10 Unique Tricks Every Movie Started To Rip-Off
4. The Teleporting Villain - Halloween
The Trick
The Halloween franchise popularised one of the most common - and widely parodied - horror tropes there is, of the teleporting villain.
Despite Michael Myers' famously slow movement speed, he's able to slink around Haddonfield largely undetected, sneaking up on his victims so effortlessly as to suggest he's able to basically teleport himself around.
But back in the earlier days of the series, Myers' free movement only enhanced the anything goes suspense, that The Shape could be anywhere at any time.
The Rip-Offs
The genre as a whole unsurprisingly cottoned onto the effectiveness of this trick and promptly ran it into the ground throughout the '80s and '90s, most notably in the Friday the 13th franchise and I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Wes Craven rather ingeniously parodied this trope in Scream, however, given that the film ends up having two killers, explaining Ghostface's fleet-footed movements.
It Follows also offered up a neat subversion of the slow-moving villain that still manages to catch its victims, given that It is a shapeshifter which can disguise itself as anyone.