10 Best Horror Movies That Subverted Classic Cliches
7. There's Nothing Out There
Long before Last House on the Left director/ meta horror legend Wes Craven gave us the definitive self-aware horror movie (and the greatest ever Matthew Lillard performance) in the form of 1996’s iconic Scream, another film featured a heroic nerd who noted that there were far too many recognizable horror tropes at play during a party with his feckless teenage friends and urged them to abide by the rules necessary to survive a slasher.
Yes, much has been made of the similarities between the nineties slasher and Rolfe Kanesky’s 1990 indie sleeper hit There’s Nothing Out There (check out The Atlantic’s brief documentary on the subject for an in depth look), but such a short summary does a disservice to this silly and inventive flick.
The film itself is a bizarre, fast paced, and very funny bit of meta horror which sees its characters exploit not only their knowledge of horror tropes, but even the filmmaking equipment itself, to fend off the alien creatures besieging their cabin, grabbing boom mikes and cameras from offscreen to defend themselves. Trippy.