Remy – Regan in The Exorcist
We all forget that, beneath that demon, there is just a little girl. A little girl whose body is being used as a sort of temporary home to a demon who has no regard for what he puts her body through. We see her crabwalk, we see her head spin, we see her getting tossed around, cut up and burnt. We see all this, and yet we breathe a sigh of relief when she comes back to her own body, forgetting for a moment that her body would have been destroyed from that whole scenario. The violence that happens to that small child in The Exorcist is brutality you wouldn’t wish on someone twice or thrice her age, yet she endures it all. Somehow.
Nato – Martin in Dead Snow
Another character that endures tremendous amounts of pain but keeps fighting, Martin also suffers psychological pain as he thinks he’s found a way to outsmart becoming a zombie, only to have bad luck kick him when he’s down.
In Dead Snow, a group of medical students go vacationing in a remote cabin on a snowy mountain, only to get the attention of some cursed Nazi zombies protecting some gold they stumble upon. Martin, one of the longest survivors of the film, ends up getting in an epic standoff between what appears to be the remaining group of zombies (along with his buddy Roy), slicing and dicing his way through them, only to be bitten at the last minute. Thinking he’s got a solution, he hacks off his arm with a chainsaw high enough to stop the spread of infection, and then cauterizes the wound. Brilliant! Then, out of nowhere, a zombie pops out of the snow and bites him square on the dick. With his spirits crushed and his manhood infected, Martin then looks up to see a whole new slew of zombies rise from the snow, ready for a second wave. Oh yeah, this is all after he accidentally kills one of his friends in the heat of battle.
“Well, fuck me, right?” That’s the only reaction I’d have.
