History TooDumbToLive / FIlm

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!Note: As a DeathTrope, [[Administrivia/HandlingSpoilers all spoilers on this page are unmarked]].
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* ''Film/TwentyEightDaysLater'': The AnimalWrongsGroup at the beginning. After being explicitly told that a monkey is infected with a contagious disease, one of them frees it anyway, leading to a ZombieApocalypse that kills nearly everyone in Great Britain, including most members of the animal wrongs group.
** The scientists, too. They ''know'' that the monkey is infected with the Rage virus, and they presumably know that it will cause a ZombieApocalypse if let out. And yet their only effort to ''stop'' this from occurring is to just give a verbal warning to the people trying to release the monkey.
* ''Film/TwentyEightWeeksLater'' The US Army allows unsupervised access to an asymptomatic infected, who consequently infects someone. Then they evacuate another one to Europe where the whole thing starts all over again, except this time it's not on an isolated set of islands.
* ''Film/AHistoryOfViolence'': Makes the perfect couple with BondVillainStupidity when all the mobsters, including their boss, dies horribly by the hand of the protagonist [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim due to their inability to just kill him off at the first occasion.]] The result is particularly hilarious when we learn, just before the last shooting, that in spite of all the talking and the stalking the villains performed earlier, their intentions was REALLY and JUST and PLAINLY to see the protagonist DEAD. Bonus points for the fact that they even know he was the ultimate {{Badass}} from the very start.
* ''Film/AlienResurrection'': Dr. Gediman becomes increasingly fascinated with the aliens, to the point that he feels they will identify with him. When the Newborn approaches him after identifying more closely with Ripley 8 than the Queen, he seems to genuinely believe it might even think of him as its daddy, and if this hybrid strain always bites into the skull of its daddy like a nectarine, ''he's right''.
* ''Franchise/{{Alien}}'': Any human who tries to capture/breed/weaponize/domesticate the Xenomorphs falls under this. The (non-canon) ''Aliens'' comics explain this as an telepathic influence from the hive mind--they pull at the weak points of humanity and guide them into making breeding easier. It becomes closer to "Too Greedy To Live" in this light.
* ''Franchise/AlienVsPredator'': The Predators in much franchise media often fall into this trope. Despite the fact that Xenomorphs are apparently one of the species that Predators enjoy hunting the most, and thus should already know what they're capable of, Predators are frequently TooDumbToLive when they fight them. For instance, instead of attacking them at range, they frequently meet them in hand to hand combat, which is the Xenomorph's forte. Worse, they often tend to attack them not with blunt weapons or lasers, or even just their own fists, but with bladed weapons. [[IdiotBall That's right, they use bladed weapons in melee combat on a species that usually kills its prey at close range and bleeds acid when it gets cut.]] Even the so called "veteran warriors" do this. However, ExpandedUniverse gives a possible explanation for this; Predator blood neutralizes Xenomorph acid, so the acid isn't ''nearly'' as dangerous to them as it is to other species and the veteran Predators utilize specially crafted blades that ''don't'' melt on contact with the acid. It's also partially justified because the Predators are HonorBeforeReason incarnated. The fact that the Aliens are at their most dangerous up close and personal is exactly the reason they are fought at close quarters: the harder the fight, the bigger the renown for the killer.
* ''Film/AliensVsPredatorRequiem'':
** Jesse's companions already killed the Alien in the stairwell, but she runs away and screams, forcing her companions to chase after her through a more heavily Alien-populated section of the hospital. Then she dies when she gets into the path of the Predator's disc blades. The Predator wasn't even ''trying'' to kill her, she just runs straight into the middle of a fight between the Predator and Aliens and gets hit ''by accident''. WhatAnIdiot.
** There's also the part near the beginning when the pizza delivery boy and his brother go down into the sewer for his car keys at night and nearly get killed by the Predator. It wasn't even like it turned to night by the time they got to the sewer, they clearly waited until night to go down, presumably so no one saw them doing it. Granted they didn't know that the Alien or Predator were on Earth yet, but still one would think that going into a sewer at night is just asking for ''some'' sort of trouble.
** None of the characters seem capable of realizing that the Predator is fighting the Aliens and that maybe it would be a good idea to just let it go about it's business and not bug it. The main character seems to at least partially notice this near the end, choosing to flee and leave the Predator alone rather then trying to fight it (an action that gets some other characters killed).
* ''Film/AnAmericanWerewolfInLondon'': David and Jack in the beginning exemplify this trope by, after being warned of danger, wandering off the road in the middle of the night, presumably without any food. Without the werewolf they still would have been lost for a long time.
* ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreetPart2FreddysRevenge'': Dude at pool party, your friends are being chased and murdered by a serial killer that has managed to possess someone enough to find a way into reality. You really think it's a good idea to tell him to calm down when he's obviously the one you've seen killing your friends and brandishing a glove with knives on the fingers? Do you have a death wish?
* ''Film/{{Arachnophobia}}'': Dr. Atherton is the foremost spider expert in the country, and he's been extensively informed how dangerous the new breed of spiders are. He sees no problem however in investigating the huge spider's nest in the barn all by himself, with no protection whatsoever. Predictably, [[TheWorldsExpertOnGettingKilled he dies within minutes]].
* ''Film/{{Batman}}''
** Half of Gotham seems to be this way. It was already common knowledge that the Joker had murdered many people, but that didn't stop them from diving at the cash he offered in public. He even said into a microphone, "Now comes the part where I relieve you, the little people, of the burden of your failed and useless lives," but they're too engrossed to listen. A minute later, many are dead. And some who aren't dead yet ''still'' grab for cash.
** A plot point cut for length in the movie but present in the novelization, you'd think that the people grabbing the money would have noticed the Joker's face on each bill and realized the cash was all fake.
** Also, poor Bob, after Joker has just been decisively pissed off and now wants to blow off some steam. He's had his little outburst, but there's a TranquilFury brewing under his crackpot exterior -- something his loyal lackey fails to notice. Of course, ''not'' giving him the gun would ''surely'' result in [[MortonsFork the same result]].
--> '''Joker:''' Bob? Gun.
--> '''Bob:''' ''(unquestioningly hands his boss his gun, not realizing Joker's in a killing mood; Joker coldly pops a bullet in his chest)''
* ''Film/BatmanReturns'' gives us The Ice Princess who is shown to be a ditz when she can't remember whether the lights come on and then pushes the switch or vice versa, but the real crown jewel is when she stands on the edge of a building; it's no wonder The Penguin so easily got Batman framed.
* ''Film/BattleRoyale'': Quite a few characters in the film adaptation. Toshinori Oda probably takes the cake for surviving a burst of gunfire due to his bulletproof vest, then jumping up a few seconds later and loudly proclaiming "I'm alive!"
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock's ''Film/TheBirds'' has Melanie going up to a room she knows is filled with birds. The result is that she is nearly killed by dozens of attacking birds. When the actress asked, "Hitch, why would I do this?", he replied, "Because I tell you to."
* ''Film/BladeRunner''. Tyrell, Tyrell, Tyrell. When your angry, vengeful creation is confronting you and demanding you perform a medical procedure on him, the correct answer is not to explain why that procedure would be fatal, it's to perform it anyway. Possibly justified in that his idolization of Roy as his ultimate creation may have been stronger than his self-preservation.
* ''Film/{{Blitz}}'':
** There is a particularly simple individual by the name of Radnor who fancies himself as a police informant after realizing that a guy who boasts of shooting a police dog 'for practice' is now killing police officers. Lacking the evidence needed to convince the police, he starts his own investigation. His idea of inconspicuous clothing while observing the killer's residence amounts to a purple, green & white jump suit. When he discovers the car in which the killer is hiding weapons & trophies, he breaks into it and ''[[BetterManhandleTheMurderWeapon personally handles]]'' the murder weapon before putting it back. The police aren't interested in his evidence (not at the £50,000 asking price) so he goes to a member of the press who is not much smarter. When he shows the journalist the car, the killer observes them. They retire to a pub to 'talk business' and when the journalist produces the money in an envelope, Radnor insists it is not 50 grand, and goes into the toilets to count it. Guess who followed them to the pub? Radnor is in the toilets counting, when the killer breezes past him, perhaps to check the latter stalls for potential witnesses. Does he take this opportunity to run for the door or scream for help? No, he just becomes terrified and starts pleading with the killer that "I haven't told him your name yet". [[TheCanKickedHim He meets his end in a toilet bowel.]]
** The killer has his own moment at the end of the film. Trying to kill the officer leading the investigation, he follows him to a parking station while wearing a police uniform he stole from one of his victims, but instead he is ambushed by the officer and his 'buddy' cop. He gets a thorough beating then laughingly claims he is going to sue them for all they are worth. Then one officer points out they have in their possession his gun, which has previously been used to shoot at ''people in uniform''. Guess what happens?
* ''The Boogens'' features a ''cast'' of this. The titular monsters may actually be smarter than the humans and dog, and they're not actually depicted as anything other than hungry. Sadly, probably the stupidest of the humans are the alpha couple, and thus survive.
* ''Film/BornOfEarth'': A character decides to stray away from the main group to take a piss...while being in the sewers being chased by monsters and one of their party having been gruesomely killed only barely a minute before.
* ''Film/BurnAfterReading'': Multiple characters more than qualify, but Chad Feldheimer goes above and beyond the call of duty, and definitely earns the title since he ends up getting shot in the head before the second act is even over.
* ''Film/CabinFever'': Every. Single. Character.
** There should be a poll to see how many would continue shaving their legs if the skin ''started to slough off'' with noticeable amounts of blood and scraping noises to {{Squick}} anybody out.
** Or a poll of people in general to ask if they would have unprotected casual sex in the middle of a deadly epidemic.
** Then there is [[FanNickname Party Cop]], whose every single action causes even more problems and the virus to spreed. The only problem? He [[KarmaHoudini makes it through 2 films without suffering any consequences]], or even aware he was causing so much damage.
* ''Film/TheCall'': Let us take a moment to mourn for the intelligence of the driver, who made not one, not two, but three really stupid mistakes that ended in his death. #1, he followed someone who was acting suspiciously to a secluded area. #2, he pulled out his cell phone to call the cops right in front of him. #3, after he's put in the trunk, he inexplicably starts screaming and yelling for help, despite Casey begging him not to. That last one ends with him getting stabbed repeatedly in the chest with a screwdriver.
* ''Camel Spiders'': A teacher takes his students on a hike through the woods when they spy a camel spider the size of a small dog. Despite the students telling him to stay back, he curiously walks towards it, even when it starts making threat displays. It kills him.
* Every victim in ''Film/{{Candyman}}''. Seriously, anyone who ''intentionally'' summons the malevolent spirit of a hook-handed SerialKiller who was killed by a lynch mob deserves what they get.
* ''Film/{{Christine}}'': Head goon Buddy, when chased by the possessed big V-8 powered car, opts to run down a long stretch of straight highway, rather than get off-road where a car might have some difficulty getting through at any speed.
* ''Film/TheChristmasToy'': Ditz the christmas toy invokes this trope in its most literal sense, since his defining character trait is stupidity, he goes off and does literally the dumbest thing a toy in their world can do, with [[NeverSayDie "death"]] as his reward.
* ''Film/ConAir'': A Prison Guard and FBI Agent Larkin have just found a box labeled "[[ShmuckBait Do Not Open]]" in the cell of Cyrus Grissom, a criminal genius, terrorist, and murderer. Larkin goes to fetch the bomb squad, explicitly ordering the guard to not open the box. The second Larkin is out of the room, the guard sits right down on the bed and opens the box. [[StuffBlowingUp He is immediately blown to smithereens.]]
* ''Film/{{Creepshow}}'': One segment of the horror anthology details the sad demise of numbskulled backwoods hick [[Creator/StephenKing Jordy Verill]]. Kind of a tragic example, since the choice that ends up dooming him is made willingly, after resigning himself to the fact that ''not'' doing so will only [[YourDaysAreNumbered delay the inevitable]].
* ''Film/TheCreepingTerror'': ''Every single human being''. The title monster eats people, but in order to do so it has to reach them by moving very slowly. However, because idiots simply sit there and scream rather than run away, they suffer the grisly death that their stupidity deserves. The fact that [[SpecialEffectFailure they have to crawl into its mouth to be eaten]] doesn't help.
* Several characters in both the original ''Film/DawnOfTheDead1978'' and [[Film/DawnOfTheDead2004 the remake]]. Since they're in the middle of a mass zombie outbreak, most of them die.
* ''Film/TheDayAfterTomorrow''. Sure, it's a DisasterMovie (and a pretty silly one at that), but it had this in spades.
** Hundreds of people are taking shelter in the public library and decide that rather than listening to the son of the smartest climatologist in the country (who just had an extended conversation with his father), they're going to go and do the exact opposite. They all freeze to death. Had they bothered listening, they would've been uncomfortable, but they would've survived.
** Then there was the scene meant to be a CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming in which Frank is dangling from a glass roof. The glass starts to crack and Frank decides to make a HeroicSacrifice because there is no way the glass can support Jason and his weight. FridgeLogic sets in when you realize Jason is holding onto two steel support beams that could have easily held the weight of the sled, the entire party, and probably an elephant.
** And then there's the entire trip. The very intelligent climatologist, who said that survival outside would be impossible, discovered that the storm would last a couple days and personally recommended the president send search and rescue parties once the storm ended, loses his best friend and almost kills another doing exactly what he said not to do and arriving at the same time as the rescue teams he is responsible for sending.
* ''Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill2008'':
** The military, law enforcement, and the government in general, though all of government in all of fiction is guilty of this trope, and it's not an unexpected reaction to aliens being suddenly real. Klaatu comes to Earth and reaches out his hand to the protagonists. Clearly, putting a bullet in him is the appropriate response. Only later do they realize he was able to shut down their defense network on a whim, and so they decide imprisoning and (implicitly) ''torturing'' him is a good idea. Klaatu's decision, after consulting a spy on Earth, is naturally that HumansAreTheRealMonsters and have to go, so the swarm of nanobots beings devouring every man-made object in its path. The military bombs it, only to see it grow larger. The Secretary of Defense at least grows a brain at this point, but the president orders even more bombing as if the opinion of his military adviser isn't worth considering.
** Klatuu's people deserve extra stupidity points as well. Consider that their entire motivation for destroying humanity is to preserve the non-human portions of Earth's biosphere. They then set their nanotech-based weapon on "Dissolve Everything", ''including rocks and trees!'' In the immortal words of Robert Asprin, "Very inferior as superior beings go."
* ''Film/DeepBlueSea'':
** The location of the facility implies this form of mentality in the project designers. Genetically-enhanced super-sharks with improved brain functions? Why not build the research lab for them in ''the middle of the ocean'' where [[TemptingFate nobody can reach the personnel]] and where, if the overly-sophisticated defense system breaks down, said sharks can escape into the wild and [[GoneHorriblyWrong spread their super-genes around the world]]. As Cracked.com put it, "You know what makes a really effective defense against sharks escaping? Hundreds of miles of dry land."
** Then Creator/SamuelLJackson stands in front of an open pool the sharks have access to give his RousingSpeech, and is eaten by a shark at its climax. It's not clear if the movie [[RealityEnsues did that last bit on purpose]].
** The sheer dumbness of giving something as deadly as a shark increased human brain power in the first place. That was bound to go well. Especially without sterilizing them. Sharks are already very intelligent, and giving them sapience is going to make them even more cunning than they are already.
* ''Film/DeepImpact'': Sarah's parents let their child refuse to go into the ark tunnel and then when Leo comes back for her, they don't try to follow on foot just because he has a motorbike.
* ''Film/DemolitionMan'': Raymond Cocteau frees a dangerous psychopath in order to get rid of an enemy, but he has it implanted in his brain that he can't ever harm him. However, he also allows him to bring other criminals inside his home who don't have the don't-harm-Cocteau rule implanted. It doesn't end well for him.
* ''Film/DjangoUnchained'': Late in the movie, Candie discovers the true identities and intentions of Django and Schultz, but gives them a chance to walk away with Django's wife, essentially giving them everything they want. Rather then take advantage of this golden opportunity, Schultz completely blows it by shooting Candie, starting a shootout that gets himself killed and nearly gets Django killed as well. Even if Schultz really wanted to kill Candie, this still makes no sense. He could have simply walked away and then returned later to kill him at a more opportune time when he wasn't in the middle of Candie's mansion surrounded by armed guards.
* ''Film/DraculaUntold'': After taking out the entire Turkish army to the last man, the vampire backup Vlad brings decides to threaten his human son right in front of him because [[KillEmAll "they (humans) are all our enemies now."]] For context, they decided to threaten the son of a guy that started a war, became an immortal vampire, slaughtered the entire Turkish army almost single handed, and then killed the leader in single combat [[PapaWolf largely just to protect his son]], and who was currently generating the cloud barrier that kept them all from burning to death in the sun. [[SarcasmMode Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.]]
* DudeWheresMyCar: Even compared to the profound idiocy of the lead characters, JerkJock Tommy is a moron. So five women (who are actually evil aliens) are pissed that they didn't get the super weapon they wanted are starting to merge together into a giant woman. Now everyone else is hiding or running for their lives and this enormous woman is obviously about to go on a rampage, but what does Tommy do? He just ogles the giant woman's body, laughs,, and [[TemptingFate asks her if she spits or swallows.]] In response the giant woman gives him a disgusted look then she eats him alive.
* ''Film/{{Elysium}}'': Delacourt for upclose confronting a complete psycho like Kruger without any protection or guards.
* ''Film/{{Equilibrium}}''. Is it ideal to continue to piss off one of your First Class Grammaton Clerics who you have just informed was an UnwittingPawn in your scheme to infiltrate the Resistance? Is there really a need to be surprised that one of your highly trained Clerics has wiped out your guards? Is there even a need to be surprised at his anger with the injustice and pain you have constantly caused him when he was already a very deadly target and of very volatile character in the first place? Cut the pathetic bullshit. He's going TranquilFury on ALL your asses.
* ''Film/EuropaReport'': Katya stays out in deadly radiation long after advised to come back with some unknown danger below the ice.
* ''Film/EvilDead2013'': Eric messes around with the [[TomeOfEldritchLore Naturom Demonto]] despite the fact he found it wrapped up in a garbage bag that was tied up in barbed wire, in a basement full of horrifically mummified cats. Not even the fact it is bound in GenuineHumanHide, chock full of horrific illustrations and mad rants stop him from painstakingly creating etchings to get at the words that were scribbled out and reading them aloud. Completely ignoring the presence of warnings on ''the same damn page'' to '''leave the scribbled-out words the [[PrecisionFStrike fuck]] alone'''. This results in the brutal deaths of his friends and himself. Seriously, there's HollywoodAtheist and then there's this...
* ''Film/ExMachina'': Despite the fact that Nathan's TuringTest of Ava was explicitly to see whether she could convince Caleb to help her escape, he had absolutely no contingency in place to stop her when she actually DID manage to get out of her room. Also, it never apparently occurred to him to put any kind of fail-safes against RobotGirl [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters Kyoko rebelling]], and yet he constantly lets her handle knives and what not.
* 2001 heist film ''Firetrap''. A building is on fire. A guard is badly injured. What's a guy to do to save him? Get on the elevator during a fire, and talk a woman you like into going with you. What do you think happened to them?
* ''Film/TheFlightOfThePhoenix2004'': The plane has just crashed in the middle of the desert and it's stormy outside. Davis goes out, in the middle of the night, to take a leak. Not only does he walk ''unnecessarily'' far away from the plane (It's the middle of the night! No one will see you, jeez), he somehow trips and falls down, then rolls ten meters away from where he was -- ''and gets '''lost'''''. He fails to find his way back to the plane, and dies out there.
* In ''Film/FourBrothers'', Lt. Green appears to be the only competent cop in the Detroit police department. This illusion is shattered near the end of the movie, when Green finds proof that Fowler is corrupt. He doesn't turn the evidence of Fowler's corruption over to his superiors on the force, nor does he tell any of his fellow cops, nor does he tell anyone else. Instead he goes to confront Fowler alone just to beat him up and then walk away, giving Fowler the perfect opportunity to murder him. Fowler then has no trouble covering up the murder since Green never told anyone he was dirty.
* ''Film/FreddysDeadTheFinalNightmare''. When is it ever a good idea to be stoned in these films? It's a choice to do this, and Spencer gets completely whacked out before indifferently shrugging that an undead serial killer suddenly appears on the TV after interrupting someone else and tells him to ''get high''. Cue being turned into a video game character who gets turned into fodder. Don't do drugs, kids.
* ''Film/FreddyVsJason''. When Freeburg sees a monster bug show up, he thinks it's awesome when it takes out a bong, and decides to follow it when it goes away. This might be explained by the fact that he's stoned out of his mind, but getting high in the first place while knowing that they're on the run from ''two'' undead serial killers was his own decision as well, so he still qualifies.
* Although this trope is hardly rare in slasher movies, special mention must be given to the FinalGirl from the original ''Film/FridayThe13th1980''. She omitted [[OnceIsNotEnough no less than three times]], each time leaving the killer's weapon right there for them when they woke up. There were a bunch of other examples of her stupidity, but that was the outstanding one.
* [[DamselScrappy Parker]] in the 2010 ''Film/OpenWater'' knockoff ''Film/{{Frozen 2010}}''. Granted, the guys weren't the brightest bulbs either (especially Dan, whose decision to bring the skiing-impaired, fair-haired maiden on ''a skiing vacation'' set the whole chain of events that led to them getting trapped on a ski-lift in motion - on his defense, though, it was at ''her'' insistence), but she takes it too far. She is also the sole survivor of the flick due to a gigantic AssPull.
* ''Film/FullMetalJacket'': When Gomer Pyle is in the middle of a psychotic breakdown and holding a loaded rifle, [[DrillSergeantNasty Gunnery Sergeant Hartman]] decides that, rather than call in the [=MP=]s, he should continue with the invective he's been slinging Pyle's way all through boot camp, and gets gunned down by Pyle for his trouble.
* ''Film/{{Gabriel}}'': The archangel Gabriel; from the very first person that he meets onward he is constantly warned that using his powers will attract the attention of every bad guy in the city, letting them know exactly where he is. So what does he do? Why, he seeks out his fallen comrades who are in hiding and proceeds to use large quantities of his powers to "help" them, even when they specifically and emphatically tell him not to and yell at him for it after the fact.
* ''Film/GhostShip'': First mate Greer knows he is on a ghost ship where some of his mates have already died. After downing his sorrows with a drink, he decides to shut off his brain and try to make out with the seductive female ghost. He falls straight through her intangible body into an elevator shaft.
* ''Film/GIJoeTheRiseOfCobra'': The fatal flaw of the Neo-Vipers. The loss of their self-preservation instincts might make them determined, but it also makes them much more likely to make fatal mistakes.
* ''Any'' attempt the JSDF uses to stop/kill Franchise/{{Godzilla}} falls under this. Most of the time, they only succeed in angering him...[[UnstoppableRage which only makes things worse.]] Conventional weaponry only annoys Godzilla and giant robots and laser cannons only serve as a temporary solution before Godzilla gets back up again and lays waste to them. And, yet they still use them in each film.
** The aliens in the Showa era don't seem to fair much better. You'd think they'd learn by now that Ghidorah is just going to be defeated by Godzilla (and whoever Godzilla is teamed-up with at the time). [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption Yet, they don't.]]
** Orga from ''Film/{{Godzilla 2000}}'' is a particularly infamous example. He tries to swallow Godzilla only to be killed by Godzilla's Nuclear Pulse. Ok, how dense do you have to be to not realize that trying to eat the dinosaur with extremely powerful radiation-based abilities is a ''bad'' idea?
** Gabara from ''Film/AllMonstersAttack'' just loves to bully Minya, even though he's ''well''-aware that Minya happens to be [[PapaWolf Godzilla's son.]] He learns his lesson the hard way, maybe.
** Pretty much anyone trying to harm Godzilla's son in ''any'' timeline is proof that they're pretty much going to have to consider it a miracle if Godzilla leaves anything left of them after he gets done with them. Whether or not whatever's left is ''living'', or for that matter even ''recognizable'' in any way, shape, or form is another matter altogether. Trying to harm ''any'' iteration of Godzilla's son is a pretty good way to commit ''[[SuicideByCop Suicide by Godzilla]]''.
** ''Film/{{Godzilla 2014}}''. Can't be a Godzilla movie without military stupidity:\\\
After Godzilla makes landfall on Honolulu, the landing forces decides it's a good idea to open fire on him with their puny assault rifles at a 350 foot monster, given the flares has shown just how huge he is. Granted they stop firing before they deplete their magazine, and the look they give makes it aptly clear that they realized this was a bad idea.\\\
The Navy attacking Godzilla as he reaches California. Not only does this not work, but Godzilla ends up destroying the Golden Gate Bridge ''by accident''.\\\
They have airplanes flying around San Francisco in anticipation of the arrival of a monster that has already demonstrated EMP abilities powerful enough to disable airplanes and send them crashing. Not-a-spoiler: They also crash.
* Many of the characters in ''Film/{{Gorgo}}'' qualify. First, our heroes bring a dangerous animal into a major population center, then disregard the possibility of Gorgo being a juvenile, then disregard the effects of its [[MamaBear mother]] [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever coming into said population center]] (confident that [[FiveRoundsRapid modern technology]] can stop it) to the point where the government didn't even bother to evacuate the city! But the jewel in the crown has to go to a trio of teenage gawkers who got up close to the edge of the river Thames to watch the monster. They watched the army fill the river with gasoline and ignite it, then watch the river burn for a full minute before realizing: Hey, maybe it's not such a good idea to be near the water while it holds burning gasoline. They are promptly, gloriously, incinerated.
* ''Film/GraveEncounters2'': The group of film students makes the decision to break into an abandoned mental asylum in the middle of the night not in spite of the fact that it might be dangerous, but ''because'' they believe that it killed a group of people horribly. The results are somewhat predictable.
* ''Franchise/{{Halloween}}'':
** ''Film/{{Halloween 1978}}'': Laurie Strode fails to make sure Mike Meyers was dead after he came back from apparent death the first time-- but then that would've been anticlimactic, wouldn't've it?
** This is especially prevalent in Zombie's ''Film/{{Halloween 2007}}'' and ''Film/HalloweenII2009'' when several people insult and strike Myers. This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that Myers in those films is [[BullyingADragon A SEVEN FOOT TALL GIANT!!!]]
* ''Film/{{Hancock}}'': All of the criminals. The titular superhero Hancock is a JerkAss FlyingBrick who can and will use his powers to frighten, humiliate, or possibly mutilate anyone who remotely displeases him. He's also [[NighInvulnerability immune to harm]]. Despite these facts, they all either insult him, try to provoke him, or [[ShootingSuperman shoot him]], even though it should be obvious he will cause them [[DisproportionateRetribution serious harm in return]].
* ''Film/HardBoiled'': A nameless Triad thug shoots two SWAT officers in the climactic hospital battle, killing one of them. As he goes to finish off the other, Teresa Chang snatches up a pistol and holds it on him. Possibly believing that she was merely a trapped civilian (she was wearing plainclothes) and wouldn't have the nerve to shoot him, the thug slapped her and called her a "fucking bitch!" She promptly shot him about five times in the torso.
* ''Film/{{Hulk}}'': Seriously, will General Ross ever get that shooting ? stopping Hulk, hurting Betty = Hulk turning into Banner? Bruce spends the entire movies trying to lay low and keep things under control. Then the military catches him, tries to perform experiments on him, he turns into the Hulk, and they make things WORSE by hitting him with heavy artillery, making him angrier than before.
* The ''Film/HorribleBosses'' films: All three of the protagonists, but especially Dale and Kurt. Each of them makes at least two stupid mistakes in the first film; in the second movie, this is downplayed by Nick, but still played ''very'' straight by Dale and Kurt.
* ''Disney/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame'': While Frollo is a cunning man, he acts on this trope near the end of the film when he climbs on top of the gargoyle to kill Esmerelda. Considering that he is standing up straight on the over-hanging gargoyle, with no support whatsoever, means his body weight causes the aging statue to crack.
* ''Film/TheHungerGames'':
** Katniss, safely hidden in a tree, watches a Tribute learn a cardinal rule about stealth in hostile territory the hard way: under no circumstances do you ''make a camp fire''; [[EpicFail you'll be too easy for the enemy to spot]].
** Clove, rather than just killing Katniss, starts [[EvilGloating gloating]] about how her group killed Rue. Thresh happens to be listening, and it ends badly for Clove.
* Pretty much the entire human race in ''Film/{{Idiocracy}}'', to the point where FridgeLogic has you wondering how they ''do''. One of the best ones is how they are on the verge of mass starvations because they irrigate their crops with Brawndo, a kind of sports energy drink, thinking that it's full of electrolytes and "it's what plants crave!" Anyone with any idea what an electrolyte is (it's ''salt'') will know that it's [[SaltTheEarth precisely the opposite of what a plant craves]], and Joe has to spend a lot of time trying to convince the morons that using water works better.
* ''Film/IRobot'': Whose bright idea was it to install hardware into robot butlers and maids that made them strong enough to crush steel, leap fifty feet in the air, and run at a hundred miles per hour?? Not exactly something chambermaids and cooks need to do. The crisis that happens is more their inventor's fault than the villain. The humans in the movie fail literature too by arguing over the Three Rules, not knowing that most of Asimov's stories focused on the ''flaws'' of said rules.
* ''Film/IKnowWhatYouDidLastSummer''. Helen, a blonde, is running through back alleys. So close, so very close is a crowded parade--which she ''left'' in order to enter said back alleys. Back behind her is the killer, her dead sister, and piles of tires. She hears a sound, ''stops'', turns back; the killer is there and grabs her and drags her behind the tires. Death ensues. Notable in that Helen is played by Creator/SarahMichelleGellar. ''After'' ''{{Series/Buffy|TheVampireSlayer}}'', which was specifically made to subvert the idea of the helpless blonde cheerleader. Good lord.
* ''Film/TheIncredibleHulk'': Emil Blonsky deserves special mention. He held his own in a battle with Hulk, mainly because of how quick he was, due to the super soldier serum he'd been given. After he and the rest of his military division have thrown everything they have at Hulk, and he is still walking, Ross tells Blonsky to fall back. Blonsky then rips off his earpiece, drops his gun and attempts to stare down the Hulk, saying "Is that all you've got?" Cue Hulk-powered thrust kick to the chest, followed by being smooshed all over a tree. Said smooshing breaks every bone in his body, which would have killed him if not for the super soldier serum.
* ''Franchise/IndianaJones'':
** [[BigBad Rene Belloq]] in ''Film/RaidersOfTheLostArk''. One would think that before "testing" something like TheArkOfTheCovenant, he would have actually done some ''research'' on it, and ''Literature/TheBible'' clearly says (Samuel 6:19, King James version), ''And he smote the men of Bethshemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the LORD, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men: and the people lamented, because the LORD had smitten many of the people with a great slaughter.'' Indy apparently knew about this passage, and tells Marion to close her eyes and not open them under any condition, but Belloq foolishly looks in it, and well, what happens to him and the Nazis is ''not'' pretty.
** ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheLastCrusade'': Dr. Elsa Schneider, after being told by the immortal knight that the Holy Grail must never cross the great seal, grabs the Holy Grail and starts backing away with it while Indy keeps telling her to ''don't move'' and ''don't cross the seal''! Moments later, she finds herself hanging for dear life above a huge chasm that she caused. Instead of letting Indy save her, she reaches for the grail. Naturally, she suffers a DeathByMaterialism when her hand slips from Indy's hold.
* ''Film/{{Ink}}'': During the kidnapping scene, it never occurs to Emma to try hiding under a bed or a couch until the nasty monster that's trying to take her gets run off. Similarly, it never occurs to any of the Storytellers to grab Emma and get her away from Ink, or to call in reinforcements before Ink even made it out of the house.
* ''Film/{{Insidious}}'': Not only does Josh Dalton spend most of the movie as the AgentScully, arguing with his GenreSavvy wife, when he finally does accept the weirdness and go into the Further to save his son, he breaks every rule he was told to follow, culminating in him stopping ''ten feet'' from his body to yell at a ghost that's been stalking him since childhood ''to possess him specifically''. The ghost possesses his body, resulting in the deaths of his family and every other character in the film. And Josh is likely stuck with a FateWorseThanDeath. NiceJobBreakingItHero.
* ''Film/IpMan'': Even after the sadistic Japanese Colonel Sato watches Ip Man beat ten karateka nearly to death, he doesn't think that walking within close range of the Wing Chun master and threatening his wife and child with a gun is a bad idea.
* ''Film/IronMan2'': Yes, Justin. Let the brilliant, vindictive Russian physicist, who you've known only for a few hours, change the design and software of your massive army of {{Mecha Mook}}s. {{What could possibly go wrong}}?
* The two dumb kids in ''Film/{{Jaws}}'', who decided that, while the town is on high alert for ANY potential shark fins, would do a prank involving a fake shark fin on a piece of wood, and tow it from underwater. Fortunately for the kids, they didn't get shot. Unfortunately, thanks to their distraction, at least one person was eaten and another kid was injured by the real shark, and managed to get away as a result.
* The first victim in ''Film/Jaws3D'', who breaks the number one rule of diving--''never'' dive alone--when he goes to repair a malfunctioning sea gate. Even if there wasn't a huge shark out there waiting for him, any number of things could have happened to him with no one to save him or call for help.
* ''Film/JawsTheRevenge''. The widow Brody is convinced that Jaws is still alive and going after her, so where does she go? Nebraska? Oklahoma? Some other place that's far away from the ocean? Nope: ''THE BAHAMAS.''
* Darry from ''Film/JeepersCreepers''. After seeing what appears to be a strange man dumping bodies down a shaft, he insists on making his sister turn their car around and going back by themselves to investigate (instead of simply reporting the matter to the police), even going as far to venture down into the shaft himself. His subsequent involvement costs him dearly down the line....
* From ''Film/JudgeDredd,'' the rookie Street Judge that dies in the beginning. Isn't one part of police training to not run off alone into an unsecured building? In his first attempt to [[LeeroyJenkins run blindly into combat]], he actually cites a training exercise at the academy as giving him grounds to do so, before Hershey admonishes, "This is NOT a training exercise." Later on, after watching Dredd clear out a room of perps, he walks up to a room filled with enemies, loudly declares [[SuicidalOverconfidence "These guys are mine!"]], kicks the door in and is filled with bullets almost instantly. Being TooDumbToLive is apparently a trend amongst rookie judges, as the guy died a week into his job and Dredd notes that most rookies last about four days.
* ''Franchise/JurassicPark'':
** It seems no one from any of the films understands the value of firearms. John Hammond doesn't keep a well armed security force on his island in case any of the dinosaurs escape. In the second and third films, the main characters mount "rescue missions" on islands full of dangerous predators without bringing any guns or anyone trained to use them.
** Especially in ''Film/JurassicParkIII'', when Amanda is shouting into a megaphone. Towards a forest. On an island she knows is filled with dinosaurs. It's so stupid that in ''Film/JurassicWorld'', it gets a TakeThat.
** ''Film/TheLostWorldJurassicPark'', with the supposed ''biologist'' Sarah Harding being one of the worst. She goes alone on an island filled with dinosaurs, and complains that Ian doesn't need to rescue her, then stumbles from one moment of rampaging stupidity to the next like a female Series/MrBean. To make matters worse, she lectures everyone with her about what you should or shouldn't do in a situation before '''immediately''' going out and doing what she said NOT to do. And unfortunately, this is a situation where her being Too Dumb to Live results in not her death, but the deaths of nearly EVERYONE she encounters on the island.
*** In probably the most glaring examples of her stupidity, she performs surgery on a baby Tyrannosaurus Rex and gets her jacket covered in it's blood. After the T-Rex pair attack the trailers, she herself explains to the Ingen mercenaries that the large and extremely dangerous predators have an incredible sense of smell and can track prey from miles away. She then goes on to ''wear the damn jacket stained in the baby's blood'' throughout the film when anyone, '''anyone''' with even a lick of sense would ''get rid of the damn thing''. Sure enough, the [[MamaBear mommy]] and [[PapaWolf daddy]] continue to pursue the group and eventually attack while they're camped up at night, causing several deaths, One of the beasts even sticks it's head into her tent and sniffs the bloody jacket which is hanging up to dry above the terrified occupants.
** Also from ''The Lost World'', you really have to give it up for that Hispanic guy who [[HeadphonesEqualIsolation zones out on his Walkman]] ''in the middle of a dinosaur-infested jungle''.
** ''Film/JurassicWorld'' has Vic Hoskins when he's confronted by the raptor Delta. Firstly, he knows that Delta ''really hates him'' and even sees him as food. Secondly, she's fallen under the ''I. rex's'' orders, not [[FluffyTamer Owen's]]. What does Hoskins do? Attempt to tame Delta despite ''repeated warnings'' by Owen that it's a bad idea. Hoskins then seals his fate further by accidentally making the "prepare to be fed" instead of the "I am your alpha" gesture. It's no surprise that he becomes raptor chow immediately after.
*** There's also the [[RedShirt overweight employee]] who works at the ''Indominus Rex'' enclosure, and his rather embarrassing death at the monster's hands due to his very poor choice of hiding spot.
* ''Film/KingdomOfHeaven'': Balian's brother, who really rather brings his death upon himself when he mocks his brothers grief, over Balian's dead wife, while wearing the pendant he stole from her body.
* ''Film/KingdomOfTheSpiders'':
** It's about a town overrun by extremely venomous tarantulas. Apparently all the townspeople are wearing brand new shoes they don't want to mess up, because at no point does anyone just try ''stepping on them''. One character tries to shoot two dozen of them with a revolver and no extra ammunition in sight; when she sees a spider on her hand, she shoots it, and three fingers, right off.
** At one point the hero is holed up in a cabin with a handful of other people. They discover spiders coming in through the vents and take care of it quickly by blocking them. A few scenes later, everyone's feeling hot and the hero ''opens the vents'' to check on the air conditioning, leading to the death of one of his companions.
* ''Film/KingKong1933'': Capturing a giant ape who's smitten with a female human and bringing him back to civilization? [[TemptingFate What's the worst that could happen?]]
* ''Film/KingSolomonsMines'': The 1985 film version has a henchman who is given the following choice: either run for his life or climb out the window to retrieve the stick of dynamite Quartermain just threw out the window. You guessed it. He goes after the dynamite. To his credit, he does manage to retrieve the dynamite just before it explodes. His last words: "I've got it!"
* ''Film/TheLastAirbender'':
** Both the Fire Nation and their earthbender captives get it in the adaptation of the episode ''[[Recap/AvatarTheLastAirbenderImprisoned Imprisoned]]''. The Fire Nation has been imprisoning [[DishingOutDirt earthbenders]] to prevent them from using their talents against the Fire Nation. They do this by sticking them in a prison camp ''[[LockingMacGyverInTheStoreCupboard in a quarry]]''. And yet, the incredibly obvious revolt doesn't happen until Aang shows up and points out that they are ''standing on top'' of gigantic quantities of their only weapon.
** The Northern Water Tribe, since the firebenders need torches to bend fire, Pakku suggests extinguishing all of them to render them powerless and... they never actually do that.
*** It's notable that neither of these weaknesses apply in [[WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender the original cartoon]]. The Earthbenders were imprisoned in a metal ship far out to sea (and finding a supply of earth for them to bend was a major plot point), and firebenders could generate their own fire and so didn't need any external source.
* ''Film/TheLastHouseOnTheLeft'':
** Aw, man, they raped and murdered these people's daughter, and they don't even know! Wow, now the mom is giving that guy a BJ! This is the best road trip ever!
** Still not as dumb as the girls, who had their hands tied IN FRONT of them didn't think to pull off the gags and use their teeth to remove the ropes.
* ''Film/LayerCake'': The Duke and his followers are stupid, loudmouthed, wannabe gangsters who have the bright idea to steal millions in drugs from Serbian war criminals, who then send their best contract killer after him. Discussed by XXXX, who notes that his kind don't mean to fuck up, they just do.
* ''Film/LethalWeapon2'': The bad guy who is responsible for killing Riggs's girlfriend and a bunch of their cop buddies is involved in a major shootout. He's a South African diplomat, so when they have him dead to rights, he pulls out his passport and intones, smugly, "Diplomatic immunity!" He gets shot in the head for his trouble by Roger Murtagh, who delivers the immortal line, "It's just been revoked."
* ''Film/MightyMorphinPowerRangersTheMovie'': Played for a brief joke with Bulk and Skull during the skydiving scene. As they're preparing to jump out of the plane, Kimberly has to remind them that it's a good idea to skydive with parachutes.
* ''Film/MinorityReport'': Detective Witwer is able to discover a criminal conspiracy has been carried out by someone with inside knowledge of Pre-Crime, yet he somehow fails to consider the possibility that this person could be the guy with the most inside knowledge of anyone involved in the project, Lamar Burgess. Thus he explains his discovery to Burgess while both of them are isolated far from the police station and while the precog units are not functioning, thus handing Burgess the perfect opportunity to get away with murdering him. Burgess could not have come up with a better way to get murder a cop and get away with it then the one Witwer handed him on a silver platter.
* ''Film/TheMist'':
** Almost everyone holds the IdiotBall so often that it's difficult to believe that they survived the first few minutes of the film. But the best example has to be when the survivors decide to take [[TheFundamentalist Mrs. Carmody's]] advice and use HumanSacrifice as a way to appease God and the creatures in the mist. As anyone who understands basic animal behavior will tell you, that kind of stuff will only draw ''more'' monsters to the immediate area around the store, as predators swarm at the smell of blood or the chance for an easy meal. On top of that, the mist creatures are shown to seemingly hunt by sense of smell or hearing because of low visibility, so attracting them to the store with an easy, injured meal would've also alerted them to the people hiding inside of it; in light of all that, sacrificing people was actually the stupidest thing they could've done.
** Subverted by the MamaBear mother who leaves the store to search for her young children. She appears to be the absolute ''dumbest'' among them; but instead she ends up surviving, perhaps as a karmic reward for her [[WhatTheHellHero misguided calling-out of the other townsfolk]] for their understandable refusal to walk out into the mist with her to accompany her to her house and children.
* ''Film/MomAndDadSaveTheWorld'':
** The science fiction spoof has a memorably absurd case of this on a massive scale, played for laughs: There's a weapon called the light grenade that disintegrates anyone it comes in contact with once the pin is pulled, but only if the victim is dumb enough to actually pick it up. It has the phrase "PICK ME UP" engraved on it. Because the movie takes place on a planet full of idiots, one of these left out in the open takes out a platoon of evil troops, each one picking it up immediately after seeing what just happened to the last guy who did that.
** In addition, Todd, while trying on hairstyles, asks "Mutton chops or Goatee" to one of the pair of twin guards, to which the guard responds, "Mutton chops, M'lord"; Todd's response is to tell the Guard, "No... shoot yourself in the head." which the guard does (Too dumb to live, so he killed himself, because he was ordered to do so) then Todd asks the other twin, who without a moment of pause or thought cheerfully responds, "Mutton chops!" then at Todd's stern look draws his gun and shoots himself in the head (Twins, too dumb to live... or maybe not), but wait, after checking himself in the mirror once more, Tod says, "You know, they have a point." The planet is essentially TSTL.
** That isn't Todd's only TDTL moment. To penetrate the castle and save his wife, Richard Nelson aka Dad in the title, leads the idiot rebels (whose favorite weapons that their leader innovated are large smooth and round rocks which they hurl like shot puts) to build a giant hollow wooden statue of Todd and put it outside the castle. Todd is called to see it, and cheerfully rushes to look, then chides his soldiers on how it looks nothing like him, but instead of having them destroy it, he shouts to open the gates and bring it in to show everyone how much it looks nothing like him... though the rebels did nail the trapdoor securely shut.
* ''Film/MysteryScienceTheater3000TheMovie'' has Crow T. Robot calculate whether or not breaking through the hull of the ship with a pick ax is a good idea or incredibly stupid. He goes ahead anyway.
-->"Let me just double-check my notes... Ah, look at this: 'Breach hull, all die.' I even had it ''underlined!''"
** The original ending had Crow doing the same thing again, but with a chainsaw.
* ''Film/MysteryTeam'': Each member of the Mystery Team, but especially Charlie and (later) Jason. Jordy also qualifies.
* ''Film/MySuperPsychoSweet16'': Madison, the birthday girl. While she and Skye, who happens to be the killer's daughter, are running from the killer, she picks that time to insult Skye again. You can guess what happens.
* ''Film/{{Neighbors 2014}}'': Garf; it takes a special kind of idiot to eat a pot brownie immediately before a disciplinary audience with the dean.
%% ** Jimmy.
* ''Night of the Living Dead''
** Everybody in the original ''Film/NightOfTheLivingDead1968''. Nobody in the film uses any sort of common sense, and it costs them their lives. In the original the character are to busy getting to each others throats than surviving against the zombies.
** In [[Film/NightOfTheLivingDead1990 the remake]] we have everybody as the original for all the same reasons ''except'' Barbara. She points out early on that the zombies are so slow they could just walk past and the idea is promptly shot down. Towards the end of the movie she escapes by simply walking past them without even firing a single shot.
* ''Film/{{Oculus}}'': Kaylie spends most of the movie describing in detail how she plans to thwart the demonic, intelligent, mind-controlling mirror, including her various mechanical fail-safes that will activate if the mirror incapacitates her or her brother...while standing within about ten feet of the mirror itself and deliberately "feeding" it lower life forms to prove that it can drain life from living things.
* ''Film/TheOmegaMan'': Richie subscribes to the popular "Children are Too Dumb to Live" concept. After Neville cures Richie of the plague, Richie asks if he will cure the Family (the bad guys). Neville declines on the reasonable basis that they are homicidal maniacs who worship the plague and prescribe the death penalty for those who are not afflicted by it. So Richie decides, on humanitarian grounds, to walk into the lair of the Family and tell them about how he was cured and they can be too. It is a relief to see Richie exit the gene pool. Too bad he brings down the hero as a result.
* In ''Film/{{Orphan}}'', the two kids never reveal that they've seen Esther committing violence, even though A) the mother clearly believes that she is and needs support and B) Esther keeps trying to kill '''them.'''
* Danson and Highsmith in ''Film/TheOtherGuys''. [[BadAss Bad Asses]]? Indeed. So much so, that cheating death seems to be their calling card. And so, they decide to test just how badass they are ''by jumping off of a 20-story building to chase the bad guys.'' It ends [[NotTheFallThatKillsYou just about as well as you'd expect.]]
* ''Film/PacificRim'':
** The "Suits" decide to scrap the Jaeger program in favor of building "Kaiju proof walls". 5 minutes later, a Kaiju crashes through the wall in less than an hour. The Kaiju is only stopped by, surprise, surprise, a Jaeger.\\\
And with that incident, you'd think that the "Suits" would go back to thinking that Jaegers are a better option. '''''NOPE.''''' They say that the walls STILL show promise. Which leads to riots along the areas of the coastal walls.\\\
And when another Kaiju is shown to have a very corrosive acid, and '''[[StoryBreakerPower WINGS]]''', it's essentially proven that the walls are not only useless, but a complete waste of time to build. Consider how many Jaegers could have been built with the resources and labour taken to wall the entire coastline of the Pacific Ocean. Then consider that even if they couldn't go through it, they could go around, being shown to be entirely capable of moving on land even early on. And the complete lack of any [[{{BFG}} active defences]] which allowed Mutavore nearly an hour of whaling on the Sydney wall to get through.
** Newton announcing to a crowded shelter full of superstitious, frightened people that the Kaiju is specifically hunting ''him''. Cue everyone backing away from him, making it very clear that they are fully prepared to sacrifice him to it to save their own skins.
* Ofelia of ''Film/PansLabyrinth'' surely qualifies in the infamous Pale Man scene. She has been warned by the Faun not to touch any of the food on display, or else; the magic book, just in case she forgot, tells her again... and guess what she does? She apparently doesn't notice the horrific looking creature sitting as still as a statue at the head of the table, never mind hear it springing to life as she takes a bite out of some fruit. The fairies with her even wave their arms and try to warn her not to, but she just greedily swats them out of the way and they end up getting eaten by the Pale Man for their troubles. It's possible that the feast exerted a sort of hypnotizing effect on her. Pan's Labyrinth was influenced by various fairy tales, and such an effect is [[ArtifactOfAttraction not unheard of]].
* Micah from ''Film/ParanormalActivity'' definitely deserves a mention. During the talk with the psychic, Micah asks about using an ouija board to contact the demon. He's told not to contact it at all, as that would constitute "letting it in" and make things much worse. What does he do? He verbally taunts the demon, keeps trying to get in contact with it in various ways, and states repeatedly that he's going to get an ouija board. The crowning point of his stupidity has to be when his girlfriend is freaked out by multiple nightly disturbances, and he tells her that all of the demonic activity is "cool stuff that he has to record". He thinks the whole thing is some sort of fun horror game. Pity he's not GenreSavvy in the slightest.
* ''Film/PerfectStranger'': Miles Haley finds out that Rowena Price, the reporter who was investigating her friend's murder, actually killed her after years of blackmail by the victim. After confronting her, he decides to blackmail the woman who just killed the last person who tried to blackmail her! His sudden death is well deserved.
* ''Film/PetSematary'' ANYONE who buried anything in the burial ground after seeing the initial results (heck, after the initial ''warning'' for that matter). You'd think that after seeing what happened to Church the cat they would have stopped, but the guy then proceeded to bury his hit-by-a-truck toddler son Gage, who then came back and killed his wife. [[WhatAnIdiot If that wasn't enough yet,]] he then '''buried his wife there''', and she mercifully put an end to his chain of idiocy.
* Then came the movie ''Film/PetSemataryTwo'' (yes, there was a second movie), which was more of the same, but with most roles reversed either gender-wise or species-wise, plus a much higher body count, reanimated or not and a MUCH higher "creepy" factor in that the plot dared to bring up the utterly stay-up-all-night-thinking-about-it scientific side of the undead people/animals, courtesy of Dr. Chase Matthews the veterinarian: first the kids Jeff and Drew buried Zowie the dog after he was shotgunned by Drew's abusive stepfather Gus, and upon Zowie's return didn't really feel like there was anything wrong when the dog acted nasty -- Zowie was probably just irritable from being away from home for a bit. More burials took place, including Gus himself and Jeff's actress mother Renee, who is taken from her grave much like Gage in the first book/movie. Interestingly, the undead Gus even does some of the burying, effectively enlisting Clyde the bully (who he killed while undead) as his henchman.
* ''Film/PitchBlack'': Paris, in a fit of blind panic after a creature swoops on the group, screws over ''everybody'' by scrambling away, pulling out the battery powering the glow-stick type lights... including the ONLY source of light around his own torso. KarmicDeath ensues.
* ''Film/PrinceOfSpace'': "Your weapons have no effect on me!" [[ShootingSuperman "Shoot him!"]]
* ''Film/{{Prometheus}}'': Ignoring scientific procedure was quite common among these supposed scientists, like 1) Removing you helmets in an alien environment. Even if the air is breathable, you don't know if there's any pathogens in it. 2) Finding an alien's head and trying to re-animate it with electricity, causing it to blow up. 3) Not having any sort of decent quarantine procedures outside on one scene. 4) Millburn tries to pet an alien-snake after it shows hostility. 5) Meredith (supposedly the smartest one) trying to ''outrun'' the gigantic, rolling spaceship instead of simply, you know, moving to the side and avoiding it.
* Anyone in the not-remake of ''Film/PromNight2008'', especially Claire (Jessica Stroup) who sees the killer coming for her and ''just stands there'' and [[PoliceAreUseless the local police]], whose bumbling and ineptitude cause all the deaths in the movie.
* ''Film/PulpFiction'':
** Vincent Vega, a veteran hitman who really should have showed a little more respect for his weapons, he ended up causing the {{Trope Namer|s}} for IJustShotMarvinInTheFace due to recklessly pointing his weapon in the wrong damned direction, and when he was sent to whack Butch Coolidge for turning around and winning the fight he was paid to throw, he left his MAC-10 submachine gun on the counter while he went to the bathroom, not taking heed to the fact that his intended target might come across it while he was doing his business, leading to Vincent getting blown away.
** See also Mia Wallace, purely because snorting a substance you found in the pocket of a virtual stranger without knowing exactly what it is is not a sensible thing to do. Then again, she is a habitual drug user and was already high on cocaine at the time she did this, so its not surprising she's acting like her brain is on leave of absence. As with Vincent Vega, this movie puts forward a consistent message of "drug use makes you dumb".
* ''Film/ThePurge'': One of the Sandin kids lets a stranger into their house. It results in a home invasion, but it remains to be seen if it results in the Sandin's deaths.
* Toward the end of ''Film/RedDawn1984'', the Wolverines are watching as a convoy full of food conveniently drops some right near where they are. They're hungry, they grab the food...and then they ''sit around in the open eating,'' despite being tops on the Soviets' "Better Dead" list. Cue helicopters... Fifteen minutes could have had them and the food safely hidden and invisible to anybody in the sky, but did they care?
* Coolio's character in ''Film/RedWater'' escapes from an exploding boat with a trunk of cash by jumping into a river being prowled by a shark (don't ask why). Instead of ditching the money and swimming for land, he tugs it along. But that's not the worst. When the shark rises out of the water and bites the trunk, what does he do? Instead of swimming away, he ''tries to pull the trunk out of the shark's mouth'' until it breaks open, scattering the money all over the water. He ''tried to collect every bill in sight'', and is promptly eaten.
* The Umbrella guard in ''Film/ResidentEvilApocalypse''. Would you just look at that? A super zombie. Over three heads taller than you. Able to lift a gatling in one hand. Walking slowly towards you. Who needs to run? Two assault rifles should stop him. Shoot! What's this? Shrugging off bullet impact? Not slowing down? Oh no he is too close. Maybe this would work. (melee with rifle) Guess what happens.
* ''Film/{{Revolver}}'', a 2005 Creator/GuyRitchie movie, has one scene where a somewhat quirky and unstable hitman is clearly uncomfortable about TheDragon's [[KickTheDog interrogation techniques]]. When he complains, the bad guy threatens him with [[TemptingFate "Question me again, Sorter, and we will have a falling out."]]. They do indeed have a falling out.
* In ''Film/RobRoy'', during a duel, Archibald Cunningham has Rob Roy essentially at his mercy. Archibald Cunningham is supposed to be an experienced swordsman, and the choreography for the most part averts InformedAbility, with only a very small number of unreasonable moments. Yet he holds the point of his blade still while taunting the man, allowing the injured Rob Roy to grab the blade and hold it fast before delivering the OneHitKill. It was common knowledge at the time, taught in fencing schools and in manuals, that you ''never'' give an opponent a chance to grab your blade. As long as the person grabbing the blade maintains sufficient force (as attested to in manuals and shown in reconstructions and research), they will not even be injured by the act.
* ''Film/RobinHoodPrinceOfThieves'': One of Robin's father's servants runs to him saying that someone had taken the servant's daughter. And he promptly puts on armor, gets on a horse and rides out the front gate. Alone. In the middle of the night. And apparently without bothering to look out first because he's ''shocked'' to see a group of [[MalevolentMaskedMen men in cloaks]] holding torches in plain view. And then he rides out to fight them instead of getting back inside, pulling the gate up and waiting for Nottingham and his dozen or so men to just give up.
* ''Film/TheRockyHorrorPictureShow'': Considering the '''numerous''' mistakes they make throughout the film, Brad/Asshole and Janet/Slut certainly apply.
* ''Film/{{ROTOR}}'': Sonya. After R.O.T.O.R. kills her fiancé, she flees with her car and R.O.T.O.R. follows her with the intention to kill her. She shakes him off and then stops on the open road and is looking for her purse (!) when she sees a police officer in the rareview mirror although she knows R.O.T.O.R. (looking like a police officer) is still following her. She only survives because R.O.T.O.R. somehow forgets to use his gun and lets her escape quickly.
* ''Film/SawII'': Many of the traps required the participants to be terminally stupid in order to kill them. Most of them are therefore effective.
** Addison immediately sticks a hand into the obvious bladed trap, and then, instead of keeping her other hand out to free the first one, shoves it in too when the syringe she's going for spills (and [[WordOfGod commentary]] reveals that the box had a key already in the back, so if she'd taken a few seconds to assess the situation she would have gotten the syringe with no trouble).
** Gus, who hears the reading of the note telling them all [[SchmuckBait not to try the key in the nearby door]], but decides to look through the peephole while Xavier does so anyway.
** Obi, who walks brazenly into a furnace and seizes the syringe without a second thought. If he'd taken a few seconds to look around first, he would have seen the valve to turn off the gas and wouldn't have been burned alive.
* ''Film/{{Scream 1996}}'':
** {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d with Sidney Prescott's assessment of a lot of slasher movies:
-->'''Sidney''': What's the point? They're all the same -- some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can't act and who's always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door. It's insulting.
** Also {{lampshade|Hanging}}d at the beginning, when Creator/DrewBarrymore's character asks "Who's there?" the killer taunts her on the phone with, "You should never say, 'Who's there?' Don't you watch scary movies? It's a death wish. You might as well go outside to investigate a strange noise or something."
** Only about three minutes after uttering the above line, Sidney is attacked by the killer and she [[GenreSavvy actually attempts the front door first]] before realizing it's locked and she has no time to unlock it, which sends her running up the stairs.
** Another character in the movie, Tatum (Creator/RoseMcGowan) is killed after trying to crawl through the pet door in an automatic garage door. Naturally, she dies when the killer does something she wasn't smart enough to do: open the door.
* Everybody in ''Film/{{Screamers}}''. Two sides are fighting a war on a planet. One side deploys the screamers, small burrowing robots. Ok, not so bad. Said screamers are equipped with an adaptive learning AI. Ok, that's risky, but not suicidal. The screamers are also built in an automated factory, and the screamers design and build newer generations of screamers. At this point, the concept moves from "risky" to "out and out suicidal". But the worst part, the thing that make you suspect the designers of the first screamers had a death wish, is the robots programming. The screamers are programmed to kill any living thing they encounter, without any Friend or Foe system. Naturally, the screamers kill every single person on the planet. Its the worst case of this trope and Genre Blindness ever seen. Now, the film implies that the Screamers were only set up and let loose by the Alliance after the planet's population had already mostly been killed off with bio-weapons and nuclear strikes by the NEB, and the Alliance was at the point of losing the war if they didn't do something crazy and desperate to change the balance of power. It's also pointed out by the surviving Alliance commander that this was a crazy act of desperation, and that there were all sorts of potential unintended consequences. So not quite Genre Blind so much as simply an attempt at Refuge in Audacity that didn't work out so great. Also, the Alliance troops did have an identification system they could wear, called a "tab," that was supposed to protect them from screamers. The system would have been great if it actually ''worked'', but the film makes it clear that screamers looked at the tabs as just a thing that goes "ping". And the tabs were a system that said "I'm already dead, don't kill me" not "I'm on your side, don't kill me".
* Will Stanton in ''Film/TheSeeker''. At the end of the movie, he and the other Old Ones are forced to retreat into the Great Hall, where their enemy the Rider cannot enter unless invited. Will then proceeds to throw open the doors when he hears his parents and sister calling him only to learn that it was just the Rider who -- oops -- is now able to enter. Evidently Will thought his completely ordinary family was able to somehow get to a mysterious place which seems to be in an alternate time/dimension.
* ''Film/ShaunOfTheDead'':
** Ed takes this to new levels and plays it for laughs. The characters need to get past a horde of zombies, and do so by acting like zombies to avoid drawing attention. When they are nearly to apparent safety, Ed's phone goes off... ''and he answers it and starts cheerfully talking on the phone, less than ten feet from dozens of zombies.'' Previously, he had "accidentally" crashed their first car, giving him an excuse to drive a Jaguar instead. Following after the cellphone incident, the electricity comes back on and he starts playing a pub fruit machine, which draw the attention of a zombie in the same building as them.
** [[CloudCuckoolander Shaun's mother]] should also be mentioned. What did she ''think'' would happen opening the door to a zombie?
** Shaun himself also fits this. What exactly made the Winchester any safer than Liz's apartment? While it's got big heavy doors and a rifle on the wall and Ed knows where all the exits are (and he can smoke), they actually probably ''would'' have been safer in the apartment, because the window was above ground level (Shaun could climb up to it, but he wasn't a zombie) and you couldn't even get into the building without being buzzed in. Even if the zombies somehow got in through that door, they could have barricaded the apartment door fairly easily. But they also wouldn't have had half so much booze.
** Let's not forget David standing ''right in front of the pub window'', seconds before he gets eaten.
** Frankly, the entire group lives and breathes this trope, making stupid decision after stupid decision, but Ed really is the king.
** The entire human race falls into this at the end. After the Army restored order, someone had the baffling idea to round up the Zombies and use them as a source of cheap labour and entertainment, instead of destroying them! And if that's not bad enough, while they ''do'' take the precaution of putting restraints on them to keep them under control, they completely forget to '''muzzle''' them! Because it's not like Zombies are well known for infecting people by ''biting'', right?
* ''Film/ShriekIfYouKnowWhatIDidLastFridayTheThirteenth'': Invoked in this slasher spoof. Everyone agrees that with the recent killings they should hide out at a safe place – but they all think it should be in the middle of nowhere, preferably the dark woods in the pouring rain, and without any adult supervision or police protection in the near vicinity. One even suggests that they should go to a deserted place that's been abandoned ever since a bunch of dorky kids were dismembered there.
* ''Film/{{Signs}}'': The aliens walk around Earth naked, despite being as much vulnerable to water as we are to sulfuric acid. Really, just coming to a planet that's roughly ''three-fourths water'' probably counts. The again the movie hints that the "Aliens" are actually demons and that that "Water" was actually Holy Water. Which would avert this trope.
* ''Film/SistersOfDeath'': The main characters respond to anonymous invites to an isolated location (one of whom hitchhikes to get there, despite the fact that they were all sent enough money to afford transport), allow two strange men to drive them to their destination (in an SUV with all the windows covered), and when their host reveals that he wants to kill one of them (the one who arranged his daughter's death seven years earlier), they continually separate and isolate themselves. And continue to do so even after [[TenLittleMurderVictims they start getting picked off.]] Not only that, the host doesn't worry about these murders at all, even though they ruin his plan.
* In ''Film/{{Skyline}}'', with LA full of alien monsters eating everything that moves, our heroes decide to try and escape in cars with big, growly engines and in broad daylight. Granted, their chances weren't all that good whatever they tried, but at least on foot and at night they had some small hope of evading detection. And let's not even think about the fact that their entire daylight plan was to escape by boat. From flying aliens. Yeah, that will work!
* ''Film/SouthernComfort'': The main characters are in the National Guard on a training mission in a swamp, miles from civilization. They see one of the inhabitants from a distance and Stuckey decides to mess with him... by pointing his rifle (loaded with blanks) at him and "opening fire." Shockingly, the locals have their own rifles, not loaded with blanks. Natural selection ensues.
* ''Film/SpiderMan3'': Gwen Stacy and her colleagues see a huge piece of rebar clearly heading towards the window of their office, and they see it from afar, and there's more than enough time to run away. The photographer reacts to it by asking "What is that thing doing in the background?", and Gwen reacts by ''walking towards the window'', as if she's not sure it's a huge piece of rebar heading her way and wants to take a closer look. Alas, Peter intervenes, and Natural Selection is once again thwarted.
* ''Film/StarshipTroopers'':
** The news correspondent and the cameraman on Klendathu are on the planet surface while the actual battle is still raging. What makes them this trope is that they actually stop during a mass retreat to get some shots of the action, and are both promptly killed for their trouble.
** Humanity in general has shades of this. The overwhelming majority of human characters regard the Bugs as mindless animals [[ItCanThink despite obvious evidence to the contrary]]. For example, early on the film, Bug plasma knocks an asteroid from the Asteroid Belt into Earth and it obliterates Buenos Aires; they did this from Klendathu, thousands of light years away. Something like this surpasses anything mankind would be capable of unless they had trillions of dollars worth of supercomputer, and the Bugs are doing these calculations ''in their heads''. But nope, Bug plasma is [[BlatantLies "random and light"]]. Even after the assault on Klendathu turns into a horrible failure that leaves thousands of humans dead and wounded, there are more than a few people who are adamant that the Bugs can't be intelligent. To quote one "expert", "[[FantasticRacism I find the idea of an intelligent bug offensive]]!" One wonders if the Bugs find the idea of intelligent monkeys offensive as well.
* ''Film/StarTrek'' (2009 reboot):
** The whole race of Romulans. Their whole sun goes supernova thus destroying Romulus in the process? Sorry, but you must be plain dumb in order to let ''that'' happen (according to Star Trek Online, they caused it by testing weapons that were banned due to this specific reason). Not only do they possess a whole '''star empire''', which means they have more planets then just the one being threatened by the super nova, they should also have the technological possibilities to detect super novas '''in time'''. It's not like they happen as a total surprise. It shouldn't have been a problem at all to evacuate a planet in time. And to let Spock as the ''only person'' in the goddamned empire try to prevent it because they were too busy arguing. That's beyond dumb. Maybe more so, since the ship and technology Spock uses were built on Vulcan, which means ''somebody'' had sufficient advance notice and time to prepare a response.
** Due to his wanting to show up the rookies, Olson waits until the absolute last moment before popping his parachute. Kirk and Sulu pull their chutes at a safe distance above the platform, but Olson turns out to have waited too long, and winds up dropping right into the path of the mining laser beam, completely vaporizing him and the explosives he was carrying for destroying the drill.
** Though they don't die, we also have the Vulcan bullies picking on Young Spock. It was clear from their reaction to Spock delivering a NoHoldsBarredBeatdown to one of them that none of them considered the possibility of their trying to "elicit an emotional response" in Spock might result in violence.
* ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness'':
** The top Starfleet brass hold an emergency meeting on top of a tower with ''large open windows''. It's not surprising when Harrison (aka Khan) attacks them with a gunship. Especially because as Kirk noted only seconds before that happened, Harrison was a high ranking member of Starfleet himself and would thus know the protocol for the situation he created and where and when the top brass would meet.
** [[GeneralRipper Admiral Marcus,]] as noted by Khan himself, thought he best way to combat the Klingons was to wake up a genocidal, sociopathic super-human and ''then'' threaten [[AFatherToHisMen his family]] so the guy will build weapons for Marcus. [[SarcasmMode Great plan!]]
* ''Franchise/StarWars'':
** ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'': We get to see Zam Wessel, the changeling assassin. She was trying to flee the Jedi at every opportunity, clearly had the ability to change shape and had just ducked into a crowded bar. Once the Jedi entered you'd expect her to change shape again and run at the first opportunity right? Instead she deliberately ''attacked'' them and was somehow surprised when they easily disarmed her (literally).
** ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'': Darth Sidious (via hologram) congratulates the Separatists for their loyalty during the Clone Wars, which are about to end, and promises that his new apprentice, Darth Vader, will "[[DeadlyEuphemism take care of them]]" when he arrives at their hideout in Mustafar. After that transmission, you'd expect the Separatists would evacuate the hideout immediately since that would have translated to "killing them." But nope. They actually [[WhatAnIdiot take his words seriously]] and just wait in the hideout until Vader arrives. Once he arrives there, [[ForegoneConclusion guess what happens]].
** ''Film/ANewHope'':
*** You'd think Admiral Motti would have known that dissing the faith of the big scary Sith Lord and personal hatchetman of the Emperor, Darth Vader, in his face is a ''very'', ''very'', '''''very''''' bad idea. He's lucky that Moff Tarkin is there to relieve him from what would have been a guaranteed death inflicted by TheDragon.
*** Then there's Greedo, a bounty hunter so amateurishly stupid that he doesn't get the most basic line you need to say when you are covering your quarry, "Keep your hands where I can see them."
** ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'':
*** During a High Speed chase through a densely packed forest, a Stormtrooper turns around just long enough to see if his target died, and promptly crashes into a tree. Look where you're driving! Or... avoid doing a high-speed chase through a densely packed forest to begin with? Considering that Luke demonstrated that the speeders can change elevation, racing through the trees at ground level in the first place qualifies everyone involved. On top of that, after Luke had been knocked off his speeder, his foe doubles back to finish him off rather than continuing on to get help, as all of the speeder troopers were commanded to do (and is the reason why they bolted from the scene in the first place).
*** The Imperial ground forces in general in ROTJ deserve this. Locating your sensitive base in the middle of a forest where there's plenty of places for the hostile natives to hide? Oh, and wearing bright, gleaming white armor to a fight in said forest? Apparently, the Empire never invented camouflage.
** Both the Jedi and Sith Orders in Star Wars, which is especially made clear in the now-non-canon Expanded Universe. The Sith are a bunch of psychotic power hungry madmen whose [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder backstabbing ways]] are almost always the reason they keep getting defeated. The Jedi are a bunch of emotionally dead people with an obsessive desire to keep an ineffectual government from falling apart that otherwise would without them, eventually leading directly to their final downfall, and their rules toward squashing all emotion and overcautious ways have been directly responsible for the fall to the Dark Side of members of their Order and subsequent rise of many Dark Jedi and Sith Lords on a near constant basis for thousands of years. Neither organization learns much of anything from these constant mistakes despite thousands of year of opportunity, and as a result eventually both have to be destroyed down to the last man and rebuilt from scratch before any significant changes are made.
* ''Film/StateOfGrace'': Frank is a mafia boss who goes to extreme lengths to kill his own friends and relatives just to satisfy the requests of another gang, against which he fears to lose in case of a mob war. It's really no surprise that he ends up being topped by Terry, his last remaining childhood friend, with even more added irony cause Terry was actually an [[ReverseMole undercover cop]] and was having qualms about busting Frank and the others.
* ''Film/TheStepfather'':
** The remake has the main character's mother debunking all possible theories that her fiancé is a serial killer, from an old lady seeing his face on ''Series/AmericasMostWanted'' to her ex-husband saying that their youngest son told them that said fiance throttled him to her sister telling her that the fiancé quit her company shortly after he was required to fill out certain information that might get him caught.
** In traditional horror fashion, [[IdiotBall everyone else is just as dim]]. Everyone who finds evidence that the titular stepfather isn't who he says he is steadfastly refuses to notify anyone of note and putt around with the killer knowledge. Special commendation goes the supposedly GenreSavvy son who, despite being paranoid as sin, ignores several anvilicious clues that he's -right-. The ex-husband is also this, as he knows the stepfather throttled his son, steps into the room that he knows the killer is in, and goes in not assuming that he could be attacked. The cops at the end may also be considered this, if not 'Too Out of Shape to Live'; They fail to apprehend a man who has been stabbed, beaten, and thrown out a second story window. You could SEE THEIR LIGHTS APPROACHING while he was still sprawled out on the ground recovering.
* The three victims in ''Film/TheStrangers''; Kristen doesn't do anything but scream, trip and cry and actually '''injures herself''', James among other things decides to go get a radio ([[ThisLoserIsYou because they were too stupid to have their cellphones on them]]) leaving Kristen alone and unprotected ''in the house, where their attackers can breeze in with ease'', and their friend has his windshield broken, sees destruction, mayhem and hears loud music playing (which to a normal person would scream '''DANGER''') and goes blithely in. They all die.
* Lex Luthor's cronies in ''Film/SupermanReturns'' Superman is currently throwing his newly created Kryptonian island into outer space with them still on it, and the entire place is falling apart. Luther urgently tells them to to get the hell out of there and don't stop to take anything so they can make it to his helicopter and escape. So what to they do? Stop to grab as much cash as they can before escaping, which slows them down long enough to be crushed by a pillar.
* ''Film/{{Taken}}'': Kim and Amanda are two American teenagers who go to France by themselves to follow around a band. They take a taxi with a stranger and then ''tell the stranger their apartment number'' and that they will be alone in the apartment. No surprise, within the first 30 minutes of the movie they are kidnapped.
** ''Film/{{Taken 2}}'' has [[BigBad Murad]] try and kidnap the protagonist Bryan and his family while they are on vacation, in revenge of their relatives being killed by Bryan in the first film...even though his relatives kidnapping Bryan's daughter to be sold as a sex slave was what led to Bryan to find and kick all of his relatives' collective asses in the first place. As one might expect, [[HistoryRepeats this plan doesn't work]]. Towards the end of the movie, Bryan offers Murad a LastSecondChance to walk away in exchange for leaving his family in peace. Murad blows it by going for Bryan's discarded gun... which was empty. Bryan promptly kills him.
* Any love for the ''mind-bogglingly stupid'' gunshop owner from ''Film/TheTerminator''? The guy who trusts his customers to handle shotguns while also leaving a box of shotgun ammo and some loose shells on the counter where any customer could just take them? Not to mention he's not the least bit suspicious of the Terminator. Granted, he probably didn't know he was dealing with a killer cyborg from the future, but c'mon, a giant man dressed as a street punk who walks in and asks for a lot of heavy-duty, high-powered firearms, including [[CriticalResearchFailure a phased 40-watt range plasma rifle]], is probably not someone you should put a lot of faith in.
* ''Film/TomYumGoong'': Given that they've watched ''dozens'' of their comrades writhe in excruciating pain, most of the {{mooks}} in [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsJ5s6CKmog this scene]] qualify ('''Warning:''' [[RatedMForManly This scene may impregnate the viewer, regardless of sex]]). If only they weren't practicing MookChivalry.
* ''Film/TheTrollHunter'': Kalle concealed the fact he was a Christian from the crew and the hunter despite the hunter warning them that Trolls will go after anyone with Christian blood. It would have been justified since he didn't initially believe it to be a life or death decision when mythological creatures were involved, EXCEPT for the fact that both he and the crew had two violent encounters with trolls before finding themselves trapped in a cave filled with Mountain King Trolls that led to him getting killed.
* ''Film/{{Trust}}'': The central character Annie. At the age of 14, she starts chatting online with someone called Charlie whose admitted age over the course of the chats goes up from 16 to 20, then to 25, and when she meets him in person at a mall we see he has to be in his late thirties at least. And what does she do? Instead of walking away, she gets into a car with him. And then goes to a motel room with him. And models in red underwear for him, before he rapes her. Admittedly she is 14, but in this day and age if a 14 year old girl does not even think to let a friend or family member know she is going to meet up with a stranger on the internet, and then ignores the cardinal rule of not getting into a car with a stranger (which hopefully most six year olds know by now) then she is clearly headed for a nasty shock.
* ''Film/{{Unfriended}}'': Most of the main characters are this, but special mention has to go to Adam, who decides it's a smart idea to threaten a ghost, that he is fully aware can force her victims to commit suicide, with a handgun. Take a wild guess how he bites the bullet.
* ''Film/UrbanLegendsBloodyMary'': The teens are all victims of their own stupidity. In the first two films, the victims were at least tricked or trapped by a killer that they didn't even know was running around butchering people but in the third film, all the kids were so dumb that they would have died with or without Bloody Mary's help.
* ''Film/WarningSign'': Goddamn near ''everybody'' in the movie. Firstly we have the Biotek employees who unzip their hazmat suits inside a sealed quarantine room - where they're making a deadly HatePlague - to pose for a photo. Then when the virus is released into the facility, the other Biotek employees apparently have no idea what a quarantine lockdown is, staring at the closing shutters and alarms in confusion and then get upset when they are ''locked in''. They then try to argue with Joanie, the security guard who started the quarantine, to let them go because she was ''scaring'' people with the quarantine despite some of them ''knowing'' they were working on a hate plague. ''Then'' the concerned townspeople and relatives outside the quarantined building try to break their way in, despite being told the spin story that a chemical that would destroy their crops had been released inside. If not for Joanie having more common sense than everyone in the county and sticking to the quarantine protocols, Utah would have been ''screwed''.
* ''Film/{{Waterworld}}'': Enola doesn't know how to swim, when 99% of the planet is covered in water. It's made very clear that she ''can'' be taught to swim and that no one ever thought that a child growing up on a planet covered by water should know how to swim.
* Beth, the main character in 2011's ''Film/TheWickerTree'', the "spiritual sequel" to 1973's ''Film/TheWickerMan'', goes crashing hard into this trope in the last 20 minutes of the film. She and her boyfriend Steve have agreed to serve as the Queen of the May and Laddie, respectively, for the May Day celebrations in the Scottish village they have been recruited to to preach Christianity. On May Day, Steve is eaten alive by a mob of villagers, while Beth is left unconscious in a room of previous Queens of the May in the village's butcher shop. All of them have been killed and embalmed, and permanently displayed sitting on wicker thrones. Upon awakening, Beth discovers this, and manages to escape through a window. She runs across the one rogue villager who's tried to help her and Steve, Lolly, who tells Beth that Steve has been killed, and she needs to escape before the same happens to her. Beth refuses, and instead, catches up to the villagers on a hill, where they are about to burn a wicker tree. Beth is told of Steve's fate, and she angrily pushes the village's leader into the wicker tree, grabs a villager's torch, '''''AND SETS THE LEADER ON FIRE!''''' Beth forces the villagers to sing; they comply, and leave. Beth ''finally'' tries to find a way out of the village, seeking the help of a young boy named Angus. Angus leads her through the woods towards another village, but this is a trap, as the other villagers come out of nowhere and capture Beth. The film ends with the audience being shown that Beth has suffered the same fate as the previous May Queens: being killed, embalmed, and sat on a wicker throne in the same room in the butcher shop.
* ''Film/WomenOfThePrehistoricPlanet'': A group of guys try to walk across a pit of acid on a small branch, and one them ends up falling in and dying. There was a path around the pit a few steps away.
* ''Film/TheWrongBox'': Several of the children who potentially stand to benefit from the tontine in the British ensemble comedy grow up to be too dumb to live, as shown in a montage following the opening credits. Just to name two, an army sergeant orders his men to fire a cannon, oblivious to the fact that he is standing directly in its line of fire, and a big game hunter insists on waiting for a rhinoceros to charge before opening fire, and waits so long that he is swiftly gored when it finally does start charging.
* ''Film/XMen'':
** ''Film/X2XMenUnited'': So, you have a school for the members of a [[FantasticRacism severely hated group]], and this school possesses very advanced technology. Why on earth do you not have a security system? Even if you don't do anything to stop invaders from just climbing over the wall and jumping through the windows, at least have an alarm so they don't catch half of everyone asleep!
** ''Film/XMenOriginsWolverine'':
*** The military needs to stop Wolverine, who they've made immune to almost all weapons. To stop him they have at their disposal: An incredibly skilled marksman, and adamantium bullets capable of penetrating the adamantium shell around his skull and incapacitating him. Somehow the idea that they should combine these two things doesn't seem to occur to them. Said marksman also thinks it's a good idea to take a jab at Wolverine when he has decided to let him live. After seeing the guy take down a HELICOPTER.
*** John Wraith, whose only power is teleportation and who thinks the best way to take down a big angry guy with claws ''and a huge healing factor'' is to punch him out.
* The title characters in ''YossiAndJagger''. One could argue that the film works best as a hour-long PSA about Why You Do Not Have Affairs Within Your Chain Of Command.
* ''Film/{{Zombieland}}'':
** Wichita and Little Rock ride the rides at Pacific Playland, which light up, make noise, and naturally attract lots of zombies. Many fans think they may have been deliberately suicidal, even.
** First averted then played straight with Creator/BillMurray: Using make-up and his acting abilities to blend in with the zombies and avoid being killed? Pretty damn friggin' smart. Pretending to be a zombie in order to scare the unsuspecting jumpy teenager WITH THE GUN? Stupidity of epic proportions, especially when he saw the reaction that he got from the survivors who weren't currently armed with firearms and then trying it again with someone who was...
** While we're on the subject, even though it doesn't get anybody killed, ''getting high'' during a ZombieApocalypse is just asking for trouble.
** There is also the whole scam the sisters play, which relies on the mark doing very specific mistakes. To whit: Wichita tells the mark that Little Rock is infected and needs to be put out her misery, but Wichita can't shoot her own sister and begs the mark to do it. The mark has misgivings about shooting a little girl, Wichita agrees to do it herself, takes the gun, and then robs the surprised mark at gunpoint. If the mark is a little more pragmatic(Columbus refused, but Tallahassee came pretty darn close to shooting her), there's a very good chance they'll just shoot Little Rock then and there.
* ''Film/{{Zoolander}}'': Derek Zoolander lost his friends in a tragic gasoline-fight accident. The only reason he survived is that he spotted his image on the front of a newspaper and went over to look at it. For extra irony, the article was about how much of an idiot Zoolander was.
----

* ''Film/FlightOfThePhoenix'': The plane has just crashed in the middle of the desert and it's stormy outside. Davis goes out, in the middle of the night, to take a leak. Not only does he walk ''unnecessarily'' far away from the plane (It's the middle of the night! No one will see you, jeez), he somehow trips and falls down, then rolls ten meters away from where he was -- ''and gets '''lost'''''. He fails to find his way back to the plane, and dies out there.

** Both the Fire Nation and their earthbender captives get it in the adaptation of the episode ''[[Recap/AvatarTheLastAirbenderImprisoned Imprisoned''. The Fire Nation has been imprisoning [[DishingOutDirt earthbenders]] to prevent them from using their talents against the Fire Nation. They do this by sticking them in a prison camp ''[[LockingMacGyverInTheStoreCupboard in a quarry]]''. And yet, the incredibly obvious revolt doesn't happen until Aang shows up and points out that they are ''standing on top'' of gigantic quantities of their only weapon.

* ''Film/TheLastAirbender'': The Northern Water Tribe, since the firebenders need torches to bend fire, Pakku suggests extinguishing all of them to render them powerless and... they never actually do that.

** Still not as dumb as the girls, who had their hands tied IN FRONT of them didn't think to pull off the gags and use their teeth to remove the ropes

* Several characters in both the original ''Film/DawnOfTheDead'' and [[Film/DawnOfTheDead2004 the remake]]. Since they're in the middle of a mass zombie outbreak, most of them die.

* ''Film/TheFlightOfThePhoenix2004'': The plane has just crashed in the middle of the desert and it's stormy outside. Davis goes out, in the middle of the night, to take a leak. Not only does he walk ''unnecessarily'' far away from the plane (It's the middle of the night! No one will see you, jeez), he somehow trips and falls down, then rolls ten meters away from where he was -- ''and gets '''lost'''''. He fails to find his way back to the plane, and dies out there.

** ''Film/XMenOriginsWolverine'':\\\
The military needs to stop Wolverine, who they've made immune to almost all weapons. To stop him they have at their disposal: An incredibly skilled marksman, and adamantium bullets capable of penetrating the adamantium shell around his skull and incapacitating him. Somehow the idea that they should combine these two things doesn't seem to occur to them.\\\
Said marksman also thinks it's a good idea to take a jab at Wolverine when he has decided to let him live. After seeing the guy take down a HELICOPTER.\\\
John Wraith, whose only power is teleportation and who thinks the best way to take down a big angry guy with claws ''and a huge healing factor'' is to punch him out.
* The title characters in YossiAndJagger. One could argue that the film works best as a hour-long PSA about Why You Do Not Have Affairs Within Your Chain Of Command.

** ''Film/{{Halloween 1978}}'': At one point in a screening, Laurie Strode's stupidity is too much for one audience member. When she fails to make sure Mike Meyers was dead after he came back from apparent death the first time, the audience member shouts, "You stupid bitch, you deserve to die!"

* ''Film/FullMetalJacket'': When Pyle is in the middle of a nervous breakdown and holding a rifle, [[DrillSergeantNasty Hartman]] decides that, rather than call the [=MP=]s, he should insult the poor guy. It doesn't end well for him.

* ''Film/SistersOfDeath'': The main characters respond to anonymous invites to an isolated location (one of whom hitchhikes to get there, despite the fact that they were all sent enough money to afford transport), allow two strange men to drive them to their destination (in an SUV with all the windows covered), and when their host reveals that he wants to kill one of them (the one who arranged his daughter's death seven years earlier), they continually separate and isolate themselves. And continue to do so even after [[TenLittleMurderVictims they start getting picked off.]]

** Also, poor Bob, after Joker has just been decisively pissed off and now wants to blow off some steam. He's had his little outburst, but there's a TranquilFury brewing under his crackpot exterior -- something his loyal lackey fails to notice.

* ''Film/OngBak'': Given that they've watched ''dozens'' of their comrades writhe in excruciating pain, most of the {{mooks}} in [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsJ5s6CKmog this scene]] qualify ('''Warning:''' [[RatedMForManly This scene may impregnate the viewer, regardless of sex]]). If only they weren't practicing MookChivalry.

** It seems no one from any of the films understands the value of firearms. John Hommand doesn't keep a well armed security force on his island in case any of the dinosaurs escape. In the second and third films, the main characters mount "rescue missions" on islands full of dangerous predators without bringing any guns or anyone trained to use them.

* ''Film/AlienResurrection'': Dr. Gediman becomes increasingly fascinated with the aliens, to the point that he feels they will identify with him. When the Newborn approaches him after identifying more closely with Ripley 8 than the Queen, he seems to genuinely believe it might even think of him as its daddy.

* ''Film/{{Creepshow}}'': One segment of the horror anthology details the sad demise of numbskulled backswood hick [[Creator/StephenKing Jordy Verill]].

After Godzilla makes landfall on Honolulu, the landing forces decides it's a good idea to open fire on him with their puny assault rifles at a 350 foot monster, given the flares has shown just how huge he is.\\\

* [[DamselScrappy Parker]] in the 2010 ''Film/OpenWater'' knockoff ''Film/{{Frozen}}''. Granted, the guys weren't the brightest bulbs either (especially Dan, whose decision to bring the skiing-impaired, fair-haired maiden on ''a skiing vacation'' set the whole chain of events that led to them getting trapped on a ski-lift in motion - on his defense, though, it was at ''her'' insistence), but she takes it too far. She is also the sole survivor of the flick due to a gigantic AssPull.

* In ''Film/FourBrothers'', [[spoiler: Lt. Green appears to be the only competent cop in the Detroit police department. This illusion is shattered near the end of the movie, when Green finds proof that Fowler is corrupt. He doesn't turn the evidence of Fowler's corruption over to his superiors on the force, nor does he tell any of his fellow cops, nor does he tell anyone else. Instead he goes to confront Fowler alone just to beat him up and then walk away, giving Fowler the perfect opportunity to murder him. Fowler then has no trouble covering up the murder since Green never told anyone he was dirty.]]

*** You'd think Admiral Motti would have known that dissing the faith of the big scary Sith Lord and personal hatchetman of the Emperor, Darth Vader, in his face is a ''very'', ''very'', '''''very''''' bad idea.

* ''Film/{{ROTOR}}'': Sonya. After R.O.T.O.R. kills her fiancé, she flees with her car and R.O.T.O.R. follows her. She shakes him off and then stops on the open road and is looking for her purse (!) when she sees a police officer in the rareview mirror although she knows R.O.T.O.R. (looking like a police officer) is still following her. She only survives because R.O.T.O.R. somehow forgets to use his gun and lets her escape quickly.

* ''Film/{{ROTOR}}'': Sonya. After R.O.T.O.R. kills her fiancé, she flees with her car an R.O.T.O.R. follows her. She shakes him off and then stops on the open road and is looking for her purse (!) when she sees a police officer in the rareview mirror although she knows R.O.T.O.R. (looking like a police officer) is still following her. She only survives because R.O.T.O.R. somehow forgets to use his gun and lets her escape quickly.

* ''Film/{{ROTOR}}'': A trio of rednecks think that the titular [[CrushKillDestroy killer robot]] is merely a human police officer, so naturally they pick a fight with him.

** ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'': Darth Sidious (via hologram) congratulates the Separatists for their loyalty during the Clone Wars, which are about to end, and promises that his new apprentice, Darth Vader, will "[[DeadlyEuphemism take care of them]]" when he arrives at their hideout in Mustafar. After that transmission, you'd expect the Separatists would evacuate the hideout immediately since that would have translated to "killing them." But nope. They actually [[WhatAnIdiot take his words seriously]] and just wait in the hideout until Vader arrives. Once he arrives there, [[ForgoneConclusion guess what happens]].

** Almost everyone holds the IdiotBall so often that it's difficult to believe that they survived the first few minutes of the film. But the best example has to be when the survivors decide to take [[TheFundamentalist Mrs. Carmody's]] advice and use HumanSacrifice as a way to appease God and the creatures in the mist. As anyone who understands basic animal behavior will tell you, that kind of stuff will only draw ''more'' monsters to the immediate area around the store. Predators swarm at the smell of blood or the chance for an easy meal, so sacrificing people was actually the stupidest thing they could've done. On top of that the mist creatures seem to hunt by sense of smell or hearing because of low visibility, so attracting them to the store with an easy, injured meal would've also alerted them to the people hiding inside of it.