Others are just sturdy - if it ain’t broke, horror people don’t fix it. No matter what your favorite kind of horror movie is, there are a dozen stock moments and narrative beats that appear time and time again. And you can’t throw a rock in the zombie subgenre without hitting someone who has been bitten but is hiding it from the rest of the group. Any monster movie (at least, post Jaws) has the town event that is too important to close down because of a (bear, rabid dog, or even another shark). And it’s not just the slashers that rely on these tropes we’ve all seen a million ghost movies where a figure appears in the background, then - after the lights flash on then off - finds its way directly next to the protagonist.
Then you see another slasher movie, and then a few more, and then perhaps a hundred more, and you no longer recall a time when those motions felt like fresh inventions. And you, naive little you, are blown away when the killer survives an attack that seemed more fatal than any of the ones he had inflicted on the jock, the nerd, and the mean girl. You’re confused when the main character spots a shady figure outside the window, only to discover in a second glance that they’re no longer there. The first time you see a slasher movie, you don’t know that the car won’t start.
