10 Horror Movie Cliches That Need To Die
1. Stigmatised Mental Illness
Ever since its inception, the horror genre has mined the fear of the unknown for our collective entertainment, of making the "other" a terror-inducing object.
It's fair to say that a large number of horror movie antagonists are inherently "crazy," whether a result of an abusive or troubled upbringing, or driven to murderous ends through some sort of broken mental wiring.
But it gets trickier when films decide to delve into an antagonist on a pathological level, painting a lop-sided picture of mental illness in pop-culture that isn't reflected by a reality where, more often than not, the mentally ill are victims of violence rather than those enacting it.
As brilliantly crafted as it is, M. Night Shyamalan's Split received plenty of blow-back for its depiction of dissociative identity disorder, and mental health organisations are constantly decrying horror filmmakers for exaggerating real debilitating conditions for the sake of popcorn-chewing multiplex fare.
It's not that horror films shouldn't ever engage with these issues, but simply that it's rarely dealt with in a way that's anything but dismissive of the actual medical issue itself.
Examples: Psycho, The Shining, Friday the 13th, Split.