How to survive a horror movie

So, you’re in a horror movie?
Okay, don’t panic. The chances of survival are pretty slim but there are tried and tested methods you can use to cut the odds in your favour. I have spent the last 30 years doing a high-level anthropological survey of the tropes, plot devices, and character arcs of horror movies. There is a formula for survival, so make sure your phone is fully charged, carry a weapon, and stay the hell out of the woods as I take you through the revised rules for surviving a horror movie.

1. Avoid that rich prick.

If there is a member of your friendship group who no one likes but you all put up with them because they (or their parents) are filthy rich, but are an insufferable, feckless bell end; DON’T GO TO ANY EVENT THEY HOST. This person is dead by the end of the first reel and their selfishness and snivelling self-serving behaviour will damn them and their guests. Don’t spend any amount of time with a person who you know is an awful, avaricious, sniveling little worm, who will die horribly and probably take you with them. No massive out-of-the-way holiday home is epic enough for you to risk getting your liver pierced by a big lad in a mask, stick with your homies and hang out in your best friend’s mom’s basement eating pop tarts instead.

2. Don’t investigate noises

You’re home alone, maybe reading your favourite horror blog, just chilling when you hear a weird noise elsewhere in the house. For the love of Gygax, don’t investigate! If you hear nails scraping on the walls, or something like wet washing being thrown onto a surface, or–worse–your name being whispered creepily in the shadows if you investigate it any further it’s going to end poorly for you, as in you will be listed in the credits as dumb-ass dead guy #2. You’ll go and check, your cat will startle you and then, just when you think you are safe, you will get a big ass knife plunged into somewhere sensitive. Curiosity killed the cat, except the fracking cat will be fine. You’re the one that will end up in a body bag.

3. Turn around and start swinging.

Okay, you ignored the last rule, or were caught short and had to venture off into the house/abandoned fairground/woods/slaughterhouse alone. First, have a weapon; something with a bit of heft, like a cricket bat. Don’t rely on a gun unless you are Jason Borne. In a horror movie, a novice with a gun has the survival odds of a jellyfish in a blast furnace. You’re stalking around looking for the masked killer, or monster, or fracking SpongeBob or whatever; if you ever want to know where it is, it’s behind you! If you feel the hair on the back of your neck rise up, don’t hesitate to turn around and start swinging, hard as you can. Lash out until you feel a crunch. Keep going until the fella in a mask is a broken heap – then keep going!

4. NEVER split up.

Do you like your friends? Do you like being alive? Good, then what you need to do is combine these passions. Don’t ever send your friend off alone. Go everywhere as a group (and I do mean everywhere). If you have to pee, just get them to face the other direction. Want to slip away for a little nookie? TOUGH! (More on that later.) Just think of porridge or something until the urge passes. If some ass hat says you should split up to complete a search quicker, point out you won’t cover more ground if you split up. You will however be spread over a wider area when the bad guy eviscerates you into festive confetti. For the 10 or 15 minutes extra it takes to do everything as a group, it is well worth staying with your peeps come hell or high water.

5. Run OUT not UP!

The inevitable has happened and a big sod with a mask, knife, and murder boner has decided to shed daylight on bits of your anatomy that you would rather they didn’t. What now? RUN that’s what. But for the love of your soft gooey internal organs, run OUT not up. Get to the door, open it and don’t stop until you reach Hawaii. DO NOT RUN UPSTAIRS! There are a finite number of floors in your house, and eventually, you will run out of stairs and realize the big sod with the kitchenware is between you and your next breath.

6. Books are for nerds and daylight.

A few things to cover on this one. First of all, if you read a book that tries to read you back, put it down. If you read a book and you start hearing creepy whispering, especially in Latin, put the damn book down. Wired ‘leather’ covering? In the bin it goes. And, whatever you do, no matter if an actual army of the undead is knocking your door down, DON’T READ ALOUD in a language you don’t understand. Treat every sentence as if it said, ‘Please bugger me with a chainsaw and possess my worthless corpse.’ As a rule of thumb if the book is dusty’, like ‘untouched by human hands for strange eons’ dusty, maybe just watch a rerun of Futurama instead?

7. Learn to Love Automobile Maintenance.

Don’t be that guy, the one who runs helter-skelter to their car, drops their keys (because of course they do.) and you pick them up. You somehow get into the car and slam the door shut on the big son of a bitch with a grudge and your car won’t start. Your starter chokes a few times, gives a pathetic cough, and dies… then so do you. If you enjoy having blood in your veins, always make sure your car is in good working order. It doesn’t matter if you’re driving a 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale, a 1970 Dodge Polara, or a 1984 Jeep Cherokee, whatever your wheels are, make sure she is fully gassed, the battery works and she is good to go at a moment’s notice.

You have just moved into the house of your dreams, and would you believe it, it’s haunted. One moment you are unpacking your knick-knacks and the next the pictures are spinning, and a ghostly hand is reaching out of a badly tuned telly. Time to leave! You hear a demonic voice croaking your name, asking for your firstborn? Get the hell out of Dodge. I don’t care if you end up in a hotel room for the night or even under a fracking bridge, have you ever heard of a haunted bridge? No! if shit starts getting spooky, pack up your family into your (perfectly functional) car and burn rubber. Are you encountering ghosts in an abandoned hotel bar? Load up the wife and kids and get your ass on a snowmobile. There’s no need for Scatman Crothers to get hurt, just LEAVE!

9. Don’t have sex. No one is that cute!

This one is fundamental. Ever since little Jason Voorhees drowned at Camp Crystal Lake; horny teens have been dropping like flies. Pre-marital sex is the leading cause of death in slutty sorority girls and meathead jocks in slasher movies. Unless your director is going for a progressive ‘sex-positive’ take on the genre, keep your goddamn pants on! For the love of Wes Craven, hop in a cold shower (with a buddy keeping an eye out). Your ‘bad boy’ boyfriend climbed up to sneak into your room? Mace the fool!! because 1) He is obviously the killer and 2) even without the context of a masked killer, that is just damn creepy. The same goes for guys. No offense my peeps but if you are a solid 3-4 and a girl who is an 8-9 invites you over for ‘thinly veiled reference for sex’, you may as well save the masked monolith a job and jump in a wood chipper yourself.

So, you have survived to the last reel. Wounded, and ragged, you face off against your tormentor for the final showdown; you strike and knock them down. DON’T look away. DON’T assume they must be dead, and keep hitting them until what remains is a fine red paste. They will always try and come back, no matter if it’s a human psycho, a personification of small-town malice or a zombie sent to rid the world of horny teens, it’s not dead until it’s the consistency of ground beef. Even then, I’d set fire to whatever is left. Feed the body into a car crusher if you must, but whatever else you do make sure the remains resemble a poorly made stake tartare rather than a person. This is just in case some genius decides to dig up the son of a bitch and the remains get struck with lightning.

Here’s the thing, if you are in a horror movie, your director is probably the kind of dick that would love to put in some footage of you all nice and cozy snuggled up in a blanket watching a cheesy black and white monster movie snacking on popcorn.  Meanwhile, in the background, the killer lurks trying to work out how to redecorate his man cave with your favourite body parts. If, against all advice, you find yourself alone, watch family guy, robot chicken, or my little pony ANYTHING other than a pre-technicolour horror flick. One important caveat here my guys, don’t be that guy to point out the well-worn tropes while actually watching a horror film if you think you are in one, all your doing is making your own eventual death a punchline (although writing an article about it is sexy and cool and wonderful)

Do you want to go to an epic house party on the anniversary of ‘The Grate Frat-boy slaughter fest?’ The correct answer is NO! For heaven’s sake stop and think, if you have a masked killer out there stalking people and killing them, don’t be in a place where a lot of drunk and stoned idiots congregate. Heard the quiet girl is going to get pranked at prom? Best skip it. There will be other parties. (For you at least.) A bunch of your bros getting high and playing with an Ouija board at a keg party? Hang out with the chess nerds instead. Believe me, you’re better off geek than Greek on this one. Afraid you might be missing out on a little loving? First of all, don’t forget rule #9, secondly, you will be comforting their girlfriend at their funeral (assuming there is enough left to bury). Nothing good ever comes of large teenage social gatherings during a masked killer’s murder spree. Pop a couple of caffeine pills and stay at home.

13. Don’t say “cliché dialogue here.”

After the third or fourth body has stacked up and there is now no doubt in your mind that you’re in a horror film, do not make the mistake of assigning yourself a role. If you aim for ‘Final boy/girl’ you will end up as ‘ironic meta commentator bisected with a hedge trimmer.’ By this stage of the game, you have stayed one step ahead, but don’t get cocky. As the late, great Randy Meeks said “Never, ever, ever, under any circumstances say, ‘I’ll be right back’ because you won’t be back.” And I would add to his sage counsel by saying also, never say “You’re just imagining things.” Or any derivative of it. It’s most certainly not just the wind, and, when a friend all bloody and dirty and scared starts to talk about the trees coming to life, don’t tell them they are talking crazy, grab a god-damn chain saw and make like Ken Kaiser. Also, in the final face-off, when it’s just you and a killing machine with Maskaphilia, bite your tongue and DON’T tell him to “Eat this” or to “burn in hell”. It never ends well when these words are uttered. At best, you will take him with you, and since the goal is to survive, keep your mouth shut and get killing.

Kurt Vonnegut in Welcome to the Monkey House wrote “A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.” This is a far more eloquent way of saying “When shit be crazy, crazy shit be sane.” If a wild-looking man who looks as if he has never heard of the concept of a comb runs towards you yelling “He comes at night! Watch the mirrors!!” take fracking notes. If you’re just hanging with your peeps at a dive bar in the middle of nowhere and a wild-looking stranger runs up to you with a tinfoil hat on, missing their shoes, and ranting and raving about aliens who steal his teeth at night, buy him a beer. Ask if he knows how to beat them. In almost every slasher, our heroes are practically told outright at the start that they will die if they go to the cabin/party/abandoned clown-slaughterhouse-asylum, Every single time the heroes blow them off, and then dies. Don’t be a dick to the loony, they may be the only ones who know where the slasher’s heart is hidden or that the flesh-eating alien is deathly allergic to bud light, or whatever.

Ask yourself this. Have you ever found yourself speaking about a person you know and said something like “Oh yeah, they’re great, always pretending to be a maniac with an axe or to have been mortally wounded; it’s such a hoot.” No one has ever, even once, said they enjoy the company of someone who is always pranking them. Besides the fact that pranksters are–invariably–Douch bags if you have faked your own death two or three times and got everyone all worked up, when you DO eventually get stabbed or with your throat split, none of your friends will take it seriously and you will die. Frantically to remember the sign language for ‘No really this time!’ Basically, if you are always pulling pranks not only will you be amongst the first to die, but not only will you thoroughly deserve it, but your death scene may as well get played out with a laugh track.

16. Leave clowns the hell alone!

Clowns are, mostly, just chronically depressed performers who are perpetually disguised and could be the human avatar of an extragalactic being of pure madness that likes to scare children, so they taste better as a little snack. No good situation has ever occurred that starts with the phrase: “We were almost completely defeated and then, thank god, a clown showed up.” If you give one of these grease-paint motherfuckers an inch they will take that inch, stretch it out and shiv you with it in the ribs until you drown in your own blood. In the very very best-case scenario you will be dealing with something like Sid Haig’s wonderfully off-putting and effortlessly sinister ‘Captain Spalding’, in the worst case you have Pennywise to deal with and all of the madness and headaches that entails. Do yourself a favor, if you see some harlequin-looking jackanape motherfracker with a fake smile plaster over their mouth, run, run your arse off. (Yes, I am Coulrophobic, how did you guess?)  

As soon as you know you’re caught in a horror movie, you need to start setting some hard boundaries. One of these is that you need to become very, very choosy over who you spend your time with. That cute but shy girl who wears an inverted pentagram and wants to hang out and eat lunch together? Yeah, she’s 100% an unstable witch, who is looking for a human sacrifice. That new kid who doesn’t talk very much but is built like a brick shit house? He’s probably got a collection of ashtrays made from human skulls. Even if a random new person isn’t the human personification of evil, they may well end up getting you killed anyway because of their drama. The chances are that a new person just appearing and a masked killer making novelty knife racks out of your peer group are connected, that might be the killers long lost niece or maybe the soul survivor of their last massacre, whatever it is, you don’t need that drama. Wait until the masked sod is dead, then make friends.

As soon as you hear of a Videotape that kills you, doing the rounds at your school, or the anniversary of the Rosh Hashanah massacre is coming up and suddenly Chad isn’t around anymore. (Sorry Chad, you’re dead mate.) You need to have a go bag ready. You want a cheap pay-as-you-go phone with a universal charger, spare keys to your vehicle, a heavy melee weapon – as I have said I am very partial to a cricket bat for most ass-kicking purposes – money and a change of clothes (jeans or sweats are ideal) also any medication you need and a spare pair of glasses. When the shit hits the fan, grab your go bag at the end of the first act, and don’t stop to you hit the post-credit sequence (which if we have done it right will be you drinking a beer in Mexico working on your tan as the sole survivor due to your ability to recognize patterns.) Even if you don’t make it out of the area it is a good idea to have everything that you need right there, that way, if you start hyperventilating you won’t die of an asthma attack because you forgot to refill your prescription.

19. Watch the news like a hawk.

This is particularly important if you are at the start and trying to piece things together. For example, two of the kids who go to your school died in their sleep. That seems like the kind of thing that might be important. How about the pile-up you narrowly escaped, are other people who are supposed to have died there showing up killed in outlandish, gnarly, and (frankly) cool-as-hell ways? Yeah, you definitely need to know about that. It’s not even the super specific stuff. Let’s say there is an alert about an escaped mental patient, and the second you realize you’re in a horror movie, everything is a clue, weird lights in the sky? Are campers going missing? You need to track stuff like this compulsively.

20. Collect urban legends and take them seriously.

If you are told that there is a videotape that kills you seven days after you watch it, you say “Thanks! I’ll make sure to avoid that one then!” If you are told that if you say candy man 5 times in a mirror, then Tony Todd will murder your dumb ass, you stay the hell away from mirrors and keep that name out of your goddamn mouth–as cool as meeting Tony Todd would be I think the thrill would be somewhat diminished by having him instantly murder you without mercy or quarter. You have to treat urban legends as gospel truths if you’re going to get through this. Fire up that browser and learn as much as you can about whatever bogeyman is lurking in your shadows, while we are near the subject. If you are given simple rules to follow,  FOLLOW THE FRACKING RULES! I mean how hard is it to keep a pet dry, keep it away from daylight, and not feed the little furball after midnight? Just do as you’re told, don’t antagonize the demon/villain/entity and you will make it to the sequel.

So, there you have it, my friends, Doktor Robsters quick and dirty guide to making it to the other end of the film alive. Remember though, if you’re a returning character in a sequel, your odds of survival go down considerably.

Don’t break the circle.

RBD