Published on: 14 Mar 22:57

Chris asks

I WANT A TRUE HORROR MOVIE WHERE ALL THE CHARACTERS ARE INTELLIGENT AND DO ALL THE RIGHT THINGS AND TAKE ALL THE PROPER PRECAUTIONS BUT STILL WIND UP GETTING KILLED BY THE ANTAGONIST

NOTHING IS SCARIER THAN DOING EVERYTHING YOU CAN IN VAIN AND STARING IN THE FACE OF FUTILITY

(plus I would like not to yell at the characters for being dumb for once)

My answer

That was the original premise for Predator, wasn’t it? I recall watching a documentary years ago where Arnold Schwarzenegger had said something like that directly. Like, we all know the tropes of your classic hilarious horror movies: a group of teens in a log cabin, zombies pour in through the walls, the movie makers are genuinely trying to create a tight, gripping atmosphere of horror and dread and death, but … the characters are all such morons that the audience loses all tension, they scoff at the screen and say “oh dear god, obviously you’ll all die horribly if you’re that stupid! What a dumb movie!”

So the idea behind Predator was that, this time, the protagonists aren’t a random splat of teen moron, no, this time they’re hyper-elite special forces. Hardcore soldiers! The first third of the movie barely features or even mentions the Predator itself: instead it covers in graphic detail this astoundingly competent merc team, doing what they do best, in vast amounts, specifically to make the audience think “oh wow, these people are amazing! They’d kick anyone’s ass! God, I’d hate to go up against them!”

And it’s all means to an end. The whole point of all of that is so that, when our Predator finally turns up, even THEY freak out … and our glorious-bastard villain feels so much more terrifying and dreadful by comparison. The audience are thinking “holy crap, even these invincible unbeatable soldiers are scared of this thing! It’s unstoppable! I’m in for one hell of a ride!”

Then again, Predator may not be the perfect example here. There’s nothing like our allegedly unshakeable special-forces team panic-spraying a million billion bullets into random jungle for minute after minute and blowing through precious ammo to make the audience think “… oookay these chumps may not be so smart.”

Source: https://crabsarepeople.quora.com/Can-you-share-som...