Every horror movie. Ever.

I went to see the woman in black the other day, alone. How brave am I? but great movie, like really really good. Almost peed my pant that’s how good it was. But when I was watching the movie there was one part that really, really bugged me. 

Now I’m not going to say spoiler alert because this happens in every single horror movie. Ever. So Daniel Radcliffe is sitting in this house, and he knows for a fact that he is alone. The woman who owned this house is dead, she’s been dead for like 20 years. There’s nobody living in the house, it’s just him. So he’s sitting there in the study doing some work and he hears this noise coming from upstairs. It’s sort of this BA BOOM. CREAAAAK. BA BOOM. CREEEAAAK.

It definitely sounds like there’s somebody upstairs. Now if that was me, and I was downstairs in my house and I heard that noise coming from upstairs, I would be out my door like a shot. I would be like a cartoon, there would be a dust cloud of where I used to be because I moved that quickly. I’d be calling the police, I’d be calling family members to get them to come and help me. There’s no way I would hang around to find out what it was.

But that’s not what happens is it? The character is never sensible enough to say “I can hear a noise upstairs. I’m just going to leave.” In every horror movie when that situation occurs, they always do one of two things.

First, they’ll call out ‘Hello?’ as if the murderer, or serial killer, or ghost or whatever the movie’s about is going to shout back; “oh sorry love I was up here behind your curtains. I was just going to murder you, but no rush, come up when you’re ready, it’s fine.”

If you know that you’re alone, why do you expect anybody to shout back at you in the first place? And if there is somebody upstairs waiting to kill you, they’re not going to shout back!

The second thing that they do, is they go and find out what it is! WHY? Why would you go? If you hear a scary noise you don’t go and find the source of it! You leave!

At least give the stupid characters a sensible friend who says, “I don’t think that we should go find out what that noise is.” Because then it gives the movie some credibility and you could argue that at least someone was in favor of not being stupid.