Death of Common Sense

Over the years I have found that the things in life that just piss me off have grown. I used to get cranky about rainy days..a crappy day at work..a paper cut. Now I hate rainy and days with too much sun..i hate work..crappy or not... and under cooked (and overcooked) food...light, dark, being too happy.....you get my drift. I do have to say that my biggest pet peeve is socieiy's basic lack of common sense.

I mean really people, think for just a second before you act. The next time someone gets drunk the night before work, stumbles in and proceeds to get fired and then blames the company..or a woman dates the exact same kinda man for the 9 billionth time and it goes horribly awry like the other 9 billion times..or oh my god pretty much anything anyone does in the town I live. I may just become a hermit.

What's this have to do with horror? Ahhhhhh... this has everything to do with horror. In fact, the reason I like Scream is because it realizes that everyone that dies in horror films dies because they're dumb. No common sense whatsoever.

Take Hostel for instance...you take 3 guys already getting mass quantities of babes and booze and you tell them "Hey in this other place quite a ways away you can get slightly hotter babes and probably wont have to work for it" and what do they do? wooooo boobs...then die horribly. Now if they would have had a modicum of common sense they woulda been like "nah I have gotten laid quite a bit, little skeezy euro trash guy. I'm gonna pass. Thanks though.." they woulda just got a venereal disease and been fine. I just have a hard time even feeling sorry for them.

The one though that drives me absolutely nuts is "lets split up", why? why?....whyyyyy? Why would anyone in their right mind knowing there is a killer loose want to leave the relative safety of a group. Hey don't get me wrong I realize why writers do it..its easier and believe you me, writers like easier. Buuuut it drives me crazy. Why would anyone wanna go into a dark basement? I don't do it for the fact that well...its dark...and i cant see anything and i don't wanna trip and rip my shirt. So I'm not going down there if there might be a killer down there that will most likely disembowel me, which if your keeping score trumps shirt ripping.

I'm not saying I hate these movies..I can't they are a staple of horror and i like horror. I do however enjoy slightly more cerebral horror or just completely supernatural horror wheres logic no longer applies. I just think that if you build a movie up as reality based then make it so. On the other hand, if you never let it get serious then do whatever your little blood soaked soul desires.

In the end maybe i'm thinking too much. Maybe these directors and writers do think hard about this stuff and realize in the end exploding heads usually trumps a legitimate spine chill. Maybe i'm the asshole here. Just maybe I should just watch the film and enjoy it again like a child...nah screw that I am waaay to old and cranky to change my ways. In fact i'm going to watch and review a nice cerebral horror movie right now...come here Offspring..lets get cozy.

originally posted by contributor David Winterborne