Horror movie formulas have become about as predictable as breakfast cereals: the picture on the box may change, but the contents are divided into sub-categories of sweet/crunchy/gooey or a combination. With horror, the B movie blender is switched to puree and here’s what you get.
Terrified female fleeing a slasher, demon, dinosaur, abusive husband through the woods…………. will ALWAYS fall.
And then, after three times looking over her shoulder to confirm that she has lost her pursuer …… the bad guy suddenly pops up right in front of her.
Only good looking teens/young people crash their car/get lost in the woods, cave, tunnel/ or get stranded on a borrowed cabin cruiser.
The ugly ones are always left sitting at home communicating with similar ugly teens/young people via cell phone or computer.
Despite chants from the movie audience, and metaphorical signs posted all over the place in the creepy old house, some plucky teen/young person will ALWAYS go alone either down into the basement or up into the attic (carrying that cranky Hollywood flashlight) while seeming to wear a glow-in-the-dark “Kill Me” sign taped to their back.
Flat tires only occur on lonely roads which lack cell phone service but harbor veritable flocks of gap-toothed hillbillies searching for young blondie women to use as breeding stock. (Look for the local sheriff to be in cahoots with these pick-up driving rednecks)
Drivers who look away from the windshield for more than two seconds are punished by having a hitchhiker, bloody child or cow suddenly appear in the road ten feet ahead of them, causing a car crash that absolutely totals the car, but leaves the teen/young people inside with only a few scraped elbows so that they are able to walk to that abandoned creepy old house in the woods ………..
Couples’ car breaks down after sundown in the middle of nowhere:
the guy always tells the girl “wait here” while he trots off into the woods to see if he can’t find someone to slit his throat. Within a few minutes, the female instinctively abandons the safety of the locked car to go crashing into the briars and brambles to find out why she can’t get her own throat slashed as well. The she gets pursued by the killer and runs into the body of her husband/boyfriend hanging upside down (eyes staring vacantly). Rest assured, she will find a hollowed out stump to hide in, only to be betrayed by her own warbling pie hole, which simply cannot be kept from emitting sobs and whimpers no matter how many hands she clamps over it.