it, “being juiced like an orange in his car while the dogs lapped it up.” That’s why we don’t play around in junkyards, kids!
Terrifier 3 — Death By Rodent
TERRIFIER 3 (Credit: Cineverse)
While Terrifier 3’s shower kill scene took home the big prize, Jess’s (Margaret Anne Florence) death by rat was also an honorable mention — it’s got to be gnarly if it nearly made Art himself (David Howard Thornton) throw up! As one reader says, “If there’s any chance to make your killer sick to their stomach because of their own craft, that definitely should mean something.”
Miscellaneous Murders & Mayhem
Chi Lewis-Parry in 28 YEARS LATER (Credit: Columbia Pictures)
There were so many great and gory submissions for this year’s award — so many that I can’t fit them all in this article! But just for you lovely readers (and voters), I’ll give you a sneak peek at some of the other deaths that were a hit with audiences this year.
Oz Perkins’ Stephen King adaptation The Monkey had some great kills, including the death-by-pool-electrocution death that Theo James’ Hal witnesses, and even though he won Best Supporting Performance, Nicholas Cage’s killer in Perkins’ Longlegs lost out for his gnarly self-inflicted death. There’s also 28 Years Later’s terrifying alpha Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry) ripping his poor victim’s spine out, and Jack Quaid’s terrible boyfriend Josh in Companion getting his just desserts via electric corkscrew. (They’re not just good for wine, folks!)
Thank you all so much for voting in and watching this year’s Chainsaw Awards! If you missed the event live, you can revisit it now on Shudder or stream it on YouTube.
A self-professed Babe With the Power and bad movie enthusiast, Maggie Boccella is a pop culture junkie whose work also appears on Collider, Blossom Mag, and Certified Forgotten, as well as her podcast Girlies for McGann. When not writing, she’s probably watching a schlocky horror movie (Slumber Party Massacre 2 forever) or reading a murder mystery.