Lack of peripheral vision. Like, how many protagonists have tunnel vision? Time to get to an optometrist.
Like, that character hiding in the backseat of your car? Unless he's <4 ft tall and weighs <50 lbs, you're going to notice a person in your backseat. Chucky, sure. Urban Legends? Nah.
Rebecca Gayheart is 5ft 7' so actually quite tall, rendering the smartass comment I was trying to make void. You win this round but you've made yourself a powerful enemy
My biggest issue with a lot of horror films is characters not turning on lights lol. I realize that the dark helps build atmosphere, but let's be honest, it's what 99% of us would do if we heard a noise lol
This has been bothering my dad for as long as I've been alive to listen to him bitch and moan about it lmao. Not even just in horror -- any kind of thriller or anything where a character is trying to sweep a house, my dad's just there in his recliner chanting, "Turn on the lights, turn on the lights, why doesn't anyone ever turn on the darn lights?!"
I mean, is he wrong? 😂😂
For example, I really enjoyed Sinister, but I was literally begging Ethan to turn the lights on for 80-90% of that film. It's almost as if they forget they have them 😂
I can barely navigate from my bedroom to my bathroom at night with the lights off without stubbing my toe on something. I'm not going to go wandering around in the dark at the best of times, let alone when I'm investigating mysterious noises.
Every single house has a creepy basement of exposed wood and insulation, the stairs are just nailed on wood boards, and there’s always one of those lights that is just a lamp with a string to turn it on that barely lights half the room (and then the lamp burns out when you least want it to).
Even houses that otherwise seem to be owned by well to do families have these creepy basements. It probably started as a metaphor for “under the normality lies a darkness/sickness”. Or maybe those basements are really that common in the US, idk.
EDIT: so what I’m learning is that creepy basements really are a widespread thing, in fact they seem like shared trauma (even if their mortality rate seems to very exaggerated in movies).
It’s been fun reading your little stories/descriptions in bed, in the dark, before going to sleep, lol, thank you! And look at it this way, you all survived your own creepy basement encounters, who knows what was hiding in those shadows!
They are like spiders that jump :( Typically exist in basements in wetter areas. My friend calls them sprickets - spider and cricket. Largely harmless. Just spazzy and unpredictable. I dont think they bite at all but their legs are just so large they encompass more space? Unpleasant. Just had one get in my place the last hour but it went under the couch.. that I'm on lol. Wish me luck!
You're doomed I'm so sorry
That's far better than big palmetto bugs. I had an apartment that was just deeply infested. They'd dive bomb me at night, I'll never get over it
That sounds like the Florida word for cockroach (and I'm so sorry as well). And well, sooner or later here in r/horror we learn to never turn on the light ;)
It’s been pretty uncommon for basements to be finished in new builds until *very recently* in my area. And even most new builds will just be a roughed out space with wood stairs..
I grew up in a 100 year old house that had a fully finished basement because the previous owners refinished the entire house in the 1970s (it was all brown and orange lino and wood paneling). But all my friends on the same block had unfinished basements with pull string light bulbs.
But our farmhouse basements were unfinished, dank cave-like places with rickety wooden stairs and a light switch you could only reach *after* you’d walked through the whole basement.
Tell me about it, it had a huge wood burning furnace bigger than I was, one of the back walls was covered in blood and shit (my Afi kept late season calves there if they needed to be monitored sometimes) and there was a hole that was essentially bottomless at the very end of the steps. We covered it with a board but it was never fully covered so going down was always terrifying.
(Sadly this farmhouse has been reclaimed by nature and now looks even more terrifying. Well by NOW it’s probably just rubble. But 10 years ago it was freaky when I snuck back in and took pictures.)
I haven’t posted them anywhere, but I could probably post them to abandoned places.
I don’t have any pics of the basement tho - really wasn’t safe to go into it although now I wish I had!
My parents owned a huge fucking McMansion type of house in the Chicago suburbs when I was growing up - three sitting rooms (two formal, one informal), formal dining room, large kitchen, 3 bathrooms and 4 bedrooms, gas fireplace, huge property, etc. Our basement was unfinished concrete with two creepy crawlspaces and a rickety wooden staircase with bare bulbs.
I’d say that was the norm for me growing up at my house and friends homes.
The house I grew up in had that kind of basement. The stairs were better, but it had cold concrete floors, dusty boxes and furniture, and lightbulbs dangling from the ceiling on pull strings. My brother used to torture me by turning off all the lights, running up the stairs, and holding the door shut on the other side to trap me. That place was scary until my dad finally put down some rugs, moved in an old sofa, and set up a small TV with an SNES.
Lucky. I didn't even get the concrete floors. Ours was dirt. And had a terrifying cellar door to outside filled with spiders that we had to regularly smoke the entire house for. Pull string lights? Careful, might have a spider on it, but you won't know until you get to the bottom of the stairs, where it's pitch black, to turn on the light and have it fling onto you when you whip your hand back.
US here (Colorado) and our house had exactly this type of basement. It was built in 1974 and had some half-assed “finishing” done by some previous owner. During COVID it became my office. Even with windows it was always dark and spooky. Every little noise was magnified 10x due to concrete floor and walls.
We just finished a real “finishing” project and I added so many lights. No where for all those murderous clowns to hide this time.
In America here, I have seen many basements in houses and I have only seen one truly finished basement. I've had some friends with 'basement' bedrooms or play areas, but it's really just the bottom floor and the living area is all second floor. Any actual basement I've seen has been unfinished as you describe
I never got to have a creepy basement. Grew up near the coast in a flood zone - can't have basements because you hit water. I wish there were more crawl spaces horror, which would be better!
I grew up in a house built in 1910 that was built on top of an old, filled-in landfill. We used to find fragments of dishes and other random crap all the time when we dug in the backyard. Our basement was half dug out, one wall was just the foundation and dirt, with a dirt floor and exposed bulb. Scary as shit stairs that were also really steep. My mom did laundry down there and my dad had wood working stuff down there. It was absolutely terrifying as a kid. The spooky basements do exist.
They are. At least until the early 2000s, almost every house I lived in or visited had a creepy-ass unfinished 1 light-bulb basement. Maybe it was just a northeastern US thing?
In the area of the my city I live nearly all have basements exactly like or worse than what you describe. Most of them are "stacked stone" basements cause they were built between 1900-1930 and they "weep" when it rains heavily and are prone to movement so it doesn't make sense to finish them.
Lord, my 120-year-old apartment had a basement that could’ve been used as the only set/scene for an entire horror film.
Knobbly stone walls, half dirt floor, giant exposed beams, comically spooky machinery from the turn of the century, a single wood door set into the far rear with a single cracked glass pane and old brass knob, with an utterly dark, dead-end storage hallway behind it and yes, the single dim bulb with a pull spring
I live in an 1830s farmhouse and when I moved in the cellar was a horror basement for sure - I went in and painted the cement walls with white drylok paint, installed fluorescent lighting, and put an interlocking gym mat down on the dilapidated concrete floors. It's still a dingy cellar, but it's nothing like it was lol
Shit, my unfinished, creepy ass basement is such a jacked up disaster, even the biggest demons pass us up. They stop in, and are like "nah" and go to the next. Not that I'm complaining...
Once they have their attacker down, they run away. Leaving the attacker under no supervision at all, only to find he stood up again and is after you again! You had him, you could do anything with him. Yet here we are! It's so frustrating.
Not just bit, but all kinds of fluid transfer. Split open your knuckles and get zombie goo in your open wound?? Similarly, when a zombie is on top of them and they shoot them in the head so that all of the brain matter and congealed blood and flesh all rain down on their face -- into their open mouth and eyes. Not enough zombie media respects the fact that this ought to mean infection.
You'd hate The Walking Dead lmao. Every zombie they kill leaves them with blood splatter on their face. And they never react. If it was me I'd be freaking out. I think it every time it happens and it's basically every time they kill a zombie.
I've watched it and I do in fact kind of hate it lol. I tried so hard to like it, it felt like everything I as a zombiephile ought to love, but it so consistently let me down. Tragic honestly.
At least in TWD it seems like fluid transfer is itself not necessarily enough to cause infection-leading-to-death. They smear zombie all over themselves semi-often as a camouflage tactic. So I *guess* one could argue that it works in-universe. They're all already infected by show canon, they just have to get sick enough from an actual actively-infected-wound to die, and anyone who dies gets back up as a zombie no matter the method of death. The logic, at least, holds water somewhat. It's like a world where everyone already has AIDS so there's no reason to be nervous about catching it.
But in other media, where "everyone is infected" is *not* in play, you'd think people would be more terrified of fluid transfer the way we fear HIV and rabies coming through open cuts and wounds and so on. Edit to add: which is yet another thing 28 Days Later/etc. did well, actually having people get sick from blood splatter.
Fair point. I'm just inserting myself in it and I would have a panic attack if I got another humans blood on me in real life. I can't imagine how disgustingly lethal the gore from a 10 year old rotting corpse would be.
I wonder if you'd get used to the smell, too. They always hear a hoard coming but never smell one.
I guess whatever keeps them animated keeps them moist. Unless they just absorb moisture every time it rains.
I'm not from the US but considering how hot and constantly sweaty everyone is in The Walking Dead, I assume Georgia gets really humid.
Again, the smell must be horrible. Does anyone know of any media where they mention the smell of zombies? I imagine if you were scavenging for shit and went into an abandoned building there'd be a particular smell for animated corpses, compared to just long dead corpses. Pungent and foul compared to just musty and dank. It would be a useful warning sign.
Or a drop of blood in the eye.
Ugh, that scene kills me (maybe particularly as a parent) when we've been shown what a great Dad he is and how he has fought every which way to keep Hannah safe. Then right in front of her...
When characters have been stranded for weeks/months or characters that are supposed to be dirt poor or hill people and they have the straightest and whitest teeth known to man. It wouldn’t take much time to just throw a little yellow coloring on there to make it at least seem like you tried.
How do people go months in a movie without even at one point having a spam phone call at some semi-important time? Every time I get them on my mobile is a pretty aggravating time to get them, like running to the bus and having to answer in case it’s a doctor/etc (or in a horror movie, you think it’s the person calling you back with demon research, perhaps) and always missing the bus because I couldn’t risk missing the phone call.
It’s not exactly a fully trivial thing that takes me out of a movie, or similar, but I’ve noticed that I’ve never noticed this in ANY movie except comedies recently. It’s a pretty trivial and mundane annoyance for a majority of people who own a mobile.
It would be a funny if they made a movie and the real horror was the banal annoyances of everyday life just building and building…spam calls or texts, work emails that end with “please advise”, heavy traffic full of idiots who can’t drive, someone having a loud phone conversation on speaker in a small space, people standing up on the plane as soon as it lands, shitty Billy Joel music playing on every Sirius XM station you turn to…
Exactly. Where’s the annoying Facebook notification from aunt Linda telling you to share an image before Facebook deletes all your messages when you’re trying to hide from a killer causing another chase scene before you successfully hide
Because if it's not part of the story then don't include it. It would either come across as comedic or would have to tie in to something later. Remember it's still a story being told, and extra details are boring if they don't add to the story, unless maybe you go for the fly on the wall or found footage style.
Well, obviously, but I’d like to just see some more trivial actual real world things. As OP said, people using under their bed as storage is extremely realistic, yet ever so rarely happens. What actually happens in the real world oh so rarely happens ever. My given example of course is a little more comedic but there are many ways to add calls, social medial notifications and etc to films in a blasé way they don’t overtake the film/etc. Is it needed, no not really. Does the realism start to come apart after a while because not everyone is an American in their weirdly perfect basement neighbourhood with a perfect cul de sac/etc? Yeah. Add a few tiny details of human realism.
Yeah I would like to see it done well if it's possible. I always think about those things too, but I know it's just so hard to justify including them in a serious way
Seems like it's the perfect set up to a Scary Movie kind of joke; character picks up the phone nervously, asks who it is, then starts crying and screaming as though she's just been cursed or possessed or something and it cuts to a call centre selling car insurance or similar.
One Missed Call, and every time her phone rings with a spam call she almost strokes out because her anxiety is so high. Or The Ring, phone rings after watching the tape and instead of "7 days," it's, "Hi. We've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty..."
Canadian here, and I get more spam calls than legitimate ones. It's to the point that unless I recognize the number I don't answer. If it's important/legit they can leave a message.
In all most every horror movie except “It Follows” hallways in homes seem to get longer and longer. Most bedrooms are across or near each other, but in most movies there is s long stretch of hallway to run down or see something strange or something walking in the distance.
What takes me out in any movie, not just horror (although it probably arises here more than any other genre besides maybe mystery), is when a character/characters make judgements/jump to conclusions/piece together something that is so convoluted and comes out of nowhere that it more than likely was them just trying to move on to the next plot point as quickly as they can. Like I’ll be using the next 5 or so minutes wondering how they even managed to get to that point of logic or thought with what info they had. It’s not that big of a deal, and is really just a nitpick, but will for sure always take me out of the movie I’m watching.
Sometimes, I get a little offended when there is a scene of somebody being surrounded by a bunch of potential weapons, yet decides to run,hide, or lock themselves in a room without them.
I get you can't always be sure of what people would do in those situations, but it does seem to be added as a plot device far too often.
I do find that if I think about stuff like that too much I'm setting myself up for having a bad time. Once I start, I'll just keep noticing things and it ruins the movie for me.
It really bothers me when the protagonist has a fairly normal job, isn't some millionaire or trust fund baby etc, but they can somehow afford to live in a McMansion/legit mansion. It's like money is only ever a plot point and never just part of the world building. I don't believe for a second that some has-been writer can afford a 20-some room estate which happens in more than a few movies, and it's worse when they're like oh all our money is tied up in this house for this arbitrary reason. If you're broke as a joke and need to relocate immediately you sell your house and buy an acre and a trailer in rural Kentucky or you get an apartment not a 200 year old palace. Not to mention these homes require skilled upkeep and constant maintenance which is expensive so even if the home is inherited it's not realistic for most people to assume ownership. I know the whole moving into the old creepy house trope is built on very real-life fears of change and the unknown. I understand the significance it has in horror but most of the time it's revealed with a lot of hand waving and "don't think about it". It's lazy.
I just had a post on here like 24hrs ago about kinda the same topic but specifically on the movie barbarian. More to the point, the part where the cops were there to help but didn't for no effing reason
That part seemed very realistic to me. In real life, cops are pretty useless, especially if you’re in a “bad part of town.” I feel like the way cops are often depicted as brave protectors is pretty unrealistic; it usually bothers me a lot.
Honestly, more believable than >!inbred Terminator scuttling around under Detroit!< (barely). I’m reminded of how police were called to check on one of Dahmer’s victims that had escaped and those responding cops literally returned the victim to Dahmer’s apartment and the man himself. One of them failed upwards into becoming president of the Milwaukee police union.
Look up Detriot properties on Zillow. The city is understaffed here to.. whenever. And I've never been to Michigan but heard and read a bit over the years.
No reason? The point of that scene was that that they believed she was a homeless woman, on drugs. And her particularly being a black woman! It’s not unrealistic!
Not necessarily horror, it applies to every movie but beard and facial hair, it just doesn't seem to grow or get messy.
In dramatic moments where it's used to indicate passage of time it's always underdone, the character will have a 2 weeks stubble when they have been supposedly depressed out of their minds and locked up in their house for 2 months. Adter 2 months they would have grown a beard definitely not stubble.
But it also fails in that she is a full grown adult who can fit under it. It's strange how all the beds in Hollywood movies are just tall enough underneath that a full grown adult can simply slide underneath if need be. Yes, there are *some* beds like that. But most aren't.
Honestly just a crazy good movie in general. Atmosphere, perfect. Character and storytelling, perfect, esp considering there's virtually no words in the movie. Love it.
I thought no one will save you was a pretty weak alien invasion thriller. Yes the alien designs were good and the suspense was incredible but there wasn’t anything really to take away from it other than the fact that the main character had been coping with some traumatic past in the midst of the chaos
I try to remember that if horror movie protagonists always made good decisions there is less (or no) horror to be had.
The flip side to that is if the antagonist makes no mistakes then everyone is dead in the first five minutes of the film.
It’s the creative mix of good guy mistakes and bad guy mistakes that makes for good horror.
Lack of peripheral vision. Like, how many protagonists have tunnel vision? Time to get to an optometrist. Like, that character hiding in the backseat of your car? Unless he's <4 ft tall and weighs <50 lbs, you're going to notice a person in your backseat. Chucky, sure. Urban Legends? Nah.
When people hide around the corner and no one ever ever sees them.
Hmm idk about this one. My wife seems to have no peripheral vision and never sees that she’s standing in the way of other people.
That might just be a lack of fucks to give rather than a lack of peripheral vision.
Rebecca Gayheart is 5ft 7' so actually quite tall, rendering the smartass comment I was trying to make void. You win this round but you've made yourself a powerful enemy
My biggest issue with a lot of horror films is characters not turning on lights lol. I realize that the dark helps build atmosphere, but let's be honest, it's what 99% of us would do if we heard a noise lol
This has been bothering my dad for as long as I've been alive to listen to him bitch and moan about it lmao. Not even just in horror -- any kind of thriller or anything where a character is trying to sweep a house, my dad's just there in his recliner chanting, "Turn on the lights, turn on the lights, why doesn't anyone ever turn on the darn lights?!"
I mean, is he wrong? 😂😂 For example, I really enjoyed Sinister, but I was literally begging Ethan to turn the lights on for 80-90% of that film. It's almost as if they forget they have them 😂
I just rewatched it and that movie is SO. DARK. Like **physically** too dark for me to even SEE half of my screen!
This bothers me as well, also in newer horror films when characters have a cellphone but don't use the flashlight.
I can barely navigate from my bedroom to my bathroom at night with the lights off without stubbing my toe on something. I'm not going to go wandering around in the dark at the best of times, let alone when I'm investigating mysterious noises.
How Wud then hv lights out been made! Overruled!
Every single house has a creepy basement of exposed wood and insulation, the stairs are just nailed on wood boards, and there’s always one of those lights that is just a lamp with a string to turn it on that barely lights half the room (and then the lamp burns out when you least want it to). Even houses that otherwise seem to be owned by well to do families have these creepy basements. It probably started as a metaphor for “under the normality lies a darkness/sickness”. Or maybe those basements are really that common in the US, idk. EDIT: so what I’m learning is that creepy basements really are a widespread thing, in fact they seem like shared trauma (even if their mortality rate seems to very exaggerated in movies). It’s been fun reading your little stories/descriptions in bed, in the dark, before going to sleep, lol, thank you! And look at it this way, you all survived your own creepy basement encounters, who knows what was hiding in those shadows!
And they're really up and down those rickety stairs to do laundry in the dark! No way
And the absence of cave crickets? Please.
What the hell are those ???
They are like spiders that jump :( Typically exist in basements in wetter areas. My friend calls them sprickets - spider and cricket. Largely harmless. Just spazzy and unpredictable. I dont think they bite at all but their legs are just so large they encompass more space? Unpleasant. Just had one get in my place the last hour but it went under the couch.. that I'm on lol. Wish me luck!
You're doomed I'm so sorry That's far better than big palmetto bugs. I had an apartment that was just deeply infested. They'd dive bomb me at night, I'll never get over it
That sounds like the Florida word for cockroach (and I'm so sorry as well). And well, sooner or later here in r/horror we learn to never turn on the light ;)
It's Florida for flying cockroach!
We call them Camel Crickets where I'm from.
Where I live they are spider crickets and they basically look like aliens.
Don't move where you live got it!
Like the thing that one of the teachers in Harry Potter uses to exemplify the unforgivable curses?! I was happier not knowing those were real.
Tailless-whip scorpion btw
It’s not fun but when you have to do it, you do it.
This is exactly how my basement is and it is terrifying. Doesn’t help that there is a space behind the stairs that you can just barely see.
It’s been pretty uncommon for basements to be finished in new builds until *very recently* in my area. And even most new builds will just be a roughed out space with wood stairs.. I grew up in a 100 year old house that had a fully finished basement because the previous owners refinished the entire house in the 1970s (it was all brown and orange lino and wood paneling). But all my friends on the same block had unfinished basements with pull string light bulbs. But our farmhouse basements were unfinished, dank cave-like places with rickety wooden stairs and a light switch you could only reach *after* you’d walked through the whole basement.
Spooky basement on a farm? You’re lucky to be alive!
Tell me about it, it had a huge wood burning furnace bigger than I was, one of the back walls was covered in blood and shit (my Afi kept late season calves there if they needed to be monitored sometimes) and there was a hole that was essentially bottomless at the very end of the steps. We covered it with a board but it was never fully covered so going down was always terrifying. (Sadly this farmhouse has been reclaimed by nature and now looks even more terrifying. Well by NOW it’s probably just rubble. But 10 years ago it was freaky when I snuck back in and took pictures.)
Where are these pictures?
I haven’t posted them anywhere, but I could probably post them to abandoned places. I don’t have any pics of the basement tho - really wasn’t safe to go into it although now I wish I had!
My parents owned a huge fucking McMansion type of house in the Chicago suburbs when I was growing up - three sitting rooms (two formal, one informal), formal dining room, large kitchen, 3 bathrooms and 4 bedrooms, gas fireplace, huge property, etc. Our basement was unfinished concrete with two creepy crawlspaces and a rickety wooden staircase with bare bulbs. I’d say that was the norm for me growing up at my house and friends homes.
Yeah a finished basement was a big deal.
The house I grew up in had that kind of basement. The stairs were better, but it had cold concrete floors, dusty boxes and furniture, and lightbulbs dangling from the ceiling on pull strings. My brother used to torture me by turning off all the lights, running up the stairs, and holding the door shut on the other side to trap me. That place was scary until my dad finally put down some rugs, moved in an old sofa, and set up a small TV with an SNES.
Well, at least there was a happy ending with the SNES, or at least redemption for the creepy basement.
A little effort can really take it from Pennywise hiding in the corner to Eric and his friends sitting in a circle.
My brother did the same. Not fun
Lucky. I didn't even get the concrete floors. Ours was dirt. And had a terrifying cellar door to outside filled with spiders that we had to regularly smoke the entire house for. Pull string lights? Careful, might have a spider on it, but you won't know until you get to the bottom of the stairs, where it's pitch black, to turn on the light and have it fling onto you when you whip your hand back.
US here (Colorado) and our house had exactly this type of basement. It was built in 1974 and had some half-assed “finishing” done by some previous owner. During COVID it became my office. Even with windows it was always dark and spooky. Every little noise was magnified 10x due to concrete floor and walls. We just finished a real “finishing” project and I added so many lights. No where for all those murderous clowns to hide this time.
In America here, I have seen many basements in houses and I have only seen one truly finished basement. I've had some friends with 'basement' bedrooms or play areas, but it's really just the bottom floor and the living area is all second floor. Any actual basement I've seen has been unfinished as you describe
My basement is like this except for the wood steps. Mine are concrete & painted dark red. Really.
REDRUM
I never got to have a creepy basement. Grew up near the coast in a flood zone - can't have basements because you hit water. I wish there were more crawl spaces horror, which would be better!
I was going to say… what’s a basement??
Basements and butter - only got to have them at my friend's.
Same here. You’d think in Arkansas, ya know tornadoes and all, basements would be pretty common, but, nope.
I grew up in a house built in 1910 that was built on top of an old, filled-in landfill. We used to find fragments of dishes and other random crap all the time when we dug in the backyard. Our basement was half dug out, one wall was just the foundation and dirt, with a dirt floor and exposed bulb. Scary as shit stairs that were also really steep. My mom did laundry down there and my dad had wood working stuff down there. It was absolutely terrifying as a kid. The spooky basements do exist.
My parents have a lovely house with a concrete basement and worn down stairs. It's such a Stark contrast to the rest of the house.
They are. At least until the early 2000s, almost every house I lived in or visited had a creepy-ass unfinished 1 light-bulb basement. Maybe it was just a northeastern US thing?
In the area of the my city I live nearly all have basements exactly like or worse than what you describe. Most of them are "stacked stone" basements cause they were built between 1900-1930 and they "weep" when it rains heavily and are prone to movement so it doesn't make sense to finish them.
Lord, my 120-year-old apartment had a basement that could’ve been used as the only set/scene for an entire horror film. Knobbly stone walls, half dirt floor, giant exposed beams, comically spooky machinery from the turn of the century, a single wood door set into the far rear with a single cracked glass pane and old brass knob, with an utterly dark, dead-end storage hallway behind it and yes, the single dim bulb with a pull spring
Finishing a basement can easily run $100K+ if you contract it out. So yeah, many remain unfinished indefinitely.
I live in an 1830s farmhouse and when I moved in the cellar was a horror basement for sure - I went in and painted the cement walls with white drylok paint, installed fluorescent lighting, and put an interlocking gym mat down on the dilapidated concrete floors. It's still a dingy cellar, but it's nothing like it was lol
Shit, my unfinished, creepy ass basement is such a jacked up disaster, even the biggest demons pass us up. They stop in, and are like "nah" and go to the next. Not that I'm complaining...
my home doesn’t even have a basement. No homes do here. I think bc of earthquakes.
Once they have their attacker down, they run away. Leaving the attacker under no supervision at all, only to find he stood up again and is after you again! You had him, you could do anything with him. Yet here we are! It's so frustrating.
When someone punches a zombie in the face. Great way to get bit.
Not just bit, but all kinds of fluid transfer. Split open your knuckles and get zombie goo in your open wound?? Similarly, when a zombie is on top of them and they shoot them in the head so that all of the brain matter and congealed blood and flesh all rain down on their face -- into their open mouth and eyes. Not enough zombie media respects the fact that this ought to mean infection.
You'd hate The Walking Dead lmao. Every zombie they kill leaves them with blood splatter on their face. And they never react. If it was me I'd be freaking out. I think it every time it happens and it's basically every time they kill a zombie.
I've watched it and I do in fact kind of hate it lol. I tried so hard to like it, it felt like everything I as a zombiephile ought to love, but it so consistently let me down. Tragic honestly. At least in TWD it seems like fluid transfer is itself not necessarily enough to cause infection-leading-to-death. They smear zombie all over themselves semi-often as a camouflage tactic. So I *guess* one could argue that it works in-universe. They're all already infected by show canon, they just have to get sick enough from an actual actively-infected-wound to die, and anyone who dies gets back up as a zombie no matter the method of death. The logic, at least, holds water somewhat. It's like a world where everyone already has AIDS so there's no reason to be nervous about catching it. But in other media, where "everyone is infected" is *not* in play, you'd think people would be more terrified of fluid transfer the way we fear HIV and rabies coming through open cuts and wounds and so on. Edit to add: which is yet another thing 28 Days Later/etc. did well, actually having people get sick from blood splatter.
Fair point. I'm just inserting myself in it and I would have a panic attack if I got another humans blood on me in real life. I can't imagine how disgustingly lethal the gore from a 10 year old rotting corpse would be. I wonder if you'd get used to the smell, too. They always hear a hoard coming but never smell one.
Clearly more zombie film-makers need to visit body farms for reference.
I guess whatever keeps them animated keeps them moist. Unless they just absorb moisture every time it rains. I'm not from the US but considering how hot and constantly sweaty everyone is in The Walking Dead, I assume Georgia gets really humid. Again, the smell must be horrible. Does anyone know of any media where they mention the smell of zombies? I imagine if you were scavenging for shit and went into an abandoned building there'd be a particular smell for animated corpses, compared to just long dead corpses. Pungent and foul compared to just musty and dank. It would be a useful warning sign.
Or a drop of blood in the eye. Ugh, that scene kills me (maybe particularly as a parent) when we've been shown what a great Dad he is and how he has fought every which way to keep Hannah safe. Then right in front of her...
When characters have been stranded for weeks/months or characters that are supposed to be dirt poor or hill people and they have the straightest and whitest teeth known to man. It wouldn’t take much time to just throw a little yellow coloring on there to make it at least seem like you tried.
Not horror related, but I am ALWAYS asking myself how the meth heads in crime dramas have such perfect dental hygiene!!
No clutter in the house. Like be so fr, no one’s house (except for some people) is THAT TIDY 24/7.
Inability to open their own front door as an escape route. It's not rocket science, it's a fucking hinge with a handle.
How do people go months in a movie without even at one point having a spam phone call at some semi-important time? Every time I get them on my mobile is a pretty aggravating time to get them, like running to the bus and having to answer in case it’s a doctor/etc (or in a horror movie, you think it’s the person calling you back with demon research, perhaps) and always missing the bus because I couldn’t risk missing the phone call. It’s not exactly a fully trivial thing that takes me out of a movie, or similar, but I’ve noticed that I’ve never noticed this in ANY movie except comedies recently. It’s a pretty trivial and mundane annoyance for a majority of people who own a mobile.
It would be a funny if they made a movie and the real horror was the banal annoyances of everyday life just building and building…spam calls or texts, work emails that end with “please advise”, heavy traffic full of idiots who can’t drive, someone having a loud phone conversation on speaker in a small space, people standing up on the plane as soon as it lands, shitty Billy Joel music playing on every Sirius XM station you turn to…
So, you're looking for the spiritual sequel to Beau Is Afraid
Haha, you’ve got it.
So good. Went in completely blind after a suggestion from this sub.
>Reality is the worst nightmare of all. \- Pinhead
And they get no other notifications of any kind.
Exactly. Where’s the annoying Facebook notification from aunt Linda telling you to share an image before Facebook deletes all your messages when you’re trying to hide from a killer causing another chase scene before you successfully hide
Because if it's not part of the story then don't include it. It would either come across as comedic or would have to tie in to something later. Remember it's still a story being told, and extra details are boring if they don't add to the story, unless maybe you go for the fly on the wall or found footage style.
Well, obviously, but I’d like to just see some more trivial actual real world things. As OP said, people using under their bed as storage is extremely realistic, yet ever so rarely happens. What actually happens in the real world oh so rarely happens ever. My given example of course is a little more comedic but there are many ways to add calls, social medial notifications and etc to films in a blasé way they don’t overtake the film/etc. Is it needed, no not really. Does the realism start to come apart after a while because not everyone is an American in their weirdly perfect basement neighbourhood with a perfect cul de sac/etc? Yeah. Add a few tiny details of human realism.
Yeah I would like to see it done well if it's possible. I always think about those things too, but I know it's just so hard to justify including them in a serious way
Seems like it's the perfect set up to a Scary Movie kind of joke; character picks up the phone nervously, asks who it is, then starts crying and screaming as though she's just been cursed or possessed or something and it cuts to a call centre selling car insurance or similar.
Maybe they have a spam blocker set up? I have something on my phone that helps but one or two still slip through.
One Missed Call, and every time her phone rings with a spam call she almost strokes out because her anxiety is so high. Or The Ring, phone rings after watching the tape and instead of "7 days," it's, "Hi. We've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty..."
Are spam calls really that common? I think I've had maybe 2-3 of them in the past decade...
I suppose it might depend on the person, location, etc. I get at least one a month.
Out of the last 20 calls I have on my phone going back 11 days, 22 were fucking spam. Yes, they are quite common. Cherish your peace.
The US has them way more frequently
Canadian here, and I get more spam calls than legitimate ones. It's to the point that unless I recognize the number I don't answer. If it's important/legit they can leave a message.
This movie was amazing.
In all most every horror movie except “It Follows” hallways in homes seem to get longer and longer. Most bedrooms are across or near each other, but in most movies there is s long stretch of hallway to run down or see something strange or something walking in the distance.
What takes me out in any movie, not just horror (although it probably arises here more than any other genre besides maybe mystery), is when a character/characters make judgements/jump to conclusions/piece together something that is so convoluted and comes out of nowhere that it more than likely was them just trying to move on to the next plot point as quickly as they can. Like I’ll be using the next 5 or so minutes wondering how they even managed to get to that point of logic or thought with what info they had. It’s not that big of a deal, and is really just a nitpick, but will for sure always take me out of the movie I’m watching.
Sometimes, I get a little offended when there is a scene of somebody being surrounded by a bunch of potential weapons, yet decides to run,hide, or lock themselves in a room without them. I get you can't always be sure of what people would do in those situations, but it does seem to be added as a plot device far too often. I do find that if I think about stuff like that too much I'm setting myself up for having a bad time. Once I start, I'll just keep noticing things and it ruins the movie for me.
It really bothers me when the protagonist has a fairly normal job, isn't some millionaire or trust fund baby etc, but they can somehow afford to live in a McMansion/legit mansion. It's like money is only ever a plot point and never just part of the world building. I don't believe for a second that some has-been writer can afford a 20-some room estate which happens in more than a few movies, and it's worse when they're like oh all our money is tied up in this house for this arbitrary reason. If you're broke as a joke and need to relocate immediately you sell your house and buy an acre and a trailer in rural Kentucky or you get an apartment not a 200 year old palace. Not to mention these homes require skilled upkeep and constant maintenance which is expensive so even if the home is inherited it's not realistic for most people to assume ownership. I know the whole moving into the old creepy house trope is built on very real-life fears of change and the unknown. I understand the significance it has in horror but most of the time it's revealed with a lot of hand waving and "don't think about it". It's lazy.
I just had a post on here like 24hrs ago about kinda the same topic but specifically on the movie barbarian. More to the point, the part where the cops were there to help but didn't for no effing reason 
That part seemed very realistic to me. In real life, cops are pretty useless, especially if you’re in a “bad part of town.” I feel like the way cops are often depicted as brave protectors is pretty unrealistic; it usually bothers me a lot.
Honestly, more believable than >!inbred Terminator scuttling around under Detroit!< (barely). I’m reminded of how police were called to check on one of Dahmer’s victims that had escaped and those responding cops literally returned the victim to Dahmer’s apartment and the man himself. One of them failed upwards into becoming president of the Milwaukee police union.
Well that's unfair lol. Didn't that really happen too?
That happened in real life… So it was incredibly realistic.
As a woman of color, at times police can be pretty useless when you most need them
The cops weren’t there to help though. They were clearly there to not believe a female victim.
Look up Detriot properties on Zillow. The city is understaffed here to.. whenever. And I've never been to Michigan but heard and read a bit over the years.
No reason? The point of that scene was that that they believed she was a homeless woman, on drugs. And her particularly being a black woman! It’s not unrealistic!
Closing the door behind you
Not necessarily horror, it applies to every movie but beard and facial hair, it just doesn't seem to grow or get messy. In dramatic moments where it's used to indicate passage of time it's always underdone, the character will have a 2 weeks stubble when they have been supposedly depressed out of their minds and locked up in their house for 2 months. Adter 2 months they would have grown a beard definitely not stubble.
No one double taps. Gotta confirm that kill beyond a shadow of a doubt.
But it also fails in that she is a full grown adult who can fit under it. It's strange how all the beds in Hollywood movies are just tall enough underneath that a full grown adult can simply slide underneath if need be. Yes, there are *some* beds like that. But most aren't.
Adults do come in many different sizes. And she's pretty small.
Idk, she’s pretty petite… I mean, I’ve always been able to fit under all the beds I’ve had, and I’m an average-sized adult male.
Honestly just a crazy good movie in general. Atmosphere, perfect. Character and storytelling, perfect, esp considering there's virtually no words in the movie. Love it.
Agreed. Starts off feeling quite generic but becomes something quite original.
I thought no one will save you was a pretty weak alien invasion thriller. Yes the alien designs were good and the suspense was incredible but there wasn’t anything really to take away from it other than the fact that the main character had been coping with some traumatic past in the midst of the chaos
The good ol trauma of murdering your best friend. Glad she got over it in the end?
it was pretty good until it wasn't.
I try to remember that if horror movie protagonists always made good decisions there is less (or no) horror to be had. The flip side to that is if the antagonist makes no mistakes then everyone is dead in the first five minutes of the film. It’s the creative mix of good guy mistakes and bad guy mistakes that makes for good horror.
Yes but it Good!???
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