Fifty Horror Clichés That Need to Die in a Fire

#30: Going Back

Logically, when it comes to escaping the horrors of a haunted house, the logical move would be to vacate the place immediately. After all, when it comes to spooky ghosts, they tend to stay in the same place, trapped in an eternal purgatory of the past. That is unless the entity is some type of demon like in Paranormal Activity that is more than happy to move locations with the people they wish to continue haunting.

When it comes to a slasher movie killer, the best thing to do logically if they are in the house is to fight back with whatever weapons you have on hand and get the heck out of there. Unless the killer in question is something like Freddy Kruger who can invade dreams, they can only run so far and have an energy limit like any other human being. They can't exactly follow you everywhere and as long as the car you have works well, the mileage between you and the murderous pursuer can get quite vast quickly.

Even when it comes to possessions linked to a single household like in The Evil Dead, the best solution still logically is to escape and not look back. Ashley Williams and his friends may have been stupid enough to stay in the haunted as heck cabin, but most other people would not follow their strange decision making. No one in their right mind would want to risk being consumed by demonic entities and even read the haunted as heck incantations book that started this bloody mess in the first place.

When it comes to surviving a horror scenario, the best thing to do most of the time is to fight back, run away, and never come back. So why is it that in so many horror stories, the characters decide to break this series of logical rules time and time again? Why is it that the main characters are dumb enough to decide to return to the location of the turmoil and end up getting killed in an easily preventable way? It comes down simply to two major things; an excuse to extend the runtime of the plot and a lack of originality on the part of the writer.

As most of you guys probably know by now, pacing in a story for most authors is one of the trickiest elements to master. It is hard to balance out the length of each scene appropriately without risking too much exposition or watering down the stakes of the story. Making this problem worse is the tendency of most writers to be their worst critics, making many trying to compose the perfect storyline doubt their course of action with the plot and fall down bad rabbit holes. The best solution to this issue is outline the story before writing a single word, thus catching yourself better on actual problems the pacing of the plot might have and creating less destructive self-doubt. If you choose to ignore this trick though, the consequences are clichés that are as illogical as the main character returning for seemingly no reason to the absolutely dangerous haunted house or location of the killer. Choices that seem sudden like returning to the danger in horror stories are more common to occur if not regulated by great organization.

Then there is the ambition of the writer to create a scary as possible plot in the least "stress-filled" way possible. To keep the characters from doing the logical move like leaving a haunted house for good, they create cheap tactics to ensure their stay will be as long and as frustrating as possible to the audience. Common excuses for this explanation includes something frustrating such as insurance on the house, leaving a prized procession behind, and maybe because the character forgot to finish a damn sandwich. Whatever the excuse, they usually fall on the uncreative side of the spectrum. They usually do this instead of going with the more logical way to ensure the plot of the story continues strong; have the entity be something like in Paranormal Activity and follow the characters no matter where they go, or create a scenario where the killer is still able to find the main character miles away thanks to tracking down the license plate of the car they were driving. The alternatives for this part of the problem really are unlimited. However, writers still choose to take the cheap tactic and just give a dumb excuse for the characters to return to the murderous center of activity.

Seriously, this cliché of the characters returning to the haunted as heck house or the bloodthirsty killer really can just be fixed with organization to the plot structure and a sprinkle of creativity. It is for that reason characters returning to the center of the conflict without explanation frustrates me and many other writers to no end. Solving the problem is very simple, yet no one seems to try it out for themselves.