My Favorite and Least Favorite Horror Tropes
Common Elements That I Love/Hate
Like all genres, horror has its share of tropes — common elements or plot devices that appear repeatedly. There’s something innately appealing about tropes. Why else would they be used continuously for decades? Here are my favorite and least favorite horror tropes.
Tropes aren’t inherently good or bad. They have enduring value when they’re utilized in fresh, innovative ways. When they’re used in a stale and unoriginal manner, they become hackneyed and can turn into cliches.
My Favorite Horror Tropes
The Doomsayer
There are few elements more entertaining than a great doomsayer character. These downtrodden folks are usually dismissed as crazy or stupid, but they are often the only people who understand the truth about what’s happening.
My favorite doomsday character is Crazy Ralph from Friday the 13th. Unfortunately, Ralph gets killed by Jason in the second movie. He got a raw deal. It would have been fun to see Ralph make it deep into the series, each time warning the latest crop of dumb teenagers that they’re all doomed!
The Creepy Mirror
When you glance at a mirror, you’re obviously expecting to see your reflection looking back at you. When you move, it moves. But what if it doesn’t? Or what if you see a shadowy figure lurking behind your reflection?
Mirror reflections that take on a life of their own are innately creepy because they break a rule of logic that we all take for granted. Examples of movies that use this horror trope effectively are Us, Candyman, and the Paranormal Activity series.
The Final Girl
Every great horror villain needs a worthy protagonist to battle. The final girl (and rare final guy) is mainly associated with the slasher subgenre. It’s fascinating to trace this trope’s history from the shy “pure” girls of the ’70s and ’80s to the more modern ladies of today’s movies.
Laura in Halloween, Nancy (and don’t forget Alice!) in Nightmare on Elm Street, Sidney in Scream, and Sienna in Terrifier are some of the most famous and best final girls.
My Least Favorite Horror Tropes
The Haunted House
Haunted houses are a fine horror setting, but they’ve been done to death. Most of these stories use the same hoary cliches and stock characters, like the skeptic, the psychic, the creepy little girl, etc.
Not to mention the stale and racist “house built on top of an Indian burial ground” plot point used by Poltergeist and others. Haunted houses have been done a million times, and (with rare exceptions) they’re just not that scary anymore.
Bad Weather
This one is just lazy. If a filmmaker or novelist has to rely on bad weather to drum up scares, they’re in serious trouble. Many of the Friday the 13th movies, especially the early installments, use this trope repeatedly.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy many of the Friday films. But it’s remarkable how the idyllic summer weather suddenly turns stormy whenever Jason’s rampage is about to climax. Does rain and thunder somehow make Jason scarier? An unstoppable monster like him should be formidable in any environment.
The introduction of thunder, lightning, and/or heavy rain alerts us that something ominous is likely about to happen. The element of surprise is taken away. It’s much more shocking if the villain attacks during, say, a bright and sunny morning.
Jump Scares
I’ve complained about jump scares numerous times before. They’re a lazy device used as a false substitute for genuine suspense. One or two jump scares are tolerable, but they are extremely annoying when used repeatedly throughout a movie.
The absolute bottom of the barrel jump scare is the “protagonist jumps with fright when someone puts a hand on her shoulder” cliché. Any movie that features this (Night Shift, for example) is pretty much guaranteed to get a negative review from me.
