More than any other genre of film, horror is perhaps the one ridiculed almost as often as it is revered. This is because, as the medium continues aging, audiences are able to pick up and recognize the common situations, tropes, stereotypes that have populated it for decades. While these circumstances were once fresh and able to surprise, now weve seen so many variations of the same stories that filmmakers are forced to find new ways to scare people. An example of this is the torture porn subgenre, which was born in an attempt to frighten the audience through its focus on explicit pain and suffering instead of more cerebral scares and ideas. As films like the Scream franchise and The Cabin in the Woods have pointed out and parodied, horror films often follow tried and true formulas, whether consciously or not. We, as audience members, are able to pick up on these fairly quickly, and as a result, most horror films just arent scary. These formulas have become so standard that we know what direction they will take before they happen. These tropes have become staples of pop culture, so much so that are culture has established rules to surviving horror films, and we know what characters will die just by the actions (or inactions) they take. So in celebration of the Halloween season, and in no particular order, here are 10 golden rules of horror that characters never obey.