Eye Contact

Halloween is almost here, one of my favourite times of year, and that means horror movies. So there's a lot of horror tropes which have been done so much that they just aren't scary any more. Right?

One of the examples that comes up a lot is "It's Behind You". Now the moment that you are presented with a panning shot or a shot of someone or something blocking out a chunk of the background, you are almost certain there's gonna be something icky back there.

It's such a common trope that Scream troped it while troping it.

Then there's the "Medicine Cabinet" shot. A combination of the "It's In The Mirror" shot and the "Check The Door" shot. You know full well in a movie like this that if you have a close shot of someone opening a medicine cabinet, when it closes, there's gonna be the beastie or whatever stood there in the reflection.

Another trope is the "It's Right There" trope, which I think Alien and Aliens uses real well - wherein the monster is placed in the shot in such a way that you don't quite understand what it is until it moves.

Like here.

"Maybe they don't show up on infrared at all." Yeah, maybe.

You know the one trope that stuck with me, though? The one trope that I have never, ever managed to shake as something that genuinely kind of freaks me out?

The beastie looking at the camera.

And this is mostly because of the Amityville Horror.

This is one of the horror movies that I watched when I was a kid. I doubt my parents knew about it at the time. I know I know, badness. But hey, it didn't do ME any - wait what am I talking about, of course it did me harm, I'm talking about the harm it did me.

Anyway.

There's this one scene wherein the kid is talking to their imaginary friend, Jody. They're playing int he kid's room. And the mom is like - oh, what're you talking to Jody about? And the kid is talking about how Jody just fled from the room because the mom scared her. Mom's like, oh well, okay, guess I will just close this window -

Looks out and sees THIS.

The whole scene is here.

That. FUCKED. Me. UP.

I don't even know why. It's just two lights. Just two lights out of a window. Except that is all you see, and yet you know that thing was looking inside, at you. You were observed. You are not safe.

That's always stuck with me, it's always a thing I like to see in a horror movie because even if it is a trope that has been done a lot, it breaks the barrier of the screen and the worlds on either side. Literally, the beast is looking out of your movie and into your soul.

Like this motherfucker here.

Or in this short by Mike Diva, called Thresher.

Anyway. Just my thoughts on something horrible.

Sweet dreams.

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