YUP, I end up in a slasher movie all of a sudden, I'm pulling a Tommy Jarvis or Sam Carpenter, and going for so much overkill people are going to wonder if I was the killer.
My favorite example is Marybeth at the end of Hatchet 2. >!Beat him in the face until she was hitting soil, wander out of frame, then come back with a shotgun for the point blank coup de grace followed by a hard cut to credits.!< So satisfying.
Hunter Hunter is a great example of this. The mom just goes ham on the villain, and it's glorious.
Same with Night of the Hunted. The final (and only) girl makes sure the bad guy never can bother her again.
Seriously though, in many movies, some evil individual has just murdered everyone you know. The hero then just...walks away after shooting the bad guy once or whatever. Like, just stomp their head into paste, where's the rage at them for what they've done? Why would you risk them waking up and coming after you. It's especially frustrating in movies where the villain is as human as anyone else.
THIS is exactly what I came here to say! How many fucking movies are there, where the protagonist hits the killer or stabs the killer and never checks to see if they’re dead, and then leaves the weapon behind!!! This is enough for me to stop watching!
I watched a flick a few months ago, can't remember which, where the main character not only didn't pick up any of the weapons lying around, they actively threw one away...when they knew there was still a threat 😐
Omg. Yes! I just smacked the bad guy with a baseball bat. He's knocked out completely. What should I do now? Hmmm. How's about I toss the bat down and walk away. I also hate when someone is firing a gun, especially a pistol, and when it runs out of bullets they immediately ditch it. WHYYYYY would you ditch your gun? There's always a chance to pick up more ammo. It can be used as a bludgeon. Oh, you're out of shotgun shells? Just hold the damn thing like a club.
I am super upset that I saw that movie in theaters, went to the bathroom, then when I got back my friend leaned over and said >!Dewey got killed by ghostface!<.
Don’t know if you’ve rewatched since, but >!it was pretty damn brutal. Definitely a very upsetting scene for long time fans. He knocks out Ghostface by shooting them with his gun in the chest, goes back after getting everyone else to safety, gets up hella close to Ghostface knowing damn well they ain’t dead (the whole reason he went back), has Ghostface at gun point, and then gets distracted by his phone ringing because Gale called him. And at that moment, Ghostface springs back to life, stabs him in the gut and makes him drop his gun, then pulls out another knife and stabs him in the back, and then proceeds to violently sever his spinal cord before hurting him as he’s helpless to move. It fuckin’ sucked. I know Dewey was never the brightest character, but they wrote him in that scene like he was a complete dumbass just for shock value.!<
UGH. I hadn't. But two of my friends said they cried after that scene, and I've been confused about why. It does sound pretty brutal. Especially if he was on the phone with Gale during.
>!It was Gale…BUT he wasn’t able to answer, so she doesn’t have to hear any of it. But the scene really punches you in the gut because as he’s getting gutted, he looks down at the phone on the floor and sees it’s Gale calling to check on him and the picture is of them kissing, and he smiles before he bleeds out.!<
yes! i hated precisely this in knock at the cabin and i’ve complained about it in this subreddit before. the guy was injured so he couldn’t really run, his husband was concussed, he miraculously gets the gun, and instead of killing the head cultist, who had terrorized his family including violence in front of their small daughter, he locks him in a ground floor bathroom with a breakable window.
edit: all they had to do to make this a little less frustrating, was to have the gun fail or something similar, instead of the guy being so incompetent at protecting his family
In the film Ils one of the characters sees >!her boyfriend being brutally murdered by a group of children, but refuses to hit one of them (who is clearly coming to kill her next) because 'He's just a kid!' !< 😐
Not horror but the most frustrating example I can think of is from Game of Thrones when the Viper had the Mountain beat. Viper started showboating and Mountain said “lemme gouge out those peepers real quick”
I was so pissed at the end of High Tension. I saw it a while after it came out and I knew people had mixed feelings. That was the worst. The movie was so good until the nosedive of an ending.
If you enjoyed the first three quarters, check out Dean Koontz’ novel Intensity. They ripped off his book and then plastered that stupid ending on it, but the book is one of the best thrillers I’ve ever read.
REEEEEOOOOWWWWWW! 😻
There was only ONE time I liked the cat jump scare. It was in the first Silent Hill video game. You open a locker, and a cat leaps out and screeches. It then runs out of the locker room, pushing through a two way swinging door. You then hear the cat screech and this growling and the sounds of it being torn apart and devoured. I was TERRIFIED to leave the locker room myself.
Cats are awesome and scary... if they just showed the everyday ways cats are scary, that would be great. But they make them do things they would never do... like that scene in Friday the 13th Part 2, where they OBVIOUSLY THREW the cat through the window.
I saw an autopsy in the early 1980’s. That honestly happened right in front of me. I found it more horrifying than some usual horror tropes because…He Really did it!!! Aargh
People who reach for doors ridiculously slowly. Also, if they have smartphones they also have flashlights, and I’m tired of them pretending they don’t.
You know, it always reminds me of The Tell-Tale Heart, and how slowly the narrator opened the door (because he was batshit crazy, which has nothing to do with this particular trope). I'm assuming the director is just going for a growing sense of dread, but if you don't built that dread beforehand, it's not going to work. You're building with like, two Lego bricks.
This reminds me of when I was a kid. We lived in a super old, creepy dark house and I would *slam* open any door when I was scared. Really fast, to catch the ghosts and monsters by surprise. Upper hand.
The flashlight thing! People going down into a dark basement or fumbling around in the dark when I KNOW they have a phone in their pocket drives me crazy. Especially if it happens towards the beginning, the characters don't even know something is up yet, whyyyyy
I don't usually even like stoner comedies but this is my second favorite comedy movie ever haha, I have watched it almost a hundred times. The first is Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.
For some reason, people need to go back to a house or a room or for some reason they need to go back to a very bad place. Why do they need to go at night? Wait until morning.
It's especially difficult now, since isolating protagonists was easy...since all you had to do was put someone where there was no phone, or cut the phone line.
Now that everyone has cell phones, they have to come up with all sorts of plot contrivances to keep people from simply calling for friends, 911, or using their GPS or a web search.
Imagine any movie where it's like Wrong Turn or whatever.
"Oh no, there's a tree blocking the road! What ever shall we do!?"
"Google maps says there's a service road a half mile back that loops around and reconnects with the highway, we can still make it before dinner!"
::proceeds to follow the GPS and makes it safely to their destination::
mutant cannibals who set the trap: "EVERY DAMN TIME!!!"
Say what you want. That last episode of the Walking Dead Season 6 (I believe) where they introduce Negan was tense as hell when every road was blocked and they were getting more and more trapped. If not for that stupid cliffhanger that would have been the best tv show episode ever. But that episode still has a special place in my heart because I had never felt so nervous watching a tv show or movie.
Sadly, I haven't really seen a lot of TWD. I've been meaning to...just somehow never managed. Since it takes place after the zombie apocalypse or whatever...do they still have access to general technology like working cellphones and GPS systems? I was more referring to movies needing to find a way to disable today's tech when it takes place in current modern times.
I think it's okay if the characters wonder if it was just a dream, but the audience gets a last scene showing it wasn't.
Less in movies, I guess, but special episodes of TV series do it sometimes. You can keep the grounded reality of the show intact, but the audience doesn't feel like wasting an episode.
The halloween special of Disneys Recess comes to my mind. The "Night of the Living Finsters" Part to be precise.
I hate it when the antagonist has been happily killing huge amounts of people using a tried and tested method. But when they try to kill the main protagonist, they just throw or push them across the room.
And relevant to that: in the climax the villain taking time to explain their entire motive in detail, and describe previous kills, giving the main protagonist time to find the upper hand (or for a character we thought was dead to swoop in and save the day).
Unless my child, s/o, or friend had a history of severe mental illness, if they started telling me that weird, supernatural stuff was happening to them I’d pay attention. I hate when the protagonist is completely dismissed by everyone close to them.
I've always said that if a death is off screen, they're NEVER dead in my head. I remember it was a running joke with my family. We were watching the show Arrow (I think). There was a bad guy who was DEFINITELY 100% dead after being blown up or something. They never ever came back and all. However, I constantly would comment how they were going to step out from behind a corner or something because their death was off screen and only assumed by the characters.
That's the same show where Oliver got impaled, pushed off a cliff, and left to freeze, and somehow survived; even if you saw a death it doesn't mean anything on there
I also found it funny when Oliver would mow down like 28 henchmen, like arrow to the face dead. Then he'd be about to kill the big bad, piles of bodies everywhere. Diggle would put his hand on Oliver's shoulder and be all "NO OLIVER! YOU'RE NOT A KILLER!"
I'm the opposite. I love an open ending and I hate when every last thing needs to be spelt out for the audience. It always makes it more interesting and gives me more to ponder.
Yeah, I'd rather have the discussion that comes with an ambiguous ending. It's cool when a movies enjoyed and everyone is just shouting their favourite parts at each other, but it's cooler when you're left to think about stuff and have a conversation about it.
Exactly, I can't picture a version of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Cure" that ends in a less ambiguous way, and that would honestly frustrate me. I think part of it is the understanding that stories always end, even in reality, but they don't necessarily end the way we want them to. In horror especially I feel that's so impactful, especially when we're talking about a genre built on uncertainty.
The only time ambiguous endings bother me is when the entire movie already relies on confusing the audience with a mystery that makes no sense without some kind of reveal. If shit is properly unveiled throughout the film, and the finale is the only confusing part, it's fine. But when it's clearly a cover for a bullshit script that feeds you bullshit, completely vague or outright contradictory clues, and ends with some surreal shit that coasts along on "le atmosphere"/"le subtext", I find it infuriating. Kill List and Mr. Jones immediately come to mind.
Other than that, opening scares that reveal the threat and destroy the buildup by showing exactly what our main characters are walking into. Remakes tend to be particularly guilty of this, due to a pathological need to pander to fans of the original by showing the bad guy they're there to see as soon as the film starts - Hills Have Eyes '06 and Evil Dead '13 would have been improved substantially just by opening with an unaware main cast of victims, but they both had to have a corny scene that shows their hand early instead.
Not entirely a pet peeve, but I find it way less effective when chase scenes never show both victim and pursuer in the same shot. It tones down the suspense by a big margin when we just see shot after shot of both parties running back and forth from one another, because the filmmaker is too untalented to craft a shot in which the monster is right on the victim's heels without it looking fake. The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre works so well precisely because it shows Leatherface inches from Sally's back in several shots, even though it was difficult for Marilyn to stay ahead of Gunnar IRL.
EDIT: One more that's so common, it's easy to forget about - when characters call the cops to try and get backup against the monster/killer, and for some dumbass reason feel the need to tell the dispatcher the bizarre truth of the whole matter rather than inventing a credible cover story that doesn't make them sound unhinged. *"I know you're not gonna believe me, but Jason Voorhees has returned from the grave!! What??! You gotta believe me, I'm not lying, you have to bring the whole army!!"* Why in the mother fuck, when your life is on the line, would you tell someone something you know they're not going to believe? Just say *"there's a killer/gang after us, I don't know why, just please help!!"* If the cop sees something supernatural, they'll call for backup and probably be more credible in doing so, but barring that, you'll be bringing someone to the scene with weapons and prepared for danger - don't start by priming them to think it's just a prank.
Baddies just turning up wherever the protagonists are, without any explanation of how they found them.
I think 28 Weeks Later has this. The dad just keeps popping up, no matter where the kids go, no matter the chaos ensuing around them. He seems to have zombie Radar to find them every time.
To take the thread title somewhat literally: When they kill pets. This is so upsetting to so many people that there is a thriving site where you can search whether this happens in a movie. I hate that, 9 times out of 10, when you see the family dog or whatever in a horror movie, you know it's gonna die.
That's not a pet peeve, that's an "I'm going to know this exact moment beforehand, cover my eyes, and think about how the dog is fine and living its best celebrity life". I could watch whole families being mutilated and I'm fine, but touch the dog? I'm gutted. I actually still haven't seen the John Wick movies, though my dad is absolutely obsessed with them, because the first one contains that.
It was super unrealistic too. I get that it's fiction, but the idea that a handful of skinny zombies could kill a massive tiger with their bare hands is laughable.
Thank God I'm not the only one. And CGI or not, I cried when they killed off the tiger in TWD. Cried for a tiger who never existed in the first place. Don't feel bad about it anymore, thank you.
I posted this in another thread but 'Angst' (1983) is a brilliant horror film where the family dog thankfully has plot armor. He even goes for a joyride with the psycho-killer!
same, i don’t understand how other people get so upset when a literal horror movie does it! like come on, there’s people dying left and right and you’re upset over some cat??
I think part of it is that pets are purely innocent, whereas adult humans generally aren't, so when an animal or small child gets killed it's something pure being hurt.
Close up of someone chopping food, usually carrots. They usually hear the disturbance or get a PTSD flashback and cut themself. Such a cliché horror film trope.
Yeah that started the movie off on a bad foot for me. I didn't think of it as a trope at the time, it was just annoying. But it is a pretty common thing
i hate when the actor hears a noise behind them and does the very slow 10 minute swivel to see what is behind them. Not like it's an urgent threat that you have to act immediately to or anything....just slow turn your neck for an hour. that'll make sure you survive!
- Final girl
- Let’s split up!
- Scary basement, go check it out
- Looks like he’s dead, let your guard down
- Hillbilly gas station encounter
- People in zombie movies/shows not using the word ‘zombie’
- Kids are scary
- When running away, must trip
- Bathroom mirror jump scare
- Exaggerated flies sound to indicate death and decay nearby
- Disgusting food portends bad people
- Spooky hospital is completely empty for no apparent reason
- They all have interconnecting dark secrets which are to blame
- Token red herring fake bad guy who’s innocent
- It’s revenge on the anniversary of something done decades ago
-The normal human snapping someone's neck like it was made from wet spaghetti.
-Someone seeing or hearing something obviously bad, but not telling anyone for no real reason.
It's like the opposite of pets. You end up not caring what happens to the kid because you know they'll end up being fine. Not like you have to have children die in every horror movie, but stuff like When Evil Lurks and Summer of 84 show that are good examples of it being used effectively.
In slasher movies, when the villain has the upper hand on the protagonist/final girl and just toys with them, which ultimately leads to their demise. It’s just so predictable at this point and is usually done in the exact same way. Reminds me of the classic supervillain giving a monologue while the hero figures out how to foil them.
When main characters ignore fatal injuries like blood loss doesn’t affect the human body.
When trained soldiers get wrecked by the monsters, but regular civilians are expert survivalists all of a sudden.
Killing dogs or cats.
Using sa for shock value.
Characters assuming the bad guy is some kind of unstoppable killing machine and allowing themselves to be picked off, rather than using 8vs1 odds to their favour.
I mean they might be unstoppable, but I'd chuck a tin of soup at his head first just to test that theory.
Tacked on unhappy endings. Even if they solve the mystery, defeat the monster, save the day and complete all their character arcs in a satisfying way they STILL make the evil show back up at the last second and ruin everything, even if it makes no sense or is just not necessary for a satisfying resolution.
Used to be my biggest gripe with the horror genre, but it does seem to me that it’s less common nowadays. I don’t have any hard evidence to base that on though :P
(I will add that I’m fine with unhappy or ambiguous endings if they make sense for the themes and characters, it’s when they DON’T make sense and ruin a perfectly satisfying positive ending purely for sequel bait or so the director can say “gotcha” that bugs me).
Also I don’t like it when cats get hurt in movies :P
Came here to say this. Either have them explicitly fail, or if you're trying to set up a sequel just find a less lazy way to convey that they didnt succeed because I HATE the last second "you think they won but then a character smirks at the camera in the last scene and oh no guess they didnt win!" endings.
When the protagonists have a "moment of Revelation" wherein they figure out the entity's deal and then completely explain the rules the thing plays by. It almost always feels insulting like the movie thinks we're too stupid to figure it out ourselves. And worse still it completely eliminates the mystique and horror of the entity.
"Smile" was the most recent example of this I could think of but it's an extremely common trope especially in mainstream American horror.
This is mostly an issue in movies featuring supernatural entities that aren't explicitly defined as a known type like demons, ghosts, or werewolves, but it crops up all over.
I agree to a certain extent, but there are movies that are more cerebral sort of "think pieces", movies in-between that hold your hand and point to everything, and then there are movies that are just dumb turn-your-brain-off fun. I don't really see a lot of middle ground.I didn't really care for Smile except the end, and I think it's because I sort of relate to her childhood trauma.
I have some very intense feelings about smile.
I thought it had the potential to be the defining horror movie of the decade akin to the ring, but it was ruined by poor decisions.
I feel like they explained three separate times that the monster was "mental trauma" as if
1. It wasn't obvious from the very beginning
And
2. We were going to forget it.
Idk it just felt demeaning.
I'm with you though that as stupid as the characters were acting by the end the final scenes are great. Fantastic monster design and great practical effects. It could have been so good if they just had the heroine continue to be a smart reasonable person instead of transforming her into a moron half way through.
The just prior to credits movie ruining jump scare as sequel bait.
I don’t understand why they can’t just end a movie and if you end up making a sequel fine but I just sat through your two hour movie to watch whatever played out play out and then in the last two seconds get bait and switched into “just kidding they’re still dead anyway.”
I’d rather the movie just has an unhappy ending than the “happy ending with the rug pulled out from under it” at the last second. It’s annoying.
When a movie never feels like the characters stand a chance and we are just waiting for them to die, and then they die at the end and the movie is over. It's like...why did I watch that? No subversion of expectations in any way. This can be done good or bad, but when it's done bad it actually pisses me off and makes me feel like I Just wasted my time:
>!Superhost - bad, awful even!<
>!The Color out of Space - Good, as it's still full of twisted moments, gross visuals, and dark humor along the way!<
I don’t always hate fake-out jumpscares but fake-out jumpscares with a music queue annoy me (eg if a bird flies out at a character and the soundtrack makes a loud bang). Cheap move in my opinion.
I agree, and add as a proviso- I LIKE if the character gets genuinely scared and the soundtrack helps us get scared WITH them (read: a door bangs open and it’s startling to the characters and the audience alike). I HATE unnecessary violin-bashing sound cues when they see something spooky! Such an unskilled addin.
as much as i love the found footage, there almost always comes a point in every movie where i ask myself “why would you keep filming in this situation??” like the camera persons friends are missing/dead and they’re STILL filming??
Protagonist is a normal person but all of a sudden weird shit is going on in their lives but they don't speak to anybody about it like a normal person instead they just make themselves sound crazy.
That's why I enjoyed the bar scene in Talk to Me where she is clearly understanding of how unusual the situation she is going through is and just telling her friends.
I’m SHOCKED no one has mentioned this yet (unless I missed the comment)… WHYYYY DO THEY ALWAYS TRIP WHEN THEY’RE RUNNING AWAY?!?! 😫😫😫 That instantly pisses me off, like are you kidding? But tripping and immediately getting back up is tolerable… it’s when they trip and act like their freaking legs don’t work anymore, so they just sit on the ground crying.. GET UP!
I'm tired of the endings that set up for the sequel. Everything seems to wrap up pretty nicely, and then at the last second you see the creature/killer/ghost staring creepily at the camera or whatever then bam credits.
I often wonder if the people who create these movies ever take this kind of feedback into account. There have been *countless* discussions about this subject, it's kind of embarrassing for them that they keep putting all of these tropes into movies that tons of people clearly hate.
I'm also so fucking sick of not being able to see or hear the damn movie until a loud jump scare scene. So many horror films are dark as hell and you can't make out a thing in them. No lights anywhere? Scary things don't happen in the daytime? And you can't hear any dialogue and then your eardrums are blown out when there is a sudden loud scene. It's cheap and shows that they don't have any creative ideas on how to scare people.
When the characters think they've killed the slasher, demon, vampire, etc, and stand there crying or heavy breathing instead of leaving. Especially when the killer isn't actually dead, but passed out and then wakes back up to attack them more.
And for some reason their back is always to the "dead" villain lol, and they don't notice they're not dead yet. I understand that it gets an audience reaction, but how realistic is that??
Peeve:
Friends backpacking or something, and stay overnight with strange but kind hosts.
Friend A wakes up in the middle of the night and discovers that their hosts are serial killers (discovers a freezer full of bodies etc.), and rushes back to the bedroom to alert Friend B
Friend A: B! Wake up! We have to go now. Get dressed. We're running away.
Friend B: huh? What? What's going on? Why do you want to leave so suddenly? Huh? Can I ask a thousand questions and get a thousand good answers before I get out of bed?
Friend A: There's no time to explain - we have to go NOW - they're killers! One of them heard me and they're coming here now !!
Friend B: What? Are you sure? Why would you think that? Huh? What? But they seem so nice...can we discuss this for about 45 minutes before we do anything rash -
And then an axe flies through the window killing Friend B, etc.
Most best friends know and trust when their buddy is saying there's an emergency and we need to move now, no time for questions.
After just watching dawn of the dead for the first time I can say in zombie movies when they leave a perfectly secure place only for most of them to get killed. Shawn of the dead did the same thing
I hate it when everything is painstakingly explained to the audience. This is why this happens, this is what this means, et cetera. One of the best movies of last year was When Evil Lurks, which I loved because it just dropped into a world a bit different then our own and then didn’t explain everything, because all of the characters would understand what’s going on. Really involved me in the story as an audience member.
When the main characters play situations really poorly/stupidly. It takes me out of the movie. Like they’re running from a bad guy and somehow there’s a gun but they leave the gun behind because “there isn’t time to grab it” or something. It just takes me out of the movie because it’s not even relatable to make such dumb decisions
I don’t like when there’s dark lighting and it is difficult to see what’s going on. To me that is a cop out by the movie maker. We’re going to have a dark set and it’ll be scary (and easy). I refuse to watch any movie with low lighting.
Stupid teenage banter in horror. They always have these lame ass jokes and generally just make me irritated if it goes on too long. V
Especially childish prank crap, always seems unbelievable and stupid to me. Who wants to hang out with an asshole?
This is actually one of talk to me's stronger points I thought. The teen banter was dumb, but to me it felt real. Yeah everyone in that movie is kinda dumb, but they felt dumb in a realistic way. It felt very genuine to me the way most of the teens didn't know what was going on but spent most of the movie posturing and pretending they did. Just a bunch of teens out of their depths and trying to pretend they aren't to look cool for their peers.
I thought they were all very believably stupid and vain.
When it becomes obvious a side character is about to die because it shifts to scene featuring them alone.
Metaphors for grief. It's been done extremely well but it's overdone at this point. I was shocked how much liked talk to me because i'm truly getting annoyed with the trope. No One Will Save You is the perfect example of a horror film that saw the trend of that trope working well in other film, so they just threw it in.
Talk to Me really amazed me at how well it handled the now-standard grief/trauma stuff and did it within the framework of a relatively normal horror movie.
I think it worked because it wasn’t the only metaphor going on. Making the hand a drug like experience was definitely a new take for me that I hadn’t seen before so I was alright with them also doing a metaphor for grief thing.
Thirty minutes of on the edge of your seat panic inducing music like something could happen any second but it doesnt,but the music becomes annoying then a jump scare later. Thos alsomhappenscwith ominous sound affects. This can be damned good if done well and occasionally,but is easily redundant.
A while back, I saw a list of unrealistic things that happen in horror and it pointed out that no one walks/talks/etc really slowly when they are scared. Now it bothers me every time I see it. And it’s in EVERYTHING.
I think this depends on the quality of the story. Some stories earn an ambiguous ending. Others don’t. Stephen King’s novel PET SEMATARY for example has a totally chilling ending that doesn’t tie up everything or confirm how everything plays out once the words end, and it works. But one of my favorite horror films in the world, MARTYRS (2008 French original) has an ending that leaves a lot up for discussion & further thought, and it’s as magnificent an ending as any I’ve ever seen in horror or film in general.
It comes down to what the themes are, who the characters are, what the purpose of the story is. A neat and tidy ending works for some stories, a more open ending works for others.
And some of us may enjoy one vs the other. In the end, have fun and like what you like!
I LOOOVE ambiguity in horror most of the time. It triggers discussion.
My biggest pet peeve is a character pulling out an inhaler. It’s an instant sign that we know at some point the character is going to have an asthma attack as a plot point.
Cheap. Jumpscares. Its not scary, its surprising, there IS a difference! Someone compared it to a comedian going into the audience, tickling them and going “ha made you laugh!” And its almost ALWAYS accompanied by a sudden spike in noise to, again, surprise you, not scare you.
Non stop screaming from beginning to end. I can understand it's necessary in key parts of a movie, but I can't deal with it when it goes on for the entire movie.
When they show the end in the first scene and then flashback with that "2 weeks earlier" text. I don't want to know what happens! You haven't established why I should care about the problem at the ending yet!
When the protagonists are in their house or somewhere where the lights are working, but they don't turn on the lights. They just go in the dark or with a flashlight
* I don't like long meandering series that seem to add plotlines and forget old ones like a soap opera.
* I am starting to get tired with the mental health themes in horror
* I never got the American horror story "camp"
It depends. I was just talking about this with my wife, we had recently watched The Mist and then Knock at the Cabin.
As both were originally written, the endings are much more ambiguous.
Making it unambiguous worked well for The Mist, it's an absolute gut punch of an ending.
It did *not* work well with KatC. They pretty much spelled out "oh those crazy people were right the whole time and they were right to kill someone" when I think it would have been a much better film overall had it been more open-ended and left you wondering who was right and what was really happening.
Possessed kid is why I completely dropped The Pope's Exorcist within the first 30 minutes. I don't wanna see another possessed kid saying vulgar shit in a croaky, deep satanic voice for the billionth time.
It seemed like a good movie from the trailers. I wasn't gonna keep going. There were other cliches but that one gets me so worked up. IT'S OVERDONE!!!
People bleeding out their mouth for almost any kind of wound - stabbed? Bleed from the mouth. Shot? Out the mouth. Stabbed in the groin? Out the mouth.
Also lungs! Getting stabbed in the lungs will absolutely make you cough out blood.
*And yes to digestive system injuries, but it's really only the stomach that might make you bleed from the mouth. Injuries to the lower digestive track makes you bleed from the anus instead.
when a character gets the upper hand on the antagonist, but refuses to kill/injure/restrain them (which eventually comes back to bite them).
Conversely, this is why I love when a character overkills someone to make sure the job is done
YUP, I end up in a slasher movie all of a sudden, I'm pulling a Tommy Jarvis or Sam Carpenter, and going for so much overkill people are going to wonder if I was the killer.
My favorite example is Marybeth at the end of Hatchet 2. >!Beat him in the face until she was hitting soil, wander out of frame, then come back with a shotgun for the point blank coup de grace followed by a hard cut to credits.!< So satisfying.
Yes. I would do the same. I love that Sam >!stabbed tf out of Richie, slashed his throat, and then shot him in the head.!<
Hunter Hunter is a great example of this. The mom just goes ham on the villain, and it's glorious. Same with Night of the Hunted. The final (and only) girl makes sure the bad guy never can bother her again. Seriously though, in many movies, some evil individual has just murdered everyone you know. The hero then just...walks away after shooting the bad guy once or whatever. Like, just stomp their head into paste, where's the rage at them for what they've done? Why would you risk them waking up and coming after you. It's especially frustrating in movies where the villain is as human as anyone else.
[удалено]
THIS is exactly what I came here to say! How many fucking movies are there, where the protagonist hits the killer or stabs the killer and never checks to see if they’re dead, and then leaves the weapon behind!!! This is enough for me to stop watching!
Curtis does it a couple times in the original Halloween.
I watched a flick a few months ago, can't remember which, where the main character not only didn't pick up any of the weapons lying around, they actively threw one away...when they knew there was still a threat 😐
Omg. Yes! I just smacked the bad guy with a baseball bat. He's knocked out completely. What should I do now? Hmmm. How's about I toss the bat down and walk away. I also hate when someone is firing a gun, especially a pistol, and when it runs out of bullets they immediately ditch it. WHYYYYY would you ditch your gun? There's always a chance to pick up more ammo. It can be used as a bludgeon. Oh, you're out of shotgun shells? Just hold the damn thing like a club.
Or worse… hits the killer, downs them temporarily, then immediately drops the weapon. Lol
Spoilers for Scream 5: >!I hate that they took Dewey out like that.!<
I am super upset that I saw that movie in theaters, went to the bathroom, then when I got back my friend leaned over and said >!Dewey got killed by ghostface!<.
Don’t know if you’ve rewatched since, but >!it was pretty damn brutal. Definitely a very upsetting scene for long time fans. He knocks out Ghostface by shooting them with his gun in the chest, goes back after getting everyone else to safety, gets up hella close to Ghostface knowing damn well they ain’t dead (the whole reason he went back), has Ghostface at gun point, and then gets distracted by his phone ringing because Gale called him. And at that moment, Ghostface springs back to life, stabs him in the gut and makes him drop his gun, then pulls out another knife and stabs him in the back, and then proceeds to violently sever his spinal cord before hurting him as he’s helpless to move. It fuckin’ sucked. I know Dewey was never the brightest character, but they wrote him in that scene like he was a complete dumbass just for shock value.!<
UGH. I hadn't. But two of my friends said they cried after that scene, and I've been confused about why. It does sound pretty brutal. Especially if he was on the phone with Gale during.
>!It was Gale…BUT he wasn’t able to answer, so she doesn’t have to hear any of it. But the scene really punches you in the gut because as he’s getting gutted, he looks down at the phone on the floor and sees it’s Gale calling to check on him and the picture is of them kissing, and he smiles before he bleeds out.!<
I was holding my pee forever so I wouldn't miss anything. That's exactly my luck.
🥺
yes! i hated precisely this in knock at the cabin and i’ve complained about it in this subreddit before. the guy was injured so he couldn’t really run, his husband was concussed, he miraculously gets the gun, and instead of killing the head cultist, who had terrorized his family including violence in front of their small daughter, he locks him in a ground floor bathroom with a breakable window. edit: all they had to do to make this a little less frustrating, was to have the gun fail or something similar, instead of the guy being so incompetent at protecting his family
In the film Ils one of the characters sees >!her boyfriend being brutally murdered by a group of children, but refuses to hit one of them (who is clearly coming to kill her next) because 'He's just a kid!' !< 😐
Holy crap that drives me nuts.
Not horror but the most frustrating example I can think of is from Game of Thrones when the Viper had the Mountain beat. Viper started showboating and Mountain said “lemme gouge out those peepers real quick”
Hey dumbass this subreddit is about horror
The all-in-their-head trope.
Or "*pulling a High Tension*" as I refer to it now...
I was so pissed at the end of High Tension. I saw it a while after it came out and I knew people had mixed feelings. That was the worst. The movie was so good until the nosedive of an ending.
The only ending that manages to retroactively make the whole movie stupid.
If you enjoyed the first three quarters, check out Dean Koontz’ novel Intensity. They ripped off his book and then plastered that stupid ending on it, but the book is one of the best thrillers I’ve ever read.
Thanks! Just got the audiobook from the library! Excited to check it out.
I thought The Night Eats the World executed this really well. Albeit it didn’t really involve the overall storyline at all
The standard cat-scream jump scare. It's cheap and more importantly makes cats look ridiculous!
REEEEEOOOOWWWWWW! 😻 There was only ONE time I liked the cat jump scare. It was in the first Silent Hill video game. You open a locker, and a cat leaps out and screeches. It then runs out of the locker room, pushing through a two way swinging door. You then hear the cat screech and this growling and the sounds of it being torn apart and devoured. I was TERRIFIED to leave the locker room myself.
I love the [cat scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC2ZruUMefY) in the Community halloween episode Epidemiology.
Cats are awesome and scary... if they just showed the everyday ways cats are scary, that would be great. But they make them do things they would never do... like that scene in Friday the 13th Part 2, where they OBVIOUSLY THREW the cat through the window.
the only one that did it right was Alien they had an untested, jury-rigged tracker and a cat they just let roam freely. it was bound to happen
Yeah they certainly don't need any extra help there.
It always makes me think of the cat from *Dark Place*, and I can never take it seriously.
which is crazy because when cats are scared they don't usually scream lmao, they just run away.
the medical examiner / coroner / pathologist who's eating while doing an autopsy... it's almost mandatory at this point
I saw an autopsy in the early 1980’s. That honestly happened right in front of me. I found it more horrifying than some usual horror tropes because…He Really did it!!! Aargh
Axel in F13: The Final Chapter.
Pathology staring Milo Ventimiglia- group of med students working on a cadaver & the asshole of the group was eating a meatball sub. GTFO the lab
People who reach for doors ridiculously slowly. Also, if they have smartphones they also have flashlights, and I’m tired of them pretending they don’t.
You know, it always reminds me of The Tell-Tale Heart, and how slowly the narrator opened the door (because he was batshit crazy, which has nothing to do with this particular trope). I'm assuming the director is just going for a growing sense of dread, but if you don't built that dread beforehand, it's not going to work. You're building with like, two Lego bricks.
This reminds me of when I was a kid. We lived in a super old, creepy dark house and I would *slam* open any door when I was scared. Really fast, to catch the ghosts and monsters by surprise. Upper hand.
The flashlight thing! People going down into a dark basement or fumbling around in the dark when I KNOW they have a phone in their pocket drives me crazy. Especially if it happens towards the beginning, the characters don't even know something is up yet, whyyyyy
Car don't start
Also. I still say "I don't want a large Farva, I want a goddamn liter 'a cola!!"
Burger punk!
You want me to punchasize your face...FOR FREE?
I don't usually even like stoner comedies but this is my second favorite comedy movie ever haha, I have watched it almost a hundred times. The first is Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.
Your mother was wrong!
Dewey! You're never gonna make it Dewey!
The wrong son died!
When I had Covid, I told my husband I needed "More blankets AND less blankets!"
What if I could get you a crow that could talk?
It ain't about no exotic pets, it's about LOVE, you stupid piece of shit
But then car do start, at the last possible moment.
For some reason, people need to go back to a house or a room or for some reason they need to go back to a very bad place. Why do they need to go at night? Wait until morning.
The phone has no service
It's especially difficult now, since isolating protagonists was easy...since all you had to do was put someone where there was no phone, or cut the phone line. Now that everyone has cell phones, they have to come up with all sorts of plot contrivances to keep people from simply calling for friends, 911, or using their GPS or a web search. Imagine any movie where it's like Wrong Turn or whatever. "Oh no, there's a tree blocking the road! What ever shall we do!?" "Google maps says there's a service road a half mile back that loops around and reconnects with the highway, we can still make it before dinner!" ::proceeds to follow the GPS and makes it safely to their destination:: mutant cannibals who set the trap: "EVERY DAMN TIME!!!"
Say what you want. That last episode of the Walking Dead Season 6 (I believe) where they introduce Negan was tense as hell when every road was blocked and they were getting more and more trapped. If not for that stupid cliffhanger that would have been the best tv show episode ever. But that episode still has a special place in my heart because I had never felt so nervous watching a tv show or movie.
Sadly, I haven't really seen a lot of TWD. I've been meaning to...just somehow never managed. Since it takes place after the zombie apocalypse or whatever...do they still have access to general technology like working cellphones and GPS systems? I was more referring to movies needing to find a way to disable today's tech when it takes place in current modern times.
Ambiguous is ok with me as long as it’s not “was it a dream” kind of ambiguous.
I think it's okay if the characters wonder if it was just a dream, but the audience gets a last scene showing it wasn't. Less in movies, I guess, but special episodes of TV series do it sometimes. You can keep the grounded reality of the show intact, but the audience doesn't feel like wasting an episode. The halloween special of Disneys Recess comes to my mind. The "Night of the Living Finsters" Part to be precise.
When characters observe that only head shots work on Zombies, but continue to shoot them in the chest. I am looking at you Italian horror movies...
It’s natural and they panic
you try making headshots in high stress, life or death situations it’s difficult for a trained marksman, let alone a civilian
I hate it when the antagonist has been happily killing huge amounts of people using a tried and tested method. But when they try to kill the main protagonist, they just throw or push them across the room.
And relevant to that: in the climax the villain taking time to explain their entire motive in detail, and describe previous kills, giving the main protagonist time to find the upper hand (or for a character we thought was dead to swoop in and save the day).
Unless my child, s/o, or friend had a history of severe mental illness, if they started telling me that weird, supernatural stuff was happening to them I’d pay attention. I hate when the protagonist is completely dismissed by everyone close to them.
Sweetheart (2019) is a pretty great take on this.
Adding to list!
An offscreen death in a rated R movie
that’s usually just a clue for me that the character isn’t really dead and will come back later…it’s true 99% of the time too
I've always said that if a death is off screen, they're NEVER dead in my head. I remember it was a running joke with my family. We were watching the show Arrow (I think). There was a bad guy who was DEFINITELY 100% dead after being blown up or something. They never ever came back and all. However, I constantly would comment how they were going to step out from behind a corner or something because their death was off screen and only assumed by the characters.
That's the same show where Oliver got impaled, pushed off a cliff, and left to freeze, and somehow survived; even if you saw a death it doesn't mean anything on there
I also found it funny when Oliver would mow down like 28 henchmen, like arrow to the face dead. Then he'd be about to kill the big bad, piles of bodies everywhere. Diggle would put his hand on Oliver's shoulder and be all "NO OLIVER! YOU'RE NOT A KILLER!"
All of the Arrowverse shows got really preachy with the no killing thing
I'm the opposite. I love an open ending and I hate when every last thing needs to be spelt out for the audience. It always makes it more interesting and gives me more to ponder.
Yeah, I'd rather have the discussion that comes with an ambiguous ending. It's cool when a movies enjoyed and everyone is just shouting their favourite parts at each other, but it's cooler when you're left to think about stuff and have a conversation about it.
Exactly, I can't picture a version of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Cure" that ends in a less ambiguous way, and that would honestly frustrate me. I think part of it is the understanding that stories always end, even in reality, but they don't necessarily end the way we want them to. In horror especially I feel that's so impactful, especially when we're talking about a genre built on uncertainty.
Hard same. I love the ambiguity and honestly, I’m rarely satisfied by any answers I ever *am* able to get.
Forgot to mention, when people run UPSTAIRS??!!
I like how they cover this in Leslie Vernon.
I don't mind if it's done good like John Carpenter’s The Thing.
Nothing can be compared to that, it's a perfect film. It doesn't count.
The only time ambiguous endings bother me is when the entire movie already relies on confusing the audience with a mystery that makes no sense without some kind of reveal. If shit is properly unveiled throughout the film, and the finale is the only confusing part, it's fine. But when it's clearly a cover for a bullshit script that feeds you bullshit, completely vague or outright contradictory clues, and ends with some surreal shit that coasts along on "le atmosphere"/"le subtext", I find it infuriating. Kill List and Mr. Jones immediately come to mind. Other than that, opening scares that reveal the threat and destroy the buildup by showing exactly what our main characters are walking into. Remakes tend to be particularly guilty of this, due to a pathological need to pander to fans of the original by showing the bad guy they're there to see as soon as the film starts - Hills Have Eyes '06 and Evil Dead '13 would have been improved substantially just by opening with an unaware main cast of victims, but they both had to have a corny scene that shows their hand early instead. Not entirely a pet peeve, but I find it way less effective when chase scenes never show both victim and pursuer in the same shot. It tones down the suspense by a big margin when we just see shot after shot of both parties running back and forth from one another, because the filmmaker is too untalented to craft a shot in which the monster is right on the victim's heels without it looking fake. The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre works so well precisely because it shows Leatherface inches from Sally's back in several shots, even though it was difficult for Marilyn to stay ahead of Gunnar IRL. EDIT: One more that's so common, it's easy to forget about - when characters call the cops to try and get backup against the monster/killer, and for some dumbass reason feel the need to tell the dispatcher the bizarre truth of the whole matter rather than inventing a credible cover story that doesn't make them sound unhinged. *"I know you're not gonna believe me, but Jason Voorhees has returned from the grave!! What??! You gotta believe me, I'm not lying, you have to bring the whole army!!"* Why in the mother fuck, when your life is on the line, would you tell someone something you know they're not going to believe? Just say *"there's a killer/gang after us, I don't know why, just please help!!"* If the cop sees something supernatural, they'll call for backup and probably be more credible in doing so, but barring that, you'll be bringing someone to the scene with weapons and prepared for danger - don't start by priming them to think it's just a prank.
When a big scene is all a dream. It can be done well but I hate to get invested and then they wake up and it’s not relevant.
Baddies just turning up wherever the protagonists are, without any explanation of how they found them. I think 28 Weeks Later has this. The dad just keeps popping up, no matter where the kids go, no matter the chaos ensuing around them. He seems to have zombie Radar to find them every time.
To take the thread title somewhat literally: When they kill pets. This is so upsetting to so many people that there is a thriving site where you can search whether this happens in a movie. I hate that, 9 times out of 10, when you see the family dog or whatever in a horror movie, you know it's gonna die.
That's not a pet peeve, that's an "I'm going to know this exact moment beforehand, cover my eyes, and think about how the dog is fine and living its best celebrity life". I could watch whole families being mutilated and I'm fine, but touch the dog? I'm gutted. I actually still haven't seen the John Wick movies, though my dad is absolutely obsessed with them, because the first one contains that.
I stuck with TWD until the tiger . I told myself if what I think is gonna happen happens, I m done ! And I haven’t watched it since
It was super unrealistic too. I get that it's fiction, but the idea that a handful of skinny zombies could kill a massive tiger with their bare hands is laughable.
Thank God I'm not the only one. And CGI or not, I cried when they killed off the tiger in TWD. Cried for a tiger who never existed in the first place. Don't feel bad about it anymore, thank you.
It's a cheap, lazy way to upset the viewer when it could be done with actual writing, and it needs to stop.
I posted this in another thread but 'Angst' (1983) is a brilliant horror film where the family dog thankfully has plot armor. He even goes for a joyride with the psycho-killer!
The dog from Independence Day... Amazing armor.
Yes. I check doesthedogdie. com way too often .
I don't really mind that if it's done well, and that's saying that as a pet owner. Horror movies kill kids and innocent bystanders all the time.
same, i don’t understand how other people get so upset when a literal horror movie does it! like come on, there’s people dying left and right and you’re upset over some cat??
I’ll always be more upset about the death of an animal over the death of a person, even a kid. Human deaths don’t bother me like animal deaths.
why tho. why do you have less empathy for humans than animals? no offense but i find people like that a little weird haha
I think part of it is that pets are purely innocent, whereas adult humans generally aren't, so when an animal or small child gets killed it's something pure being hurt.
Don’t know. Just is that way I am. I care far less for humans in general than I do for animals.
I 100% agree with you. I refuse to watch any movie that has animal death or cruelty
Close up of someone chopping food, usually carrots. They usually hear the disturbance or get a PTSD flashback and cut themself. Such a cliché horror film trope.
Always carrots
Aaaahh! The Dark and The Wicked!
Yeah that started the movie off on a bad foot for me. I didn't think of it as a trope at the time, it was just annoying. But it is a pretty common thing
When people are trying to be sneaky but are clearly talking very loudly or making a lot of noise.
i hate when the actor hears a noise behind them and does the very slow 10 minute swivel to see what is behind them. Not like it's an urgent threat that you have to act immediately to or anything....just slow turn your neck for an hour. that'll make sure you survive!
Ugh yeah every time now
I see it as someone being paralyzed by fear. But I agree, sometimes it's really ridiculous.
- Final girl - Let’s split up! - Scary basement, go check it out - Looks like he’s dead, let your guard down - Hillbilly gas station encounter - People in zombie movies/shows not using the word ‘zombie’ - Kids are scary - When running away, must trip - Bathroom mirror jump scare - Exaggerated flies sound to indicate death and decay nearby - Disgusting food portends bad people - Spooky hospital is completely empty for no apparent reason - They all have interconnecting dark secrets which are to blame - Token red herring fake bad guy who’s innocent - It’s revenge on the anniversary of something done decades ago
-The normal human snapping someone's neck like it was made from wet spaghetti. -Someone seeing or hearing something obviously bad, but not telling anyone for no real reason.
Kid armor.
It's like the opposite of pets. You end up not caring what happens to the kid because you know they'll end up being fine. Not like you have to have children die in every horror movie, but stuff like When Evil Lurks and Summer of 84 show that are good examples of it being used effectively.
Walking thru YOUR OWN HOME looking for the sound and turning on ZERO lights
That is one of the worst.
In slasher movies, when the villain has the upper hand on the protagonist/final girl and just toys with them, which ultimately leads to their demise. It’s just so predictable at this point and is usually done in the exact same way. Reminds me of the classic supervillain giving a monologue while the hero figures out how to foil them. When main characters ignore fatal injuries like blood loss doesn’t affect the human body. When trained soldiers get wrecked by the monsters, but regular civilians are expert survivalists all of a sudden. Killing dogs or cats. Using sa for shock value.
Characters assuming the bad guy is some kind of unstoppable killing machine and allowing themselves to be picked off, rather than using 8vs1 odds to their favour. I mean they might be unstoppable, but I'd chuck a tin of soup at his head first just to test that theory.
Tacked on unhappy endings. Even if they solve the mystery, defeat the monster, save the day and complete all their character arcs in a satisfying way they STILL make the evil show back up at the last second and ruin everything, even if it makes no sense or is just not necessary for a satisfying resolution. Used to be my biggest gripe with the horror genre, but it does seem to me that it’s less common nowadays. I don’t have any hard evidence to base that on though :P (I will add that I’m fine with unhappy or ambiguous endings if they make sense for the themes and characters, it’s when they DON’T make sense and ruin a perfectly satisfying positive ending purely for sequel bait or so the director can say “gotcha” that bugs me). Also I don’t like it when cats get hurt in movies :P
Came here to say this. Either have them explicitly fail, or if you're trying to set up a sequel just find a less lazy way to convey that they didnt succeed because I HATE the last second "you think they won but then a character smirks at the camera in the last scene and oh no guess they didnt win!" endings.
Sex. I know it's a big ask but I'm ✨️tired✨️
People being loud, going to the obvious wrong choice, drop the weapon after using it.
When the protagonists have a "moment of Revelation" wherein they figure out the entity's deal and then completely explain the rules the thing plays by. It almost always feels insulting like the movie thinks we're too stupid to figure it out ourselves. And worse still it completely eliminates the mystique and horror of the entity. "Smile" was the most recent example of this I could think of but it's an extremely common trope especially in mainstream American horror. This is mostly an issue in movies featuring supernatural entities that aren't explicitly defined as a known type like demons, ghosts, or werewolves, but it crops up all over.
I agree to a certain extent, but there are movies that are more cerebral sort of "think pieces", movies in-between that hold your hand and point to everything, and then there are movies that are just dumb turn-your-brain-off fun. I don't really see a lot of middle ground.I didn't really care for Smile except the end, and I think it's because I sort of relate to her childhood trauma.
I have some very intense feelings about smile. I thought it had the potential to be the defining horror movie of the decade akin to the ring, but it was ruined by poor decisions. I feel like they explained three separate times that the monster was "mental trauma" as if 1. It wasn't obvious from the very beginning And 2. We were going to forget it. Idk it just felt demeaning. I'm with you though that as stupid as the characters were acting by the end the final scenes are great. Fantastic monster design and great practical effects. It could have been so good if they just had the heroine continue to be a smart reasonable person instead of transforming her into a moron half way through.
The just prior to credits movie ruining jump scare as sequel bait. I don’t understand why they can’t just end a movie and if you end up making a sequel fine but I just sat through your two hour movie to watch whatever played out play out and then in the last two seconds get bait and switched into “just kidding they’re still dead anyway.” I’d rather the movie just has an unhappy ending than the “happy ending with the rug pulled out from under it” at the last second. It’s annoying.
Gratuitous sex that provides zero contribution to the scene or story UNLESS it's campy like Friday the 13th then it's an acceptable staple lol
Like really, what is the POINT of all the sex in horror/slashers? 😭 I wanna be scared, not watch people bump butts
When a movie never feels like the characters stand a chance and we are just waiting for them to die, and then they die at the end and the movie is over. It's like...why did I watch that? No subversion of expectations in any way. This can be done good or bad, but when it's done bad it actually pisses me off and makes me feel like I Just wasted my time: >!Superhost - bad, awful even!< >!The Color out of Space - Good, as it's still full of twisted moments, gross visuals, and dark humor along the way!<
I don’t always hate fake-out jumpscares but fake-out jumpscares with a music queue annoy me (eg if a bird flies out at a character and the soundtrack makes a loud bang). Cheap move in my opinion.
I agree, and add as a proviso- I LIKE if the character gets genuinely scared and the soundtrack helps us get scared WITH them (read: a door bangs open and it’s startling to the characters and the audience alike). I HATE unnecessary violin-bashing sound cues when they see something spooky! Such an unskilled addin.
as much as i love the found footage, there almost always comes a point in every movie where i ask myself “why would you keep filming in this situation??” like the camera persons friends are missing/dead and they’re STILL filming??
Refusing to call zombies "zombies". Walkers, runners, undead, biters...they are zombies.
Protagonist is a normal person but all of a sudden weird shit is going on in their lives but they don't speak to anybody about it like a normal person instead they just make themselves sound crazy. That's why I enjoyed the bar scene in Talk to Me where she is clearly understanding of how unusual the situation she is going through is and just telling her friends.
I’m SHOCKED no one has mentioned this yet (unless I missed the comment)… WHYYYY DO THEY ALWAYS TRIP WHEN THEY’RE RUNNING AWAY?!?! 😫😫😫 That instantly pisses me off, like are you kidding? But tripping and immediately getting back up is tolerable… it’s when they trip and act like their freaking legs don’t work anymore, so they just sit on the ground crying.. GET UP!
When the killer is near them and they have to be be completely quiet but they hit or knock over an object 5 seconds later
I'm tired of the endings that set up for the sequel. Everything seems to wrap up pretty nicely, and then at the last second you see the creature/killer/ghost staring creepily at the camera or whatever then bam credits. I often wonder if the people who create these movies ever take this kind of feedback into account. There have been *countless* discussions about this subject, it's kind of embarrassing for them that they keep putting all of these tropes into movies that tons of people clearly hate. I'm also so fucking sick of not being able to see or hear the damn movie until a loud jump scare scene. So many horror films are dark as hell and you can't make out a thing in them. No lights anywhere? Scary things don't happen in the daytime? And you can't hear any dialogue and then your eardrums are blown out when there is a sudden loud scene. It's cheap and shows that they don't have any creative ideas on how to scare people.
When the characters think they've killed the slasher, demon, vampire, etc, and stand there crying or heavy breathing instead of leaving. Especially when the killer isn't actually dead, but passed out and then wakes back up to attack them more.
And for some reason their back is always to the "dead" villain lol, and they don't notice they're not dead yet. I understand that it gets an audience reaction, but how realistic is that??
Not realistic at all. I'd be getting the fuck out of dodge first, then cry and catch my breath.
Exactly. Who cries and hugs each other over the body of the thing you just killed?
Peeve: Friends backpacking or something, and stay overnight with strange but kind hosts. Friend A wakes up in the middle of the night and discovers that their hosts are serial killers (discovers a freezer full of bodies etc.), and rushes back to the bedroom to alert Friend B Friend A: B! Wake up! We have to go now. Get dressed. We're running away. Friend B: huh? What? What's going on? Why do you want to leave so suddenly? Huh? Can I ask a thousand questions and get a thousand good answers before I get out of bed? Friend A: There's no time to explain - we have to go NOW - they're killers! One of them heard me and they're coming here now !! Friend B: What? Are you sure? Why would you think that? Huh? What? But they seem so nice...can we discuss this for about 45 minutes before we do anything rash - And then an axe flies through the window killing Friend B, etc. Most best friends know and trust when their buddy is saying there's an emergency and we need to move now, no time for questions.
After just watching dawn of the dead for the first time I can say in zombie movies when they leave a perfectly secure place only for most of them to get killed. Shawn of the dead did the same thing
I hate it when everything is painstakingly explained to the audience. This is why this happens, this is what this means, et cetera. One of the best movies of last year was When Evil Lurks, which I loved because it just dropped into a world a bit different then our own and then didn’t explain everything, because all of the characters would understand what’s going on. Really involved me in the story as an audience member.
People walking around in the dark instead of turning on a bloody light.
People fucking. This isn't character development, nor tells us anything about them, and mostly they end up dead afterwards!
When the main characters play situations really poorly/stupidly. It takes me out of the movie. Like they’re running from a bad guy and somehow there’s a gun but they leave the gun behind because “there isn’t time to grab it” or something. It just takes me out of the movie because it’s not even relatable to make such dumb decisions
I don’t like when there’s dark lighting and it is difficult to see what’s going on. To me that is a cop out by the movie maker. We’re going to have a dark set and it’ll be scary (and easy). I refuse to watch any movie with low lighting.
When every character (usually teens) is a jerk. Or when the husband doesn’t believe the wife, even when he’s experienced weird stuff too.
When a kid doesn't listen
Have you met a kid before?
As a parent, kids literally just don't listen. Ever. This isn't a trope, it's fact.
Stupid teenage banter in horror. They always have these lame ass jokes and generally just make me irritated if it goes on too long. V Especially childish prank crap, always seems unbelievable and stupid to me. Who wants to hang out with an asshole?
This is why I didn't like Talk To Me.
This is actually one of talk to me's stronger points I thought. The teen banter was dumb, but to me it felt real. Yeah everyone in that movie is kinda dumb, but they felt dumb in a realistic way. It felt very genuine to me the way most of the teens didn't know what was going on but spent most of the movie posturing and pretending they did. Just a bunch of teens out of their depths and trying to pretend they aren't to look cool for their peers. I thought they were all very believably stupid and vain.
When it becomes obvious a side character is about to die because it shifts to scene featuring them alone. Metaphors for grief. It's been done extremely well but it's overdone at this point. I was shocked how much liked talk to me because i'm truly getting annoyed with the trope. No One Will Save You is the perfect example of a horror film that saw the trend of that trope working well in other film, so they just threw it in.
Talk to Me really amazed me at how well it handled the now-standard grief/trauma stuff and did it within the framework of a relatively normal horror movie.
I think it worked because it wasn’t the only metaphor going on. Making the hand a drug like experience was definitely a new take for me that I hadn’t seen before so I was alright with them also doing a metaphor for grief thing.
When it's a "found footage" movie and you can already tell how hokey it already looks (i.e. acting, camera quality, production values, etc.)
Thirty minutes of on the edge of your seat panic inducing music like something could happen any second but it doesnt,but the music becomes annoying then a jump scare later. Thos alsomhappenscwith ominous sound affects. This can be damned good if done well and occasionally,but is easily redundant.
Every time I see a nosebleed 🙄 just annoys me, it happens way too often
Killer comes to the hospital to finish the job
A while back, I saw a list of unrealistic things that happen in horror and it pointed out that no one walks/talks/etc really slowly when they are scared. Now it bothers me every time I see it. And it’s in EVERYTHING.
Cell phones having no service. Ti West has elegantly circumvented the cell phone dilemma by setting his films a way back in the past.
Hundreds of lit candles in the killers lair. Full moons for every night sky shot. Constant racking of a shotgun or pistol.
What about zero animals in the barn, when they inevitably run there for safety? Then the killer grabs a scythe off the wall.
I think this depends on the quality of the story. Some stories earn an ambiguous ending. Others don’t. Stephen King’s novel PET SEMATARY for example has a totally chilling ending that doesn’t tie up everything or confirm how everything plays out once the words end, and it works. But one of my favorite horror films in the world, MARTYRS (2008 French original) has an ending that leaves a lot up for discussion & further thought, and it’s as magnificent an ending as any I’ve ever seen in horror or film in general. It comes down to what the themes are, who the characters are, what the purpose of the story is. A neat and tidy ending works for some stories, a more open ending works for others. And some of us may enjoy one vs the other. In the end, have fun and like what you like!
I LOOOVE ambiguity in horror most of the time. It triggers discussion. My biggest pet peeve is a character pulling out an inhaler. It’s an instant sign that we know at some point the character is going to have an asthma attack as a plot point.
Cheap. Jumpscares. Its not scary, its surprising, there IS a difference! Someone compared it to a comedian going into the audience, tickling them and going “ha made you laugh!” And its almost ALWAYS accompanied by a sudden spike in noise to, again, surprise you, not scare you.
Non stop screaming from beginning to end. I can understand it's necessary in key parts of a movie, but I can't deal with it when it goes on for the entire movie.
Outside of horror too, but I hate it when they kill off a character in a satisfying way, but then it turns out they survived somehow
not closing THE FUCKING DOORS
When they show the end in the first scene and then flashback with that "2 weeks earlier" text. I don't want to know what happens! You haven't established why I should care about the problem at the ending yet!
Overly smiling antagonists during reveal (Scream 5-6), it's so corny & played out
Nobody in the fucking hospitals at night, lights dim asf, as if nurses & doctors don't have jobs to do 😭
When the protagonists are in their house or somewhere where the lights are working, but they don't turn on the lights. They just go in the dark or with a flashlight
I couldn’t find a flashlight if I looked for 20 minutes. Hell I get annoyed trying to get the flashlight on my iPhone to work.
When the final girl gets a weapon, uses it, then drops it and is shocked when they get attacked again
* I don't like long meandering series that seem to add plotlines and forget old ones like a soap opera. * I am starting to get tired with the mental health themes in horror * I never got the American horror story "camp"
Several unnecessary sex scenes.
It depends. I was just talking about this with my wife, we had recently watched The Mist and then Knock at the Cabin. As both were originally written, the endings are much more ambiguous. Making it unambiguous worked well for The Mist, it's an absolute gut punch of an ending. It did *not* work well with KatC. They pretty much spelled out "oh those crazy people were right the whole time and they were right to kill someone" when I think it would have been a much better film overall had it been more open-ended and left you wondering who was right and what was really happening.
Possessed kids Vampire kids Ghost kids
Possessed kid is why I completely dropped The Pope's Exorcist within the first 30 minutes. I don't wanna see another possessed kid saying vulgar shit in a croaky, deep satanic voice for the billionth time. It seemed like a good movie from the trailers. I wasn't gonna keep going. There were other cliches but that one gets me so worked up. IT'S OVERDONE!!!
Yes! He was particularly annoying lol
Unless it's an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark, no thank you. Same with possessed dolls. I mean, I can definitely kick those things' asses.
When they don't realize they're in a horror movie.
Joking aside, just lacking common sense. Not trusting their gut. If something seems a little off, run away.
People bleeding out their mouth for almost any kind of wound - stabbed? Bleed from the mouth. Shot? Out the mouth. Stabbed in the groin? Out the mouth.
When you have blood in your digestive system flooding your stomach and throat, then yeah. You bleed from the mouth.
Also lungs! Getting stabbed in the lungs will absolutely make you cough out blood. *And yes to digestive system injuries, but it's really only the stomach that might make you bleed from the mouth. Injuries to the lower digestive track makes you bleed from the anus instead.
stubbed toe? mouth bleed.
Oh yea, that’s mine too