What is the smartest decision you’ve ever seen in a horror movie?

Spoilers ahead, obviously.

Oftentimes people in horror movies make such reckless decisions that it makes it really stand out when someone makes a good decision.

I think the award has to go to Danny at the end of the Shining, when he’s being chased by Jack in the maze. He backtracks his own footprints in the snow and then dives into the hedges so Jack can no longer follow his path, then dips the fuck out of the maze when he knows Jack is officially lost.

Not as much a smart decision, but Sally leaping out the window when she sees Leatherface chasing her up the stairs in Texas Chainsaw Massacre is probably the smartest thing she could have done, instead of barricading herself in the room with dehydrated dogshit Grandpa Sawyer like other movie characters may have done.

Edit: forgot to add two from two of my favorite horror villains.

In the 2006 remake of the Omen, rather than push Kathy out of the window as in the original (this is one of the only original and brilliantly inventive moments of the remake), Mrs. Baylock pushes a syringe into her blood transfer tube and inserts an air bubble in it, staging Kathy’s murder as a simple brain embolism from a stroke. Fucking genius and dreadful.

And Ash from Alien staging his insistence to save the newborn monster as concern for all their safety. They all know the little shit spits acid and has razor-sharp teeth (it just gnawed its way through Kane’s chest). His tone when he yells not to touch it suggests “it’ll kill us” rather than “I’ll kill you if you kill it.”