10 Most Bizarre Horror Stereotypes
5. Dream Warnings
If you have a movie based around a killer who targets you in your dreams, that's one thing. But while the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise can get away with using dreams as a tool of foreboding, there are so many other pictures that bizarrely use dreams sequences as a way to warn central characters about what horrors lie ahead.
Unless you have a dream-based presence like a Freddy Krueger, this is a trope that can be so tired and unimaginative.
How often have we see a main protagonist in a horror film be visited by visions of the picture's 'big bad'? Too many to count, that's how many. You can maybe rationalise such happenings if it's part of the fallout of having already encountered some villainous sort, yet you need look no further than the Amityville franchise for the classic example of this being a lazy plot point to fall back on.
With Amityville, you ended up having people with no ties to the original Amityville house whatsoever having visions and dreams of sinister shenanigans supposedly tied to that locale and its previous inhabitants. But the whole Amityville franchise is one that's enough to warrant a whole article all of its own, for the 28(!) movies that feature the Amityville name are so often full of tired tropes.