I have a love/hate relationship with clichés in horror movies.  For one, I find poorly written, cliché-ridden films the easiest to review because I’m a sarcastic asshole and part of me lives to mock things.  But when I’m taking the genre seriously, searching for that ever-elusive genuine scare, clichés are a disappointing sign of lazy screenwriting and studios’ desire to satiate audiences who are either too dumb to know any better or sadly just don’t care.

You’re all familiar with them and probably roll your eyes every time you see a demonic child doing a spider-walk towards our protagonist or a suddenly irresponsive cell phone displaying the “no signal” message during a crucial moment.

So, I’ve taken it upon myself to start a little project to point out the various clichés we love and loathe.  Rather than a long, wordy blog post, I’ve chosen to briefly introduce each cliché (hopefully at the rate of one per week, but we’ll see) and create a compilation video showcasing its awesomeness/douche chilliness.  This week’s inaugural cliché is…

The False Alarm – Our protagonist is home alone.  They’re planning a quiet night of studying in their bedroom before bed but an odd noise disturbs them from their plan.  Of course, they leave the safety of their bedroom to investigate (another cliché, itself).  The camera, positioned just above their shoulder, follows them as they head toward the source of the noise – a closet, perhaps.  The noise occurs again.  Our protagonist hastily flings open the door – CUE SHRIEKING SOUND EFFECT – to reveal….a cat!  They scream and then scold the animal for freaking them out.

There are dozens of instances of the false alarm – a sudden shoulder grab, a character pretending to be dead, etc.  This overused device is meant to create tension and then reveal it to be a ploy so that when the real kill or attack happens, you won’t be ready for it.  It never really works, yet it just won’t die.  Let’s take a look.