10 Weird Rules That Only Ever Work In TV & Movies

When we settle in to watch a movie or binge watch a show, we have to remember to consciously separate some elements of reality from the entertainment. We sometimes forget we're watching something fictional on screen and can find ourselves slapping our foreheads and exclaiming "but that doesn't happen in real life!"

Whether we're watching a gritty crime drama or a bombastic action thriller set in space, the formula remains the same. So in order for characters to do what they do and for the story to go down a certain path we have to suspend our disbelief and agree that some decisions and actions only make sense in movie-world.

The reason why slasher victims run around the house instead of outside as the killer stalks them is because movie rules dictate we've got another 90 minutes of film and there's still three more teenagers to kill. The reason why the bad guy ties the hero up next to a bomb with a long fuse instead of shooting them there and then is because we still have to have the climactic fight on a rooftop.

But outside of Deus Ex Machina, poor decision-making or even sheer dumb luck for our protagonists, we tend to not pick up on subtle glaring holes that just don't happen in the real world.

In the introduction of this article, it was stated that at times we overlook and accept that some realms of reality are pushed aside in favor of the movie and its story.

If a story establishes the deep voiced "in a world..." before moving on with the actual narrative, we tend to find ourselves eased in to the universe more smoothly. It's the first rule of World-Building.

But in horror films; when the origins of the monster/killer are explained, particularly if it was a normal person who died and was resurrected to act revenge, our heroes ignore the first part of this statement and seem to prioritise the latter.

But wait a second, someone died and was buried and then came back to life?! That's a lot to take in, and even more to come to realise that magic, curses and hauntings are real and science might not be true after all.

In horror films, we just accept the world has this rule but back in the 80's when a bunch of kids were told that a former caretaker for a school was burnt to death and now attacks kids in their dreams, no one stopped to point out how really weird that was.