Welcome to part 1 of the fourth annual Scare Value Horror Movie Awards! Essentially…our version of a 2025 Horror Movie Awards. Today we will award some non-traditional categories for the year that was. These are the more…fun awards. Today we crown Best Kill, Best Final Girl, Best Killer, Best Twist. and Best Gore Effects. Needless to say, there will be spoilers.
We will also be inducting this year’s first inductee into the Scare Value Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame is reserved for the greatest, most important or most influential horror movies in history.
Tomorrow we will be back with part 2 of the awards where we will give out some more traditional recognition. Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, Best Director, and, of course, Best Picture will be awarded. We will also induct this year’s second chosen film into the Hall of Fame.
Let’s get down to business.
2025 Scare Value Awards
Best Final Girl
Who will join Noa from Fresh, Brynn from No One Will Save You and Sister Cecilia from Immaculate as a Scare Value Best Final Girl award winner? Five new leading ladies hope to survive the award process. This year’s nominees are…
Piper – Bring Her Back
Quinn – Clown in a Cornfield
Iris – Companion
Zephyr – Dangerous Animals
Olivia – Self-Help
Visually impaired Piper survives an incredibly rough series of events in Bring Her Back. Deaths in the family are bad enough, but she has to contend with an insane caretaker who intends to sacrifice her. Praying upon her foster mother’s one weakness to survive earns her a spot among the nominees. Quinn from Clown in a Cornfield is probably the most traditional final girl on the list…but she’s a good one. Best among her attributes is that, in the end, she does what every final girl should do. She gets the heck out of Dodge.
Since Iris is a robot…you’d think she wouldn’t make for a good final girl candidate. But her final girl arc is the entire backbone of Companion. She literally takes control of her destiny by becoming autonomous. Nothing says final girl more than that. Dangerous Animals‘ Zephyr has to contend with a madman in a strand land…while on the water. She’s strong and ruthless in what she will do to escape. Olivia walks through Self-Help ahead of the game at every turn. She can smell a rat and spot a fake. And…her tragic backstory makes her uniquely equipped to deal with all of it.
Each candidate brings their own strengths to the table…but this vote was locked up a long time ago. One character’s arc is so interesting, so integral to the way her movie works that it stands above and beyond a strong year of final girls. In fact, this winner would have taken home top prize in all four years of this award show so far.
The Scary Goes To…
Iris in Companion
Best Killer
Art the Clown won the inaugural award in the 2022 Awards. He’s since been joined by Evil Dead Rise‘s Ellie and Dale Kobble from Longlegs as the next two winners. Who will join the three iconic horror antagonists and take home this year’s award? The nominees for Best Killer are…
Tucker – Dangerous Animals
Ray – I Know What You Did Last Summer
The Monkey – The Monkey
Remmick – Sinners
Gladys – Weapons
Dangerous Animals‘ Tucker is a fascinating character. He’s wild…and brutal…and you can’t take your eyes off of him. He exists in his own delusion…getting his rocks off feeding women to sharks. Ray’s status as one of the killers in the I Know What You Did Last Summer legacy sequel may seem like stunt writing or wish fulfillment…but it carries a deeper meaning. The theme of the movie is that what’s past is being forgotten. Ray can’t handle his ordeal from decades back being washed away and minimalized. Which is what the original’s true legacy became as well.
Can an inanimate object be the best killer of the year? The Monkey makes a compelling case for it. With kills more shocking than any other movie offers…the clapping toy is as brutal as Tucker and more uncaring than any human on the list. Remmick isn’t exactly human in Sinners…but he is a fascinating character. His mission comes from a place of twisted love and unity…and the need to absorb Sammy’s special talents. A dynamic character to be sure. Perhaps no one this year was more memorable than Gladys in Weapons. Whether she is jump scaring you on the ceiling, disarming you with her odd demeanor, or being deadly and frighteningly serious…Gladys is a pure force of nature.
Best Killer is one of this year’s toughest award categories. Some very different motivations are acted upon in some incredibly effective ways. First reaction is to look at the way Tucker dominates his story…or the way Gladys completely overtakes hers. But how much of that was performance over effectiveness? Both Jai Courtney and Amy Madigan have earned much deserved nominations in the acting categories for their work. As killers…they don’t have the highest body counts out there…even with their unique ways of doing business. Which brings us to that pesky monkey. A string of memorable kills…a high body count…and a completely unstoppable force. Can an inanimate object be the best killer of the year?
The Scary Goes To…
The Monkey in The Monkey
Best Gore Effects
The Sadness, Project Wolf Hunting and Terrifier 3 took home the first three iterations of this award. They did so by splattering blood and violence across the screen in every frame. Who will join them in 2025? The nominees for Best Gore Effects are…
With gore effects you’re looking for multiple things. Are they effective? Do they look good? Is there a lot of them? That last one has been a tiebreaker for these awards dating back to the start. Paint the walls red and you’ve got a nice shot at this one. This year, however, there weren’t movies that went as hard as our previous winners have. Which means…effectiveness and quality are key. Bring Her Back features a knife chewing scene as uncomfortable and memorable as any effect in recent memory. Meat Kills has brutally realistic gore when it calls upon it. The Monkey probably has the most gore of the contenders…but they don’t stay with you the way some others on the list do. The Ugly Stepsister‘s best moments are built around body horror that looks fantastic. V/H/S/Halloween is consistently gooey…even as it plays them for some laughs.
A strong year for practical gore brings us to another tough category. The gore effects in these films are often their best quality. Movies like Meat Kills and The Ugly Stepsister need them to make their movie’s work. The Monkey and V/H/S/Halloween use them to show us a good time. Bring Her Back uses them to make sure you can’t easily shake off what you’ve seen. Without an obvious tiebreaker available from an out and out gorefest…we turn to the one that stands out the most.
The Scary Goes To…
Bring Her Back
Best Twist
The first Scare Value Award for Best Twist went to Orphan: First Kill‘s jaw dropper. In 2023, The Sacrifice Game got the nod for a fun, if slight, game-changer. Last year’s Speak No Evil remake took home the award. How will this year’s crop measure up? The nominees for Best Twist are…
There are multiple clowns – Clown in a Cornfield
Patrick is a robot too – Companion
Erik is adopted – Final Destination: Bloodlines
The kids aren’t what they seem – Marshmallow
The ghost’s identity – Presence
One of the most interesting things about story twists is how they come at different times and can have different intentions. Clown in a Cornfield changes from a standard masked slasher to generational war halfway through its story. Companion unveils (one of) its twists around the same time. If you managed to go into the movie without knowing that Iris was a robot…congratulations. Because that would have been amazing. It’s still amazing when you find out there’s a second robot hanging around too.
Final Destinations: Bloodlines uses its twist to have a lot of laughs. Everything leading up to learning what Erik’s true heritage is has you on edge. Once you learn…you’ll be in stitches. Marshmallow saves its twist for the end. It recontextualizes what came before and retroactively changes the story into something different. Presence saves its twist for the end too…adding an incredibly moving layer to the entity we’ve been watching through the eyes of all along.
Each of these twists benefits their story. Sometimes in entertaining ways…sometimes in emotional ones. One of them manages to ultimately do both. Even if it might not even be the best twist in its movie depending on how blind you managed to enter the story.
The Scary Goes To…
Patrick is a robot too – Companion
Best Kill
Best Kill is always a fun category. Previous winners in this category were Halloween Ends‘ babysitting mishap, the dog attack in When Evil Lurks and the Yoga Kill from In A Violent Nature. Which fresh kill will join the pantheon of Scare Value Award winners? The nominees for Best Kill are…
Head in a bear trap…eaten by rabbits – Bambi: The Reckoning
Heather is fed to a shark – Dangerous Animals
The MRI machine – Final Destination: Bloodlines
Swimming pool explosion – The Monkey
Gladys ripped apart – Weapons
2025 had no shortage of memorable kills. If you missed out on the latest Poohniverse entry, Bambi: The Reckoning, you missed out on one of the best. We’re talking about a head caught in a bear trap while a pack of little rabbits nibble away at the body. That’s good stuff no matter where you steal your IP from. Dangerous Animals‘ signature kill is pretty incredible too. Tucker ties poor Heather up and dangles her above the hungry sharks below…until only the leftovers remain bobbing in the water. Perhaps no death in 2025 was more memorable than Final Destination: Bloodlines‘ MRI machine debacle. The fact that the one “safe” character in the group fell to its magnetic grip just proved that things get messy when you mess with death and lose.
The Monkey had plenty of options to choose from in this category. It had the best collection of kills in 2025…but this is an individual award. For the best of the bunch, we took the explosive swimming pool kill that left a diver splattered across the hotel’s property. Aunt Gladys’s death in Weapons was a supremely satisfying moment. Being ripped apart by the very children she aimed to suck the life from had a perfect irony to it. If you include her mad dash through the neighborhood…it’s easily one of the best scenes of the year.
This is always a fun, and difficult, category. People have their favorites…and there are a lot of kills throughout an entire year of horror. Depending on what criteria you use…any kill here (and a few that aren’t) could easily top your list. This list will be topped by the one that had people squirming in their seat from beginning to end.
The Scary Goes To…
The MRI Machine – Final Destination: Bloodlines
2025 Scare Value Hall of Fame Inductee
Each year two films will be selected to join the Scare Value Hall of Fame. These movies are the best of the best in horror history. They can be important of influential…or just a hell of a lot of fun. This year’s second inductee will be unveiled in Part 2 of the 2025 Sare Value Awards tomorrow. This year’s inductees will be enshrined alongside John Carpenter’s Halloween, George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein, William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, Ishiro Honda’s Godzilla and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. For our first inductee…we look back at the mother of all slasher movies.
Psycho
Psycho is one of three masterpieces to claim Ed Gein as an inspiration. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre took its spot in the hall last year…Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of Robert Bloch’s novel joins in this year. The ball is now firmly in the court of The Silence of the Lambs. I’m sure it will complete the trifecta at some point. Hitchcock’s Psycho improves upon the novel in a few ways…most importantly by changing Norman Bates from an unlikeable slob to the timid and trapped Anthony Perkins version you can’t help but side with. That’s the film’s greatest trick. Forcing you to the side you don’t know that you shouldn’t be on until well after the most famous scene in movie history takes place inside the motel shower.
Thank you for checking out part 1 of our version of our 2025 Horror movie awards. The 2025 Scare Value awards will return tomorrow to award Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Screenplay…and to induct another film into the Scare Value Hall of Fame.
