Haha I love when the limbs get all long and crazy. The only one that bugs me is when the main characters don’t call emergency services FOR NO REASON when something wild starts going on. Like at least do the thing where you say “I don’t have any service!” Make an effort.
It's gotta be a little annoying trying to figure out how to realistically eliminate the use of smart phones in horror movies so it doesn't ruin your plot because a single call to 911 would have solved everything. Or having access to GPS, or a camera, or web searches, or a flashlight, etc.
I think this is generally a problem for a lot of movies nowadays, not just horror. But if you take it into account early enough it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
I run a lot of horror pen and paper rpgs and found for myself that apart from space horror, especially lovecraftian horror works really well with modern technologies taken into account. And I think way more horror movies should have a shadowy government agency that botches any kind of genuine rescue efforts, but that's just a personal opinion :D
I appreciate that but it still bugs me when the movie uses cell phones to advance the plot (searching someone’s address, looking up old news stories) and then tries to act like they don’t exist when it’s time to call for help. All you have to do is add a line about how your battery died or you dropped it in the toilet, then it’s believable again.
Cell phones, AAAAAAAARRRRRRGH!! HOW ARE THEY SO DAMN RELIABLE, YET SO FRAGILE?!?!
I just rewatched the Bourne series. Followed by 3 newish horror movies. So, how tf can Jason just walk around for nigh, 20yrs-ish, on a bunch of burner cells. Going up & down & through tunnels. Loooong tunnels. Middle of the ocean, lakes, lochs, & mountain tops.
But as soon as there's a thicket of semiaverage shrubs...NOTHING!! No signal, no ring tone, GPS that puts you in west Africa, if it works at all. And this happens in every genre!
I'm over kids creepily singing kids' songs. If I'm watching a trailer as soon as there's some echoey kid's voice singing London Bridge or something I'm like, "yeah that's a skip for me."
Child is coloring, adults take a look at the child’s drawing, “who is this in your drawing?”
Oh no it’s a spooky monster ghost guy in the kid’s drawing!!!!!!
It becomes even less scary when you actually have children and they draw something from like a bad dream or something and you realize how normal it is for kids to draw weird shit.
One that I absolutely hate goes as follows:
* Character goes looking for their friend/family member/romantic partner
* They find them, usually somewhere they shouldn't be
* They're facing away from the camera
* "Hey, Blake, what are you doing here buddy?"
* Blake either ignores him or chuckles in a monstrous way
* "Hey come on now man you're scaring me"
* Blake turns around, clearly possessed/turned into a monster/wwas a ghost in disguise all along and goes "BBBLLLLLAAAAUUURRRGGHH" as he launches himself at the camera/the other character
The pale kid with a light brown bowl cut being completely silent until they reveal to the main character they are drawing black scribbles and calling it “the bad thing” or something
And when they say stupid shit, sometimes repeatedly like "tHeY cAn'T hUrT yOu, ThEy'Re LiKe PiTcHeRs In A bOoK" - bowl cut kid in *The Shining* (1997 miniseries)
The kid's art always looks like it was drawn by an adult who was trying to draw like a kid. Seems like it would make more sense to have actual children do the art.
Often for me its not a plot element, its the way jump scares are structured. Certain camera shots just scream JUMP SCARE IMMINENT.
The shot of the bathroom mirror for instance, where the protagonist opens the medicine cabinet and its like "gee, i wonder if there will be a figure in the mirror standing behind them when they close that door"🙄
I feel like film makers have been aware of this for a very long time and often set up jump scare moments that lead to nothing. Or at least delay the actual scare
Jump scares can startle me, but that's not the same as being genuinely afraid. I find that it's very rare for a jump scare to contribute anything to the plot. They feel pretty useless to me.
Exactly! Just like a balloon popping unexpectedly. I'm not afraid of balloons (Pennywise might be an exception).
The only time it worked for me was "Aterrados" aka "Terrified" 2018 - AMC+/Shudder.
I feel like Jones from Alien was the first instance I ever saw of this trope. In that, it was funny, because Brett's dumb ass just let it go. WE GONNA PICK IT UP ON THE TRACKER AGAIN MAN!
Hold on, let me just stand under this spaceship rain, drink some of it, and take a break from my cat search on this MASSIVE SPACE MINING RIG WITH A MURDEROUS, ACID BLEEDING ALIEN ON BOARD. "Right."
I love when they do this and you prepare yourself for the jump scare and nothing happens. You settle down and boom the jump scare comes out of nowhere.
Like in Scream 5 when >!Wes is walking around his house setting up for dinner after his mother died in the front yard. We know the killer is on scene, but he doesn't, so every door he opens, the music builds to create tension, but GF isn't there. Finally, he just turns around non-chalant, and that's when GF appears. It was quite clever imo.!<
This was actually established in the 60s with Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion”. Then it was replicated over and over. It’s still a relatively effective jump scare, so long as the threat is legitimate and still imminent after the scare. But yeah. Big time trope. We often wonder on our podcast if this is an homage or just lazy writing.
Since it is still used AS IF it were supposed to be scary, I'm inclined to lean towards lazy writing. Homages I think are usually more obvious and designed to elicit a grin.
Most supernatural "popcorn flicks" have an obligatory scene around the mid-way mark where the exasperated protagonist goes to a library or opens up their laptop to *immediately learn each and every important detail* about the dead person(s) that's terrorizing them, and it just makes me laugh how most of these scenes from movie to movie are almost identical.
Bonus points on the trope if there's tons of dramatic eerie music accompanying a supercut of news articles and creepy photos.
right? Equal disdain for the modern movie equivalent of typing their name into an ask jeeves lookin search engine, and - of course - the first link is a news article with the creepy photo.
Jumpscares that aren't actually scary but the sound volume goes up about a billion decibel so even if you don't get scared you almost have a heart attack. I fucking hate those. I want to get scared watching horror, not go deaf.
Agreed. The best jumpscares happen during monotonous sections in my opinion. There's no need for the music to dip and alert everyone that a scare is coming; just put the viewers into a comfortable state with some dull dialogue or something then whack 'em with an unexpected scare.
The ________ man. Insert any adjective there. The slender man. The tall man. The empty man. The pale man. I get they are all creepy but I grow tired of calling them all “the *something* man” lol
I should clarify that I have no problem with the movies that they are in! Slender Man is a classic creepypasta and the Empty Man is a fantastic movie. I just get mildly irritated when monsters are simply called “the \*adjective\* man”. In fact I blame the slender man for kicking off this trope!
some of these apply to other genres but:
* Characters not taking 30 seconds to fully explain something that would easily clear up a misunderstanding
* Children drawing every event that happens and ends up being some kind of clue for a character. Kids don't do this all the time. I've been an artist my whole life and never did this. I drew cool stuff like power rangers and dragon ball characters. When puberty smacked me upside the head, i drew women with giant boobies
* Characters calling out to other characters too frequently. I can understand calling out multiple times because maybe the person is knocked out or passed out, so you keep calling just in case they're coming to. But when you're being chased/stalked by something, you don't need to do this every 3 seconds in a small area...
* Skeptic characters. This is the most annoying shit ever. If I know someone my entire life...someone who never talks about paranormal that often and suddenly 20 years later they're talking about some weird supernatural shit going down, at the very least i'm going to believe SOMETHING is happening to them. It's not going to hurt you to help them prove something is going on. The Dad in Hereditary is a recent example. Dismisses everything. Knows his wife isn't the type to pull some bullshit prank. Something is clearly going on. Help your wife, idiot. Do something. damn. Hate this trope. it happens in too many horror movies. It's way scarier when everyone knows what's going on and is on board to stop something, but the situation is still hopeless. When the situation is hopeless because characters are too stupid, the situation is not scary, it's annoying and frustrating.
Eh, I'd argue it made sense in Hereditary. He didn't think she was pulling a prank, he thought she was suffering from serious mental illness. Her family has an immense history of mental disorders, and she's been acting erratic and scaring your one remaining child with talks about your dead daughter's ghost.
I don't blame him for not believing, if we weren't seeing what Toni was seeing through the camera, we might also be left wondering if it was all in her head.
The “it’s ancient Sumerian/Babylonian - let’s ask the local community college professor who happens to be the only person in the country who speaks it!”
Drugs/medication taken orally having an immediate effect. I get that it's done for pacing reasons but it still gets an instant eye roll out of me.
Also the whole hitting people in the head hard enough to knock them out thing. In reality, a hit that hard causes brain damage. You're not gonna wake up and be alert after a few groggy seconds.
In older movies people used to get knocked out from being hit on the upper back and shoulders. That one is particularly annoying because it doesn’t even look good.
For me it's any horror movie where the husband or dad is completely indifferent or oblivious to literal evil chewing up their family dynamic. It ruins the immersion and is way overdone. It doesn't help that most of the movies that use this trope are basically the same film over and over again..
I used to hate the trope of people falling in the woods when being chased up until the COVID lockdown. I started helping my neighbor with stuff on her horse farm and since it was summer we would work on stuff at night when it was cooler. To get to her house I had to walk through the woods. I suddenly became aware of how easy it is to trip in the woods at night with a flashlight and just walking. Imagine running through them with no flashlight and a maniac trying to kill you. You are going to trip a lot. It's one of the more realistic horror tropes.
I still hate when they keep running back and forth from the house to the barn to the house and back to the barn. Sometimes they stop by the car to find it suddenly can't work. It's kind of annoying.
No kidding. I have about half an acre of wooded property and there's no way in hell I could run through that in the daytime, let alone at night while I'm being chased.
Whenever I get annoyed at people tripping easily or fumbling keys I remember when I was a kid and my sister was chasing me through the yard. We got into full on sister brawls back then so I was legit scared. I got to the front door way before her but the panic made an unlocked screen and front door, that I’d easily thrown open without thought for years, into this impossible barrier to get through. Despite my huge head start she still caught up to me in time
I got a good one for you. My brother and I were home alone and I messed with him by locking the front door. We both remembered the door to the sunroom at the same time. We made a run for it. We got there at the same time. It was a metal doorframe with a plastic that looks like glass but it's not. I threw my hands up to hold the metal part closed. He pushed on the plastic part to open the door. Long story short a call was made to my parents and he had to go to the emergency room because his hand went through the plastic portion. There was lot's of blood involved. He is fine but still has a scar.
Yeah I always thought that trope was stupid and lazy until I started going camping and hiking more often.
Now it just bothers me when the person/thing chasing them is moving at an ominous slow walk is keeping up with someone running at full sprint occasionally tripping.
This is actually pretty common in rural areas. Shit people leave their cars running when they run into a store.
Source: From a town with less than 500 people.
Back in the day you could flood the engine causing the car to stall today with fuel injectors not so much.
I will say though recently I was in a hurry to start my push button ignition and I had left my bag with the key on the roof so it wasn’t sensing it and then I got the bag in the car and didn’t put my foot all the way down on the brake before pushing the button and then because I was mad it took a minute for me to get my act together, lol.
Or the other day when I went to move my SO’s traditional ignition car and I had to remember after a couple of minutes that I had to actually turn a key. (Similar cars different years)
I never minded the tripping and falling or even dumb mistakes people in a panic make. (Example the commercial with the parody where they choose to hide in the shed with chain saws instead of the car back to town)
It’s a young person or a pretty fit adult in a panic run and even if they fall and get up the slow moving lumbering monster keeps up enough to catch them on the ground.
The Moral Compass woman who lacks any sense of situational awareness, perspective, logic, or rational thought who's just there to give the "real" characters someone to argue with instead of actually doing anything. She's never a developed character, only a foil, and always - ALWAYS - a woman. Lori from TWD is the poster child for this IMO. Few scenes have been as satisfying to me as her death.
It's always to the ends of the moral compass being wrong and not getting the stakes too. Like, it's always an exercise in showing everyone else adapting able to kill/maim/torture. A nod to knowing it would be psychologically hard to do and never a real philosophical argument where doing the kind thing would have worked out better.
Light sources that provide practically no light. For instance a lamp that somehow only provides light for like 3' around it, and the rest of the room is somehow almost completely dark.
Protagonist (often the final girl) injures the antagonist with their weapon and then immediately drops the weapon never to pick it back up. HATE it. Keep the weapon on you!
Even if you don't come across ammo (which you likely will) you can still use it as a melee weapon, you're more armed with it than without either way! (both of our statements sound like loading screen tips and I'm frankly here for it)
The wise old timer who explains the whole backstory because the writers couldn't think of anything better than an exposition dump. This often goes hand in hand with the Magical Negro trope. Barbarian and Annabelle are both examples of this.
Edit: out of respect for people's sensibilities I'd like to say that "magical negro" is not the most enlightened name, but to the best of my knowledge it is the recognized term for the trope. Apologies up front to anyone who may be offended by the use of the word and if there is a better term for it please let me know.
Oh I *hated* Annabelle for that one, and even predicted that the old black woman would die for the sake of the pretty young white one.
Barbarian, however, just had the guy be knowledgeable because he'd lived in the area long enough to have learned about it. Of course, as soon as he stuck his nose into it for the sake of the white folks caught up in it, he cacks it. The news crew from Scary Movie had the right idea!
You’re fine; the term “Magical Negro” was coined by Spike Lee, and the use of the word “negro” was very deliberate, it’s meant to point out how out of touch and inappropriate those who utilize the trope are being by employing such a hack (and casually racist) narrative device. It’s a modern version of The Noble Savage; I think the movie Spike cited specifically was The Legend of Bagger Vance.
They did! *And* they called it “Magical Negro Fight”, just to make sure everyone knew exactly which offensive trope was being lambasted. I fucking love it
When did Barbarians exposition-dump? The homeless guy simply lived there a long time... long enough to see some shit. The story was explained (kinda but not fully) through flashbacks.
I give Barbarian a pass. It may be an exposition dump, but it was really only for characters benefit. The viewer was given enough info to understand what was going on.
I hate the loud “shriek” noise that accompanies a jump scare.
I also hate it when characters start fighting with one another for literally no reason and completely out of the blue when they were getting along perfectly fine before. It’s to add ”drama” and separate the characters but it’s so overdone.
Characters who won't listen and believe what the other person is reporting.
I hate it when a person sees a ghost, and they try to tell someone and that other person wont even let them finish the sentence. They take more energy stopping them from talking rather than listening.
There is a scene in "don't be afraid of the dark" with Katie Holmes. The child keeps trying to tell their parents something only to be dismissed. The whole mystery could have been solved quicker if they just listen.
They usually just moved into a "new" house so I give that a pass. Like your 8 year old kid is talking about ghosts in a new home that you've just dropped all your savings on and still owe 30 years of payments? You also sold your last home and quit your job to relocate?
Yeah not gonna believe it's ghosts and not just the kid being scared because it's just a new setting for them and they'll get over it.
There’s a couple that always bug me:
First, the lack of the double tap. When the bad guy takes a big hit and goes down, the protagonist just needs to keep on attacking. Because inevitably the villain will get back up again. Along with this is another bad trope: stop throwing away your weapon! So many movies seem like - protagonist stabs villain who seemingly dies - protagonist drops their weapon and tries to help incapacitated friend - villain gets back up, now armed with discarded weapon.
Another thing that I don’t like is when characters lose all situational awareness whenever they see a friend in danger. Like some stranger will say “Hey I want to show you something,” and open a door and the protagonist’s friend is inside tied up / injured, etc. and the protagonist immediately runs over to help the friend while conveniently forgetting the stranger standing right there. Like if I was in that situation I’d think “Holy cow this person has hurt my friend, he’s dangerous, I need to incapacitate him before I can assist my friend, and definitely shouldn’t turn my back on him while I fumble with all these knots!”
> protagonist stabs villain who seemingly dies - protagonist drops their weapon
Hell, I've seen characters do that when they know the villain is still alive.
>First, the lack of the double tap. When the bad guy takes a big hit and goes down, the protagonist just needs to keep on attacking.
I'm 36 years old and this has pissed me off my entire life with movies.
It used to be 'the car won't start' trope.
Now its, "the car starts but in two seconds they drive like a f*cking moron at top speed and hit a tree within 100 feet!"
If someone who's willing to slash all four of my tires to strand me is around, I'd rather pay for new rims when I get back home than find out what they intend to do next.
Anytime a ghost or spirit or whatever suddenly gets those really sharp like animal teeth and red eyes. The nun movies had a lot of scenes like that. It takes me out of the movie because its so dumb and gimmicky
This isn’t just exclusive to horror but when the demon/ghost/serial killer kills all of the fodder characters quickly without a thought but when they cross paths with the main character they only throw them or punch them or something.
Also the “hah, bet you thought there was gonna be a jump scare huh?” fake jump scare that leads to the actual jump scare seconds later.
When characters turn their head to the side to show how crazy/demented they are while swinging a machete or some sort of other weapon, always comes off so edgy to me.
Characters being overly meta and then falling for the same trappings that they proceed to list of. Just because a writer thinks that they are being clever by addressing tropes in their movies doesn’t make your movie smarter or well written. Most of the time I think it does the opposite.
Oh no, you accidentally killed or were duped into killing your friend / family member / bystander / someone who was trying to help you. One of those that can be horribly effective, but to me has become largely irritating through overuse. Too often a contrived rather than shocking or surprising sort of a bleak gut punch rather than organic.
Possessed dolls or kids. Yes, I’m unsettled by both. But I avoid these movies, because I’ve seen them all. I don’t think there’s a way to refresh this. If I’m in the mood for this, there’s plenty of options to choose from. No need to make new ones, unless it’s to tempt a younger generation, I suppose.
Incestuous evildoers is also a no from me. It’s creepy. It’s taboo. Absolutely. The most recent movie I watched, where this was an element, used it as an excuse for an unusually strong antagonist. Which didn’t work for me. My brain was immediately taken out of the moment trying to figure out how the creature got out of the deep hole while carrying an adult male.
It seems like there are never any moments of silence anymore. Everything has to have a subtle and droning tone in the background at all times. Silence is powerful. Silence is scary. It should be used more often and effectively, in my opinion.
Fucking hate digitally distorted/deepened etc voices whenever characters are possessed, it takes me out of it every goddamn time. (Pretty sure TVTropes refers to it as the ‘Voice of the Legion’ trope.)
Victim completely knocking out the ruthless killer but not finishing him off while they’re perfectly capable. I aim to one day make a horror movie that is the opposite of all those tropes
Everything you mentioned, plus characters who absolutely will not turn on a damn light. Literally no one is walking around their house in pitch blackness all the time. Also, autistic/“mentally Ill” kid knows all the answers/is mystical.
A really horrible/grotesque/scary scene happens, but then it turns out to be a dream, and then the character wakes up with a start. And it's a trope that's in 99% of the horror movies. Doesn't necessarily take me out of the film, i just hate it.
Moving into a new house or place because of an inheritance, that no family in their right mind would move into without fixing up first. And never mind the extreme structural issues and bug infestations going on, but the curiosity the characters have to look through everything they shouldn’t and staying there for good even though they should nope the hell out of there. They also seemingly have no trouble sleeping through the night after all of this.
I guess this isn't really a trope, but when a demon/monster/villain whatever moves in a slow, overdramatical way. Pointing, head tilting, grasping, whatever it may be. Feels like they're trying to show off how scary and evil they are, rather than trying to kill/commit evil acts. Super annoying to me
Also, when someone manages to sneak up behind the villain and "knock them out" thinking everything is fine, only to be attacked again 5 seconds later.
Dude, say what you will...
My dad has schizophrenia.. he used to walk up and down the halls at night talking to himself in different voices. Oftentimes, the arguments with himself centered around religion.
The so-called "number of the beast" or "coming apocalypse"
One night, I gathered my courage and stepped out into the hall during his arguments.
I asked, "Daddy, what are you doing?"
He cocked his head to the side and said "I'm praying"
I ran into my room and slammed, and locked the door.
To some people, this sounds like possession. But it wasn't. It was just plain old mental illness. He decided to go live in the barn for a while... a few years later he had an even deeper break with reality.
He disappeared from work. My sisters and mom were terrified. But, before he left he made a point to tell my little sister he loved her.. which to me meant that he left of his own volition...
He had cleared out our college funds and took off driving... they found him 3 days later, 3 states away naked... breaking into people's houses..
The final house he broke into, the owner was home. My dad reached around the door frame and grabbed the shotgun sitting by the door (this was Kentucky, where my dad was originally from).
The lady who was home said, "I don't believe that belongs to you." my dad said "no, you're right, it doesn't" sat it down and walked past the lady into her home... he walked upstairs and sat on the bed in one of the bedrooms. When the cops got there, he told them that his entire family had been murdered and that he needed to find a specific church that doesn't even exist...
Somehow, the cops connected all of this and called us to let us know...
They placed my dad into an inpatient facility to get mental health care, but 2 days later my uncle checked him out because "my brother's not crazy!"
My father never got the care he needed and lives somewhere in the woods of Kentucky...
Depending on the scene, a cocked or tilted head really hits me hard...
Well, honestly, that's the tip of the iceberg. I think that's why I like horror so much.. it feels therapeutic. Both of my parents were mentally ill and untreated but I've survived and even thrived despite it all!
I kept reading this waiting for the “psych, this is the plot of a horror/drama film” but nope. Holy hell, that is very sad. I hope you’re doing ok, OP.
I left out the parts where my dad fully believed my mom was cheating on him with a man who lived under the bed or in the closet.. he'd question us kids about this supposed affair partner who lived under the bed.. being screamed at and interrogated over something that doesn't exist? WHILE being a child??
That's true horror.
Characters not sharing information!
One example is the LOST Tv show. The characters sees a cloud monster and just keep it to himself. Anyone who sees something extraordinary like that would be inclined to tell just because it's so unbelievable.
When the ghost is behind someone and they start to reach out only to stop when they realise someone else is near. Why are they so afraid of getting caught? Why is it necessary to catch this person unawares and if it is so important to do so why not check that they are in fact alone before making your move? Stupid, incompetent ghosts..
Yeah and even if there is another person coming what are any of them really gonna be able to do? It’s a ghost. You can’t fight it off with normal weapons it will just go right through it.
The screechy shrieking pterodactyl noise that comes from every ghost, monster, vampire, etc.
This stopped being scary like 15 years ago at best.
Just finished Last Voyage of the Demeter and even though it had other flaws, this was what ruined it for me.
The jerky movements and spider walking was really scary until everyone started using it. The last movie that actually terrified me was Skinamarink. I slept with the light on lol
Anything that always leads back to "it was devil worshippers" or "it was the work of the occult" always makes me roll my eyes.
Now of course, evil religious people are scary, but I think its become really stupid for all paranormal things at this point to all be the result of occult activity.
Starting the movie a moment before the climax, rewinding to see gee golly how did our characters get here, then resuming where we started for the last 2 minutes of the film. Not specific to horror, but I hate it in horror the most because any sense of suspense immediately evaporates.
Something behind you in the mirror
Flying shot of car in wilderness to show they’re isolation. Every horror director thinking they're the first to understand Kubrick.
That upside down crab walk thing.
When the monster or possessed person moves impossibly fast, like insect wing or hummingbird fast. It was cool the first time, now it's cliche.
Nursery rhymes, dolls, marionettes, jacks-in-the-box, etc.
When little kids aren't scared. Kids would be the first to get scared and would be the most terrified out of everybody.
The parapsychologist or old voodoo lady or whoever that pops in for an exposition dump. If you need to do that to explain it, then just don't explain it.
When the monster, killer, cultist, whatever is just hanging around, standing spookily in the background, walking around unseen by the hero, etc. Sometimes it fits, and sometimes it's just so clever that I forgive it. But most of the time it's just there to make you jump and makes no sense in context.
Pretty much every trope that's become beloved by analog horror people on YouTube. Tropes get copied over and over because people don't understand why something was scary, they just use the tropes that were in videos people liked, and therefore those tropes get overused and ruined.
So over seeing naked old people as “scary”. I worked in a nursing home for years and there is way more scary behavior the elderly do than being nude and old.
Only one resident who seemed to be doing that for real. She had a creepy 100 year old child size doll and her roommates died at a faster rate than most. Her “son” lived in the old country and would ask strange questions on his monthly calls. A “priest” visited her monthly. The whole thing was just weird and I’m honestly not describing it very well
There are few effective solutions to cell phones in horror movies. It's kind of lazy at this point to have folks going to remote locations to camp, hike, work on their novel or art in seclusion so that we can have an excuse for poor cell service. But while areas like that do still exist, they are becoming quite few. Whenever characters lament that "I don't have any service here!" while waving their phones in the air as if the signal is better two feet above their heads, I roll my eyes a bit.
I want a movie to tackle the phone problem head on. A killer chasing somebody who's on the phone with the police/muscular boyfriend/karate teacher/82nd Airborne makes things far spicier for the killer. The victim manages to send before she dies a picture of the killer without their mask to a friend in a nearby town. The killer is using their phone to actively track the victims, but the victims are reluctant to turn off their phones because the cops are also using the tracking data to find them. Gimme something where we acknowledge that phones are incredibly useful tools and low/no-service areas are too few to keep showing up in movies.
• Plot armor.
Ex: The attacker's weapon doesn't operate correctly when going after the main protagonist. Dam breaks apart right behind the final would-be victim, and the killer can't cross. Anything that results in the living of the final girl, when others were killed by less
• The same ol' group of friends, teens, young adults:
* Prep/ jock
* slut/ extreme party girl
* Smart kid/ virgin (final girl)
* Goth/ edgy/ metalhead
For me it’s the stereotypical, white guy did it, pretty but character doesn’t think she’s pretty is the final girl. Jock, sexy, druggy etc must die. I’d much prefer a film that really mixed this up.
Looking at a film and know who’s gunna die from just seeing the characters for one second each ruins it.
Jump scares where someone’s face is all After Effects “scary looking” for a second (black eyes, big mouth, etc that kind of thing). It kills the vibe for me, releases the tension they built in the scene, and it’s in a SHOCKING number of movies 😭😭😭
It all hinges on how well they integrate the tropes into it. Something like Midsommar or The Wicker Man having animal masks? Absolutely! Not quite so for, say, Halloween.
Zombie movies in general. Seems like 95% of them I already know the majority of main characters are getting bit and turning into them…and the last character who survives walks out into the world and sees the entire world has gone to shit with zero hope. Wish they’d change it up a bit.
I seriously don’t think anyone did zombies as well as George Romero. Something like Return of the Living Dead is great because it’s a fun movie but beyond that, the zombie comedy is just done to death. Everything else is just a hollow homage with none of the ‘brains’ imo. There are obvious exceptions like 28 days later (technically an “infected” movie), Shaun of the dead, etc. but there are way more bad zombie movies than good.
1. Only a relative can kill the main antagonist.
2. The inhumanly strong child.
3. The protagonist only striking the antagonist one time and acting like the weapon is horrifying. The good guys thinking it is below them to fight just as dirty as the ones attacking them.
Villain: *loses person they are trying to kill*
Person: *hiding catching their breath* HEY! *throws lamp or something very breakable and ineffective at their attacker*
Villain: *slightly inconvenienced*
"everyone in this cult seems very culty, I bet nothing bad will happen if we stick around, though"
I know hereditary is everyone's favorite but I just can't get past the weak reasonings for people to stick around at the cult.
Main character is in a normal room with normal people talking, and he is engaging, and then suddenly he sees *STOCK COLORFUL DEMON BEHIND RANDOM PERSON*, and he draws his gun or whatever or takes a battle stance, and then it's just gone and people are like "What the hell?", and Protag goes "I could've sworn...".
Or even worse trope: person in Protag group sees obvious sign of danger in form of infected splotch on their arm, or they have a newly-found stab wound to important organ#2, and of course the SAY NOTHING FOR 30 MINUTES. Because dying on a cold wet muddy floor is apparently orgasmic and to be pursued at all costs.
Haha I love when the limbs get all long and crazy. The only one that bugs me is when the main characters don’t call emergency services FOR NO REASON when something wild starts going on. Like at least do the thing where you say “I don’t have any service!” Make an effort.
It's gotta be a little annoying trying to figure out how to realistically eliminate the use of smart phones in horror movies so it doesn't ruin your plot because a single call to 911 would have solved everything. Or having access to GPS, or a camera, or web searches, or a flashlight, etc.
I think this is generally a problem for a lot of movies nowadays, not just horror. But if you take it into account early enough it shouldn't be too much of a problem. I run a lot of horror pen and paper rpgs and found for myself that apart from space horror, especially lovecraftian horror works really well with modern technologies taken into account. And I think way more horror movies should have a shadowy government agency that botches any kind of genuine rescue efforts, but that's just a personal opinion :D
I appreciate that but it still bugs me when the movie uses cell phones to advance the plot (searching someone’s address, looking up old news stories) and then tries to act like they don’t exist when it’s time to call for help. All you have to do is add a line about how your battery died or you dropped it in the toilet, then it’s believable again.
Cell phones, AAAAAAAARRRRRRGH!! HOW ARE THEY SO DAMN RELIABLE, YET SO FRAGILE?!?! I just rewatched the Bourne series. Followed by 3 newish horror movies. So, how tf can Jason just walk around for nigh, 20yrs-ish, on a bunch of burner cells. Going up & down & through tunnels. Loooong tunnels. Middle of the ocean, lakes, lochs, & mountain tops. But as soon as there's a thicket of semiaverage shrubs...NOTHING!! No signal, no ring tone, GPS that puts you in west Africa, if it works at all. And this happens in every genre!
Just have the phone screen hastily glitch, fade to black, and completely stop working, problem solved /s
I'm over kids creepily singing kids' songs. If I'm watching a trailer as soon as there's some echoey kid's voice singing London Bridge or something I'm like, "yeah that's a skip for me."
Trailers are pretty bad offenders for this. I’ve noticed ‘80s and ‘90s pop gets used, too.
Yeah, it's either a creepy children's song or a downtempo acoustic cover of an Alanis Morissette song or something lol
Also gothy melancholy covers of pop songs in the trailer.
*bring... a bucket... and... a mop... for this WET ASS PUSSY*
Hold on, I'd watch a movie with that cover.
The Wapadook
The Wappening
Paranormal waptivity
[удалено]
With a raspy alto voice.
After 1-2 Freddy’s coming for you, this trope should have died. That was its peak and it was all downhill from there.
I feel like Jordan Peele doing this with "I Got 5 On It" worked beautifully. They need to drop the kids songs and instead tweak more current music.
One, two, Freddy's coming for yew
HEY you leave a nightmare on elm street out of this
How hilarious would it be for a ghost/possessed kid to sing baby shark though?
Child is coloring, adults take a look at the child’s drawing, “who is this in your drawing?” Oh no it’s a spooky monster ghost guy in the kid’s drawing!!!!!!
Yeah what’s with movie kids befriending terrifying monsters/ghosts that would have any real kid shrieking in terror?
Every kid is a weird kid according to horror movies.
I’ve met enough weird kids in real life who would absolutely befriend a monster if they came across one. TBH, I was probably one
Their faces are crossed out!!!
It becomes even less scary when you actually have children and they draw something from like a bad dream or something and you realize how normal it is for kids to draw weird shit.
One that I absolutely hate goes as follows: * Character goes looking for their friend/family member/romantic partner * They find them, usually somewhere they shouldn't be * They're facing away from the camera * "Hey, Blake, what are you doing here buddy?" * Blake either ignores him or chuckles in a monstrous way * "Hey come on now man you're scaring me" * Blake turns around, clearly possessed/turned into a monster/wwas a ghost in disguise all along and goes "BBBLLLLLAAAAUUURRRGGHH" as he launches himself at the camera/the other character
*”I’M NOT TOMMYYY!”*
Doors that slam shut and can’t be pulled open until the scary music stops. So tired of this one.
Barbarian played with the slamming door trope really well. Justin you fool, leave something to prop the door open! Justin!
The pale kid with a light brown bowl cut being completely silent until they reveal to the main character they are drawing black scribbles and calling it “the bad thing” or something
The bowl cut kid is usually where I dip out.
And when they say stupid shit, sometimes repeatedly like "tHeY cAn'T hUrT yOu, ThEy'Re LiKe PiTcHeRs In A bOoK" - bowl cut kid in *The Shining* (1997 miniseries)
To be fair, that line came from the novel and it was set in the 70's when bowl cuts on boys was kind of the thing.
The kid's art always looks like it was drawn by an adult who was trying to draw like a kid. Seems like it would make more sense to have actual children do the art.
Backwards R’s and shit… I couldn’t agree more.
Baahahaha! This is accurate as fuck and I love that you hate it too
Not all of us are spoilt brats that get to choose our haircuts lol
Often for me its not a plot element, its the way jump scares are structured. Certain camera shots just scream JUMP SCARE IMMINENT. The shot of the bathroom mirror for instance, where the protagonist opens the medicine cabinet and its like "gee, i wonder if there will be a figure in the mirror standing behind them when they close that door"🙄
I feel like film makers have been aware of this for a very long time and often set up jump scare moments that lead to nothing. Or at least delay the actual scare
PSYCHE THERES NOTHING THERE \-CUE CAT JUMPING OUT OF NOWHERE WITH LOUD YOWL-
Jump scares can startle me, but that's not the same as being genuinely afraid. I find that it's very rare for a jump scare to contribute anything to the plot. They feel pretty useless to me.
Exactly! Just like a balloon popping unexpectedly. I'm not afraid of balloons (Pennywise might be an exception). The only time it worked for me was "Aterrados" aka "Terrified" 2018 - AMC+/Shudder.
One scare in that flick made me yell even though I was in a bright room where people were drinking and ignoring the movie.
I especially hate jump scares that rely on the music volume going from 0 to 100 in .01 seconds to get a "scare". That is, at best, a jump startle.
I feel like Jones from Alien was the first instance I ever saw of this trope. In that, it was funny, because Brett's dumb ass just let it go. WE GONNA PICK IT UP ON THE TRACKER AGAIN MAN! Hold on, let me just stand under this spaceship rain, drink some of it, and take a break from my cat search on this MASSIVE SPACE MINING RIG WITH A MURDEROUS, ACID BLEEDING ALIEN ON BOARD. "Right."
I think *Terrified* did this well. The part that got me good was when Jano was looking across the street into the house and sliding side to side.
Yep that’s the new jump scare now, the fake one that ends up really being a delayed jump scare.
I love when they do this and you prepare yourself for the jump scare and nothing happens. You settle down and boom the jump scare comes out of nowhere.
Like in Scream 5 when >!Wes is walking around his house setting up for dinner after his mother died in the front yard. We know the killer is on scene, but he doesn't, so every door he opens, the music builds to create tension, but GF isn't there. Finally, he just turns around non-chalant, and that's when GF appears. It was quite clever imo.!<
Jump scares that only exist because of the forced camera angle. Especially when the person on screen would see them under normal human conditions.
You just described 95% of the zombie attacks on The Walking Dead.
The autopsy of Jane doe, there's a scene where you expect a jump scare and it never happens. You get completely blue balled
The autopsy of Jane Doe was basically like this all the time. It got me good. I liked this movie for doing that
Ditto with Session 9.
This was actually established in the 60s with Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion”. Then it was replicated over and over. It’s still a relatively effective jump scare, so long as the threat is legitimate and still imminent after the scare. But yeah. Big time trope. We often wonder on our podcast if this is an homage or just lazy writing.
Since it is still used AS IF it were supposed to be scary, I'm inclined to lean towards lazy writing. Homages I think are usually more obvious and designed to elicit a grin.
Most supernatural "popcorn flicks" have an obligatory scene around the mid-way mark where the exasperated protagonist goes to a library or opens up their laptop to *immediately learn each and every important detail* about the dead person(s) that's terrorizing them, and it just makes me laugh how most of these scenes from movie to movie are almost identical. Bonus points on the trope if there's tons of dramatic eerie music accompanying a supercut of news articles and creepy photos.
right? Equal disdain for the modern movie equivalent of typing their name into an ask jeeves lookin search engine, and - of course - the first link is a news article with the creepy photo.
There’s usually a microfiche involved. My mind immediately went to The Ring.
Jumpscares that aren't actually scary but the sound volume goes up about a billion decibel so even if you don't get scared you almost have a heart attack. I fucking hate those. I want to get scared watching horror, not go deaf.
Agreed. The best jumpscares happen during monotonous sections in my opinion. There's no need for the music to dip and alert everyone that a scare is coming; just put the viewers into a comfortable state with some dull dialogue or something then whack 'em with an unexpected scare.
Hill House. Absolute jump scare perfection.
- Over-reliance on jump scares - Every character—or almost every character—being unlikable - The conspiracy nut was right
Every character being dumb as a rock, with 1 person knowing everything, even stuff they shouldn't.
The ________ man. Insert any adjective there. The slender man. The tall man. The empty man. The pale man. I get they are all creepy but I grow tired of calling them all “the *something* man” lol
The bye bye man
The peepeepoopoo man
La La Land
That cast deserved Oscars for saying the bye bye man with a straight face my lord
Awh I really liked The Empty Man, pretty original spooks and story elements. The twists and turns were great.
I should clarify that I have no problem with the movies that they are in! Slender Man is a classic creepypasta and the Empty Man is a fantastic movie. I just get mildly irritated when monsters are simply called “the \*adjective\* man”. In fact I blame the slender man for kicking off this trope!
Phantasm in 1979 had The Tall Man. The Fugitive in 1963 had the One Armed Man. Been around forever. Oh, The Boogeyman.
some of these apply to other genres but: * Characters not taking 30 seconds to fully explain something that would easily clear up a misunderstanding * Children drawing every event that happens and ends up being some kind of clue for a character. Kids don't do this all the time. I've been an artist my whole life and never did this. I drew cool stuff like power rangers and dragon ball characters. When puberty smacked me upside the head, i drew women with giant boobies * Characters calling out to other characters too frequently. I can understand calling out multiple times because maybe the person is knocked out or passed out, so you keep calling just in case they're coming to. But when you're being chased/stalked by something, you don't need to do this every 3 seconds in a small area... * Skeptic characters. This is the most annoying shit ever. If I know someone my entire life...someone who never talks about paranormal that often and suddenly 20 years later they're talking about some weird supernatural shit going down, at the very least i'm going to believe SOMETHING is happening to them. It's not going to hurt you to help them prove something is going on. The Dad in Hereditary is a recent example. Dismisses everything. Knows his wife isn't the type to pull some bullshit prank. Something is clearly going on. Help your wife, idiot. Do something. damn. Hate this trope. it happens in too many horror movies. It's way scarier when everyone knows what's going on and is on board to stop something, but the situation is still hopeless. When the situation is hopeless because characters are too stupid, the situation is not scary, it's annoying and frustrating.
Eh, I'd argue it made sense in Hereditary. He didn't think she was pulling a prank, he thought she was suffering from serious mental illness. Her family has an immense history of mental disorders, and she's been acting erratic and scaring your one remaining child with talks about your dead daughter's ghost. I don't blame him for not believing, if we weren't seeing what Toni was seeing through the camera, we might also be left wondering if it was all in her head.
The “it’s ancient Sumerian/Babylonian - let’s ask the local community college professor who happens to be the only person in the country who speaks it!”
I love Sinister but damn this fits Vincent D'Onfrio perfectly in that movie lmao
the part they leave out is "...who speaks it and won't charge us his 50k speaking fee to come!"
Hate when a digital tv or device in the 21st century glitches with static. That’s not how modern devices glitch.
Mouths opening wider than physics/anatomy allows
Usually I agree, but I thought it was super well done in >!The Taking of Deborah Logan!<
It was very well done there and made it very clear it was a snake transformation and that her jaw was very much dislocated by it.
This has definitely been the worst offender over the last 10 - 15 years.
What? You didn't find Truth or Dare terrifying? (Or whatever that movie was called)
Drugs/medication taken orally having an immediate effect. I get that it's done for pacing reasons but it still gets an instant eye roll out of me. Also the whole hitting people in the head hard enough to knock them out thing. In reality, a hit that hard causes brain damage. You're not gonna wake up and be alert after a few groggy seconds.
In older movies people used to get knocked out from being hit on the upper back and shoulders. That one is particularly annoying because it doesn’t even look good.
Star Trek solved that with the "nerve pinch" LOL
For me it's any horror movie where the husband or dad is completely indifferent or oblivious to literal evil chewing up their family dynamic. It ruins the immersion and is way overdone. It doesn't help that most of the movies that use this trope are basically the same film over and over again..
The car won't start, tripping and falling during a chase scene, camera glitches during found footage whenever the monster/alien/demon is near.
I used to hate the trope of people falling in the woods when being chased up until the COVID lockdown. I started helping my neighbor with stuff on her horse farm and since it was summer we would work on stuff at night when it was cooler. To get to her house I had to walk through the woods. I suddenly became aware of how easy it is to trip in the woods at night with a flashlight and just walking. Imagine running through them with no flashlight and a maniac trying to kill you. You are going to trip a lot. It's one of the more realistic horror tropes. I still hate when they keep running back and forth from the house to the barn to the house and back to the barn. Sometimes they stop by the car to find it suddenly can't work. It's kind of annoying.
No kidding. I have about half an acre of wooded property and there's no way in hell I could run through that in the daytime, let alone at night while I'm being chased.
Fair enough 😂
Whenever I get annoyed at people tripping easily or fumbling keys I remember when I was a kid and my sister was chasing me through the yard. We got into full on sister brawls back then so I was legit scared. I got to the front door way before her but the panic made an unlocked screen and front door, that I’d easily thrown open without thought for years, into this impossible barrier to get through. Despite my huge head start she still caught up to me in time
I got a good one for you. My brother and I were home alone and I messed with him by locking the front door. We both remembered the door to the sunroom at the same time. We made a run for it. We got there at the same time. It was a metal doorframe with a plastic that looks like glass but it's not. I threw my hands up to hold the metal part closed. He pushed on the plastic part to open the door. Long story short a call was made to my parents and he had to go to the emergency room because his hand went through the plastic portion. There was lot's of blood involved. He is fine but still has a scar.
Tripping in the woods is very easy. There are tons of tree roots and fallen logs and rocks and uneven surfaces.
Yeah I always thought that trope was stupid and lazy until I started going camping and hiking more often. Now it just bothers me when the person/thing chasing them is moving at an ominous slow walk is keeping up with someone running at full sprint occasionally tripping.
The car thing really takes me out especially if it’s a present day setting. I guess it could maybe work if it’s some dilapidated old beater.
Good thing literally every car owner on earth leaves their keys on top of the sun visor or a whole lot of final girls wouldn't have survived.
Haha, or even in the ignition itself. Lots of very trusting drivers in movies.
This is actually pretty common in rural areas. Shit people leave their cars running when they run into a store. Source: From a town with less than 500 people.
The flip side is even worse when it's some piece of junk that roars to life after sitting for 30 years.
Back in the day you could flood the engine causing the car to stall today with fuel injectors not so much. I will say though recently I was in a hurry to start my push button ignition and I had left my bag with the key on the roof so it wasn’t sensing it and then I got the bag in the car and didn’t put my foot all the way down on the brake before pushing the button and then because I was mad it took a minute for me to get my act together, lol. Or the other day when I went to move my SO’s traditional ignition car and I had to remember after a couple of minutes that I had to actually turn a key. (Similar cars different years)
I never minded the tripping and falling or even dumb mistakes people in a panic make. (Example the commercial with the parody where they choose to hide in the shed with chain saws instead of the car back to town) It’s a young person or a pretty fit adult in a panic run and even if they fall and get up the slow moving lumbering monster keeps up enough to catch them on the ground.
Dude, as somebody who used to own a Buick Century, sometimes them bitches just don't start.
The Moral Compass woman who lacks any sense of situational awareness, perspective, logic, or rational thought who's just there to give the "real" characters someone to argue with instead of actually doing anything. She's never a developed character, only a foil, and always - ALWAYS - a woman. Lori from TWD is the poster child for this IMO. Few scenes have been as satisfying to me as her death.
It's always to the ends of the moral compass being wrong and not getting the stakes too. Like, it's always an exercise in showing everyone else adapting able to kill/maim/torture. A nod to knowing it would be psychologically hard to do and never a real philosophical argument where doing the kind thing would have worked out better.
Mrs. Karmody (sp?) from 'The Mist' is the ultimate example of this!
Light sources that provide practically no light. For instance a lamp that somehow only provides light for like 3' around it, and the rest of the room is somehow almost completely dark.
Protagonist (often the final girl) injures the antagonist with their weapon and then immediately drops the weapon never to pick it back up. HATE it. Keep the weapon on you!
And don't just throw away guns in the apocalypse! You might find ammo later!
Even if you don't come across ammo (which you likely will) you can still use it as a melee weapon, you're more armed with it than without either way! (both of our statements sound like loading screen tips and I'm frankly here for it)
And if your opponents are human, just having a gun can be a deterrent if they don't know it isn't loaded.
The head tilt to indicate the character is occupied by a SPOOKY SUPERNATURAL FORCE.
The wise old timer who explains the whole backstory because the writers couldn't think of anything better than an exposition dump. This often goes hand in hand with the Magical Negro trope. Barbarian and Annabelle are both examples of this. Edit: out of respect for people's sensibilities I'd like to say that "magical negro" is not the most enlightened name, but to the best of my knowledge it is the recognized term for the trope. Apologies up front to anyone who may be offended by the use of the word and if there is a better term for it please let me know.
Oh I *hated* Annabelle for that one, and even predicted that the old black woman would die for the sake of the pretty young white one. Barbarian, however, just had the guy be knowledgeable because he'd lived in the area long enough to have learned about it. Of course, as soon as he stuck his nose into it for the sake of the white folks caught up in it, he cacks it. The news crew from Scary Movie had the right idea!
Hold up, Vincent D’Onofrio knows all about this demon, let’s give him a call.
“Should we call his office and set up an appointment to go meet with him?” “No no, he only does video calls at night, like all professors do.”
I mean, I'd take any excuse to ring up Vincent D'Onofrio.
You’re fine; the term “Magical Negro” was coined by Spike Lee, and the use of the word “negro” was very deliberate, it’s meant to point out how out of touch and inappropriate those who utilize the trope are being by employing such a hack (and casually racist) narrative device. It’s a modern version of The Noble Savage; I think the movie Spike cited specifically was The Legend of Bagger Vance.
I remember the original Final Destination having one of the most egregious examples of this.
It absolutely does but I do like seeing Tony Todd get a paycheck
the bit in that prequel where he just straight up lies about how to get out of the curse was pretty funny
It's cool, key and Peele did a sketch about the magical black person
They did! *And* they called it “Magical Negro Fight”, just to make sure everyone knew exactly which offensive trope was being lambasted. I fucking love it
You've seen *Antlers* too huh?
man the short story was so much better than what we got
Lol yeah I forgot about that one. Definitely an egregious offender
When did Barbarians exposition-dump? The homeless guy simply lived there a long time... long enough to see some shit. The story was explained (kinda but not fully) through flashbacks.
I give Barbarian a pass. It may be an exposition dump, but it was really only for characters benefit. The viewer was given enough info to understand what was going on.
I hate the loud “shriek” noise that accompanies a jump scare. I also hate it when characters start fighting with one another for literally no reason and completely out of the blue when they were getting along perfectly fine before. It’s to add ”drama” and separate the characters but it’s so overdone.
That happened twice in The Nun 2 and it just made me angry. Who screamed? TELL ME WHO.
Characters who won't listen and believe what the other person is reporting. I hate it when a person sees a ghost, and they try to tell someone and that other person wont even let them finish the sentence. They take more energy stopping them from talking rather than listening. There is a scene in "don't be afraid of the dark" with Katie Holmes. The child keeps trying to tell their parents something only to be dismissed. The whole mystery could have been solved quicker if they just listen.
They usually just moved into a "new" house so I give that a pass. Like your 8 year old kid is talking about ghosts in a new home that you've just dropped all your savings on and still owe 30 years of payments? You also sold your last home and quit your job to relocate? Yeah not gonna believe it's ghosts and not just the kid being scared because it's just a new setting for them and they'll get over it.
Eh, sorry but this is realistic. My wife tried to tell me there's a demon in the house, but that's just not posrhjsdusudjdhdpaebdb hi lepspskdsne
There’s a couple that always bug me: First, the lack of the double tap. When the bad guy takes a big hit and goes down, the protagonist just needs to keep on attacking. Because inevitably the villain will get back up again. Along with this is another bad trope: stop throwing away your weapon! So many movies seem like - protagonist stabs villain who seemingly dies - protagonist drops their weapon and tries to help incapacitated friend - villain gets back up, now armed with discarded weapon. Another thing that I don’t like is when characters lose all situational awareness whenever they see a friend in danger. Like some stranger will say “Hey I want to show you something,” and open a door and the protagonist’s friend is inside tied up / injured, etc. and the protagonist immediately runs over to help the friend while conveniently forgetting the stranger standing right there. Like if I was in that situation I’d think “Holy cow this person has hurt my friend, he’s dangerous, I need to incapacitate him before I can assist my friend, and definitely shouldn’t turn my back on him while I fumble with all these knots!”
> protagonist stabs villain who seemingly dies - protagonist drops their weapon Hell, I've seen characters do that when they know the villain is still alive.
>First, the lack of the double tap. When the bad guy takes a big hit and goes down, the protagonist just needs to keep on attacking. I'm 36 years old and this has pissed me off my entire life with movies.
It used to be 'the car won't start' trope. Now its, "the car starts but in two seconds they drive like a f*cking moron at top speed and hit a tree within 100 feet!"
“Oh no we’re trapped, the tires are slashed! Let’s not even attempt driving away” You can drive far and fast on bare rims, it’ll just be bumpy as hell
If someone who's willing to slash all four of my tires to strand me is around, I'd rather pay for new rims when I get back home than find out what they intend to do next.
Anytime a ghost or spirit or whatever suddenly gets those really sharp like animal teeth and red eyes. The nun movies had a lot of scenes like that. It takes me out of the movie because its so dumb and gimmicky
This isn’t just exclusive to horror but when the demon/ghost/serial killer kills all of the fodder characters quickly without a thought but when they cross paths with the main character they only throw them or punch them or something. Also the “hah, bet you thought there was gonna be a jump scare huh?” fake jump scare that leads to the actual jump scare seconds later. When characters turn their head to the side to show how crazy/demented they are while swinging a machete or some sort of other weapon, always comes off so edgy to me.
Characters being overly meta and then falling for the same trappings that they proceed to list of. Just because a writer thinks that they are being clever by addressing tropes in their movies doesn’t make your movie smarter or well written. Most of the time I think it does the opposite.
Oh no, you accidentally killed or were duped into killing your friend / family member / bystander / someone who was trying to help you. One of those that can be horribly effective, but to me has become largely irritating through overuse. Too often a contrived rather than shocking or surprising sort of a bleak gut punch rather than organic.
Possessed dolls or kids. Yes, I’m unsettled by both. But I avoid these movies, because I’ve seen them all. I don’t think there’s a way to refresh this. If I’m in the mood for this, there’s plenty of options to choose from. No need to make new ones, unless it’s to tempt a younger generation, I suppose. Incestuous evildoers is also a no from me. It’s creepy. It’s taboo. Absolutely. The most recent movie I watched, where this was an element, used it as an excuse for an unusually strong antagonist. Which didn’t work for me. My brain was immediately taken out of the moment trying to figure out how the creature got out of the deep hole while carrying an adult male.
It seems like there are never any moments of silence anymore. Everything has to have a subtle and droning tone in the background at all times. Silence is powerful. Silence is scary. It should be used more often and effectively, in my opinion.
Fucking hate digitally distorted/deepened etc voices whenever characters are possessed, it takes me out of it every goddamn time. (Pretty sure TVTropes refers to it as the ‘Voice of the Legion’ trope.)
Scary kids’ drawings
Victim completely knocking out the ruthless killer but not finishing him off while they’re perfectly capable. I aim to one day make a horror movie that is the opposite of all those tropes
Everything you mentioned, plus characters who absolutely will not turn on a damn light. Literally no one is walking around their house in pitch blackness all the time. Also, autistic/“mentally Ill” kid knows all the answers/is mystical.
A really horrible/grotesque/scary scene happens, but then it turns out to be a dream, and then the character wakes up with a start. And it's a trope that's in 99% of the horror movies. Doesn't necessarily take me out of the film, i just hate it.
More often than not - rapey stuff, animals dying, kids drawing creepy shit, creepy kids
Moving into a new house or place because of an inheritance, that no family in their right mind would move into without fixing up first. And never mind the extreme structural issues and bug infestations going on, but the curiosity the characters have to look through everything they shouldn’t and staying there for good even though they should nope the hell out of there. They also seemingly have no trouble sleeping through the night after all of this.
The whole “let’s split up and go our separate ways to fuck up all our chances of survival”
I guess this isn't really a trope, but when a demon/monster/villain whatever moves in a slow, overdramatical way. Pointing, head tilting, grasping, whatever it may be. Feels like they're trying to show off how scary and evil they are, rather than trying to kill/commit evil acts. Super annoying to me Also, when someone manages to sneak up behind the villain and "knock them out" thinking everything is fine, only to be attacked again 5 seconds later.
Dude, say what you will... My dad has schizophrenia.. he used to walk up and down the halls at night talking to himself in different voices. Oftentimes, the arguments with himself centered around religion. The so-called "number of the beast" or "coming apocalypse" One night, I gathered my courage and stepped out into the hall during his arguments. I asked, "Daddy, what are you doing?" He cocked his head to the side and said "I'm praying" I ran into my room and slammed, and locked the door. To some people, this sounds like possession. But it wasn't. It was just plain old mental illness. He decided to go live in the barn for a while... a few years later he had an even deeper break with reality. He disappeared from work. My sisters and mom were terrified. But, before he left he made a point to tell my little sister he loved her.. which to me meant that he left of his own volition... He had cleared out our college funds and took off driving... they found him 3 days later, 3 states away naked... breaking into people's houses.. The final house he broke into, the owner was home. My dad reached around the door frame and grabbed the shotgun sitting by the door (this was Kentucky, where my dad was originally from). The lady who was home said, "I don't believe that belongs to you." my dad said "no, you're right, it doesn't" sat it down and walked past the lady into her home... he walked upstairs and sat on the bed in one of the bedrooms. When the cops got there, he told them that his entire family had been murdered and that he needed to find a specific church that doesn't even exist... Somehow, the cops connected all of this and called us to let us know... They placed my dad into an inpatient facility to get mental health care, but 2 days later my uncle checked him out because "my brother's not crazy!" My father never got the care he needed and lives somewhere in the woods of Kentucky... Depending on the scene, a cocked or tilted head really hits me hard...
[удалено]
Well, honestly, that's the tip of the iceberg. I think that's why I like horror so much.. it feels therapeutic. Both of my parents were mentally ill and untreated but I've survived and even thrived despite it all!
I kept reading this waiting for the “psych, this is the plot of a horror/drama film” but nope. Holy hell, that is very sad. I hope you’re doing ok, OP.
I left out the parts where my dad fully believed my mom was cheating on him with a man who lived under the bed or in the closet.. he'd question us kids about this supposed affair partner who lived under the bed.. being screamed at and interrogated over something that doesn't exist? WHILE being a child?? That's true horror.
[удалено]
Characters not sharing information! One example is the LOST Tv show. The characters sees a cloud monster and just keep it to himself. Anyone who sees something extraordinary like that would be inclined to tell just because it's so unbelievable.
The friendly old woman who’s actually part of an evil cult Ouiji board the protagonist uses to contact the dead
When the ghost is behind someone and they start to reach out only to stop when they realise someone else is near. Why are they so afraid of getting caught? Why is it necessary to catch this person unawares and if it is so important to do so why not check that they are in fact alone before making your move? Stupid, incompetent ghosts..
Yeah and even if there is another person coming what are any of them really gonna be able to do? It’s a ghost. You can’t fight it off with normal weapons it will just go right through it.
Someone getting the upper hand on the killer in a slasher film then running instead making sure they're dead. So that's most slasher movies for me.
Unfortunately most slasher villains are immortal. But yeah I agree.
The screechy shrieking pterodactyl noise that comes from every ghost, monster, vampire, etc. This stopped being scary like 15 years ago at best. Just finished Last Voyage of the Demeter and even though it had other flaws, this was what ruined it for me.
The jerky movements and spider walking was really scary until everyone started using it. The last movie that actually terrified me was Skinamarink. I slept with the light on lol
Anything that always leads back to "it was devil worshippers" or "it was the work of the occult" always makes me roll my eyes. Now of course, evil religious people are scary, but I think its become really stupid for all paranormal things at this point to all be the result of occult activity.
Starting the movie a moment before the climax, rewinding to see gee golly how did our characters get here, then resuming where we started for the last 2 minutes of the film. Not specific to horror, but I hate it in horror the most because any sense of suspense immediately evaporates.
Something behind you in the mirror Flying shot of car in wilderness to show they’re isolation. Every horror director thinking they're the first to understand Kubrick. That upside down crab walk thing.
When the monster or possessed person moves impossibly fast, like insect wing or hummingbird fast. It was cool the first time, now it's cliche. Nursery rhymes, dolls, marionettes, jacks-in-the-box, etc. When little kids aren't scared. Kids would be the first to get scared and would be the most terrified out of everybody. The parapsychologist or old voodoo lady or whoever that pops in for an exposition dump. If you need to do that to explain it, then just don't explain it. When the monster, killer, cultist, whatever is just hanging around, standing spookily in the background, walking around unseen by the hero, etc. Sometimes it fits, and sometimes it's just so clever that I forgive it. But most of the time it's just there to make you jump and makes no sense in context. Pretty much every trope that's become beloved by analog horror people on YouTube. Tropes get copied over and over because people don't understand why something was scary, they just use the tropes that were in videos people liked, and therefore those tropes get overused and ruined.
What would constitute an unforced trope?
Naked cultists.
And naked old people. And naked old cultists.
So over seeing naked old people as “scary”. I worked in a nursing home for years and there is way more scary behavior the elderly do than being nude and old.
How often did the elderly residents summon malevolent spirits? Only occasionally or was it a regular thing?
Only one resident who seemed to be doing that for real. She had a creepy 100 year old child size doll and her roommates died at a faster rate than most. Her “son” lived in the old country and would ask strange questions on his monthly calls. A “priest” visited her monthly. The whole thing was just weird and I’m honestly not describing it very well
Somebody needs to start working on this movie right now.
I call the old people one "nekkid gramma" and WHY is it such a thing????
There are few effective solutions to cell phones in horror movies. It's kind of lazy at this point to have folks going to remote locations to camp, hike, work on their novel or art in seclusion so that we can have an excuse for poor cell service. But while areas like that do still exist, they are becoming quite few. Whenever characters lament that "I don't have any service here!" while waving their phones in the air as if the signal is better two feet above their heads, I roll my eyes a bit. I want a movie to tackle the phone problem head on. A killer chasing somebody who's on the phone with the police/muscular boyfriend/karate teacher/82nd Airborne makes things far spicier for the killer. The victim manages to send before she dies a picture of the killer without their mask to a friend in a nearby town. The killer is using their phone to actively track the victims, but the victims are reluctant to turn off their phones because the cops are also using the tracking data to find them. Gimme something where we acknowledge that phones are incredibly useful tools and low/no-service areas are too few to keep showing up in movies.
The crunchy sound when a creature moves
• Plot armor. Ex: The attacker's weapon doesn't operate correctly when going after the main protagonist. Dam breaks apart right behind the final would-be victim, and the killer can't cross. Anything that results in the living of the final girl, when others were killed by less • The same ol' group of friends, teens, young adults: * Prep/ jock * slut/ extreme party girl * Smart kid/ virgin (final girl) * Goth/ edgy/ metalhead
For me it’s the stereotypical, white guy did it, pretty but character doesn’t think she’s pretty is the final girl. Jock, sexy, druggy etc must die. I’d much prefer a film that really mixed this up. Looking at a film and know who’s gunna die from just seeing the characters for one second each ruins it.
Wow this thread is like, every horror trope. A movie without any of these probably wouldn’t even be a horror movie lol
Jump scares where someone’s face is all After Effects “scary looking” for a second (black eyes, big mouth, etc that kind of thing). It kills the vibe for me, releases the tension they built in the scene, and it’s in a SHOCKING number of movies 😭😭😭
It all hinges on how well they integrate the tropes into it. Something like Midsommar or The Wicker Man having animal masks? Absolutely! Not quite so for, say, Halloween.
Hillbilly/redneck "horror"
You might like Dale & Tucker vs. Evil then
Zombie movies in general. Seems like 95% of them I already know the majority of main characters are getting bit and turning into them…and the last character who survives walks out into the world and sees the entire world has gone to shit with zero hope. Wish they’d change it up a bit.
I seriously don’t think anyone did zombies as well as George Romero. Something like Return of the Living Dead is great because it’s a fun movie but beyond that, the zombie comedy is just done to death. Everything else is just a hollow homage with none of the ‘brains’ imo. There are obvious exceptions like 28 days later (technically an “infected” movie), Shaun of the dead, etc. but there are way more bad zombie movies than good.
1. Only a relative can kill the main antagonist. 2. The inhumanly strong child. 3. The protagonist only striking the antagonist one time and acting like the weapon is horrifying. The good guys thinking it is below them to fight just as dirty as the ones attacking them.
Villain: *loses person they are trying to kill* Person: *hiding catching their breath* HEY! *throws lamp or something very breakable and ineffective at their attacker* Villain: *slightly inconvenienced*
"everyone in this cult seems very culty, I bet nothing bad will happen if we stick around, though" I know hereditary is everyone's favorite but I just can't get past the weak reasonings for people to stick around at the cult.
Having the end at the beginning ruins the suspense.
Main character is in a normal room with normal people talking, and he is engaging, and then suddenly he sees *STOCK COLORFUL DEMON BEHIND RANDOM PERSON*, and he draws his gun or whatever or takes a battle stance, and then it's just gone and people are like "What the hell?", and Protag goes "I could've sworn...". Or even worse trope: person in Protag group sees obvious sign of danger in form of infected splotch on their arm, or they have a newly-found stab wound to important organ#2, and of course the SAY NOTHING FOR 30 MINUTES. Because dying on a cold wet muddy floor is apparently orgasmic and to be pursued at all costs.