800,000 and rising: the horror movie with the highest kill count of all time
If you’re watching a horror movie, then you can count on a few things definitely happening: there are probably going to be jump scares, and there will almost certainly be a decent amount of blood.
You can also expect characters to make decisions that go against all conventional logic, especially if they’re sex-obsessed teens, and locations to be dark, atmospheric, and all around disturbing. However, perhaps the greatest horror trope of all time is death.
Not every scary movie features somebody biting the dust, though, and Poltergeist, April Fools Day, and The Babadook are all famous examples of corpse-less horrors, but for the most part, characters in these films don’t tend to last very long. Since horror fans are calm, well-adjusted people, there is an obsession within the community surrounding the so-called ‘kill counts’ of their favourite films and characters. If you’re one of these people, then sorry to have offended you, but you’ve got to admit it’s a little bit strange.
One of the leading authorities on this matter is the YouTube channel Dead Meat, wherein their Kill Count series delves deep into the bloodthirstiest, most murderous films and franchises in the history of horror, racking up bodies like they were on sale. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a movie with a kill count in the hundreds or, on very rare occasions, the thousands.
For instance, see the zombie comedy classic The Return of the Living Dead, which features an eye-watering 4,038 deaths; however, the movie at the very top of their list leaves that number in the dust, and it’s one you’ve probably never heard of.
In 2023, director Chad Payne unleashed his gruesome passion project onto an unsuspecting YouTube audience in the form of Emesis Blue, an animated feature made entirely with Source Filmmaker, a free piece of software from video game makers Valve. Payne used the assets and lore of the first-person shooter game Team Fortress 2 to bring his twisted vision to life, and according to Dead Meat’s video about the film, Emesis Blue has a kill count of 800,054, and no, that isn’t a typo.
Before we break down how any movie, let alone a fan-made one released on the internet for free, got to this absurd number, we have to talk about what Emesis Blue is actually about. An unnamed soldier is sent on a mission to locate Jules Archibald, the governor of New Mexico, where he discovers that Archibald has been working on something called the ‘Respawn Machine’, which can bring people back from the dead; well, sometimes it can.
According to a scene in the film, Archibald’s tests of the Respawn Machine resulted in 800,000 people dying and then failing to come back to life. Dead Meat doesn’t usually count this many offscreen deaths, but when the main character later falls into a hellish pit, he is surrounded by the corpses of Archibald’s unfortunate test subjects. Combine this number with the other characters killed during the runtime, and there’s your answer.
While more mainstream movies may ‘officially’ have a claim to the highest kill count, Emesis Blue will forever have a special place in the horror canon as the 800,000 was merely an estimate, so the true number of fatalities might be even higher. Don’t have nightmares now!
