It’s a little known fact that my favorite month is October. It partly has to do with that transition in the atmosphere. Everything changes – that drop in temperature, that constant scent of something burning and the fact that every coffee shop in existence is selling pumpkin-flavored everything. It’s also the month where everyone starts preparing for Halloween – and what better way to get yourself in the mood for October 31st than by popping a scary movie into your DVD player?
AMC officially launched their annual Fear Fest, a TV event that takes place from October 16 until Halloween night itself. They kicked things off with the series premiere of The Walking Dead, and are continuing to air scary movies from every era – from the classic (the Halloween series) to the slightly ludicrous (Dracula 2000, anyone?) to the just plain hilarious (Slither is without question my favorite example of this, having found a way to bridge horror and humor in a way that has no equal, as far as I’m concerned).
The horror movie is its own unique genre. It balances the scary with the clever, the suspense with the violence. Unlike gore films, which seem to try to see how gratuitous and disgusting they can be while still managing to attain a rating fit for theatre-goers, the horror movie is designed more towards getting your heart racing than your stomach turning.
So, in honor of the genre itself, we’re going to take a look at the classic rules that most horror movies seem to follow these days, courtesy of the Scream trilogy. The thing that makes this series of films different, however, is that the characters within them are fully aware of horror movie conventions and the clichés that are often portrayed in an on-going series of films – and yet many of them often fall victim to the very scenario they have been warned about only a few scenes prior:
You can never have sex. You can never drink or do drugs. “It’s a ‘sin factor’.”
In other words: virgins always survive. Ironically, the exception to this rule does occur in the first Scream movie, wherein our heroine, Sydney Prescott, manages to survive despite having slept with her long-term boyfriend during the course of the film. In another example of this, the original Halloween series features the innocent and intimately unavailable Laurie Strode, a character who exemplifies the trope of the “final girl,” or the person who always confronts the killer last. However, she is guilty of the second half of the rule in that she enjoys a joint with one of her friends. While these two “final girls” seem to be immune to this particular rule, their friends (and secondary characters) are not so fortunate, and several fall victim to the killers in these films. Other films guilty of this: Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, My Bloody Valentine.
Never, ever, EVER, under any circumstances say “I’ll be right back,” ’cause you won’t be back.
It’s never a smart idea to announce you’re leaving the room, the campsite, the haunted house or any place where you’ll be separated from the rest of the group. At this point, you’re just asking to get stabbed, strangled or otherwise mutilated. In Scream, no sooner has resident horror film expert Randy just declared this rule than Stu announces he’s leaving the room to grab some more beer, only to depart with a taunting “I’ll be right back!” much to everyone else’s amusement. He does wind up on the receiving end of a knife, but by a much different means than the audience anticipates. Other films that follow this rule include The Evil Dead and Sorority Row.
In a sequel, the body count is always bigger.
In order to reel in your audience, you’ve got to produce a bigger and better film in terms of body count. More people have to die, and most of the time, these people are going to be characters you either genuinely care for or didn’t expect to be offed in any sense. For example, the first film in the Halloween series only carries five deaths, while its sequel, Halloween II, produces nine and Halloween III has thirteen particularly unlucky victims – and as the films go on, the number of characters who die, both on-screen and off, only continues to rise. Scream has seven in its first film, ten in its second and ten in its third – but if you count the number of times the killer technically “dies” in Scream 3, you could notch that up to eleven. Which brings us to our next rule!
If you want your films to become a successful franchise, never, ever, under any circumstances assume the killer is dead.
Or, in other words, the art of the double tap, no better epitomized than in 2009′s Zombieland, wherein Columbus (played by Jesse Eisenberg), outlines a series of rules of his own – one of which includes the rule that you should always deliver a second (and truly fatal) blow to the killer to ensure they’re dead – and for real this time – otherwise you’re guaranteeing that they’re going to come back for more, and you’ll probably be the first on their list, and they’re never gonna give you up. Oh, no, wait, I’m getting carried away here, and you didn’t come all this way to be Rick-rolled. Other movies in violation: Friday the 13th, Halloween, Candyman.
Anyone, including the main character, can die.
The Anyone Can Die rule is a main staple of any horror film. It’s mostly used as a shock factor, designed to deliver a wake-up call to the audience that anyone can bite it at any time, and the more the movie designates a character with out-of-this-world likeability, the more likely they are to get a knife in the gut. One of the first horror films to do this (and do it well) was Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho, which killed off its seemingly untouchable heroine Marion Crane within the first thirty minutes and made it plain that the situation was going to be a lot more dangerous than originally advertised. In The Grudge, a remake series of the original Japanese film Ju-on, no one is safe from Kayako’s wrathful curse, not even Karen (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar). Other films known for this rule: the Final Destination series (no, seriously, everyone dies in those movies), and, really, do we even need to get into Saw? That one’s pretty much a no brainer.
Images copyright of Dimension Films and Paramount Pictures.
