Fifty Horror Clichés That Need to Die in a Fire

#28: Tripping

Note:  I would like to give a special thanks to my dear friend HorrorFanatic87 , who helped me come up with this idea and a bunch of the prompts for the eight upcoming parts.  He helped me with the editorial following a viewing of The Evil Dead at my house that really got the creative juices flowing for both of us.  Also, please check him out for yourself when you get the chance.  He just started his Watt Pad account and is going to start writing some stuff of his own soon.

If you somehow were transported into a random slasher movie and were trying to escape the killer, what would you do? Well, there is basically unlimited possibilities in doing so, considering the horror clichés you have become so accustomed to have taught you how to not fight back with an IQ of zero. You could easily get the upper hand of the killer by gathering as many weapons as possible without a limit to their usage; axes, knives, shovels, chainsaws (if there is gasoline nearby), and a Lucille-like bat Negan from The Walking Dead would be proud of. Make sure to get back-up as well, which will only make your chances of succeeding higher, considering those who fight alone in horror movies tend to be easy bait. After calling the cops, you could chase the killer strategically into a back alley and get to work with your squad using your weapons to injure them enough to the point that they cannot hurt anyone else. You would not want to kill the murderer due to a need for a confession in court, where you could get justice for everyone they have killed. Everything seems to be set up perfectly for your plan to escape and save as many characters as you can in the movie you trapped yourself into.

However, before you have a chance to do any of this, the movie's dumb logic comes to bite you in the butt. Right when you are about to gather supplies from the garage of your choice, you trip over a random branch generated out of nowhere and sprain your ankle. Unable to get up, all of a sudden you see the killer approaching you. Having knowledge about tripping in horror movies, you try to drag your body away from the killer. This sadly proves to not work, and well, you know the rest. For those not getting the picture about what is happening, basically in this scenario you just became killer stew, all because of a stupid branch.

The purpose of bringing you into this scenario was to bring home that characters tripping over anything in a horror movie or even a book is absolutely frustrating. It makes no sense that someone with the skills to cheat death for so long in the story would be taken down by the inconvenience of a simple branch or bump in the road. Tripping over might inconvenience you for just a couple of seconds at best, especially if you managed to land on the soft dirt path of the woods. You might injure your ankle a little or scrape up your knee, but 95% of the time, you will be able to continue on your way and manage to outrun the threat after you. If you do manage to break a bone in the other 5% of cases, there is still a very clever way you could still escape. Grab a large tree limb, usually about two or three feet tall, and use it as a cane to escape. Even if you are far from a sturdy branch, someone nearby could still save you, since most logical people probably are smart enough to have brought a friend with them so they don't fight this alone. Unless you are extremely unfortunate or stupid, tripping over something will not spell doom.

While the character falling over can be argued to work as a way to bring tension to the scene, it has the added side effect of making the audience become frustrated that such a cheap tactic was used in the first place to create said scene. By now, everyone and their mother knows enough about horror stories that the tripping cliché has become sickeningly common to them.

Plus, the logic of the character is lost in this route. If someone was running for their lives from a killer, they would probably have a laser point focus on all their surroundings, including the ground below them. This is a life or death situation and the adrenaline of the character is going to be at an all-time high. They are going to do anything in their power to escape, and focusing on their surroundings is probably going to be their first course of action. The fight or flight reflex in people is extremely powerful, and would not be cancelled out by fictional logic the author tries to sell you.

The only way I could see this cliché having any merit at all is if the character maybe had an underlying health condition. For those with severe asthma, they might be so distracted by keeping the air in their lungs that they don't see the bump in the road. Then there are the situations in which someone not physically fit might run out of air quickly and fall over due to a lack of energy to continue running. As for those in wheelchairs or crutches, it is a fifty-fifty shot for them. Someone extremely experienced with their wheelchair or crutches has a great chance of escaping, while those who have only been using the devices for a short amount of time have a lower chance of gathering up enough energy to get away. Even with these factors to consider, no one in any of these situations with logic is going to be without close help nearby. With that help, they could still escape despite the odds, defeating the death trap of a crack in the road or an exposed tree branch completely.

So for those of you who want to write great horror stories, please don't be cheap with your deaths by having your characters trip over something mid-dash. Instead, have a more realistic factor stop them completely in their tracks, one that cannot be fixed with strong reflexes or help nearby. Creating some type of dead end could be a great start in fixing this cliché, as even the smartest and best prepared characters are not going to be able to get out without confronting the killer. Just create something original that realistically puts the character at a stalemate.