Thriller Killers

Great thrillers are great movies. But everybody knows what it's like to sit through a thriller that's so awful it's not even campy. So what makes a good thriller? Is it in the special effects or the story? Is it in the music or the suspense? Well, I'm not entirely sure. But after watching too many of these bad movies, what I do know is what is sure to kill a thriller.

1. Prank phone calls, especially when the villain is just breathing heavily on the other line. Not only is something like this totally overplayed, it's just not scary. If the person on the other end doesn't respond right away, normal people just assume it's a telemarketer and hang up. Nobody stays on the line just to see what will happen, especially if the caller is being creepy. So if there's a prank call in a movie, not only is the audience angry that the actress (because in a movie, it's always a woman who's afraid of a telephone) picked up the phone time and time again, but they are also thinking that she is a total idiot for flipping out.

Also overplayed and not scary: getting the sheriff involved. There's always a point where the actress has had enough and calls the local sheriff, telling him that someone keeps pranking her, probably as an innocent joke. He gets back to her much later in the movie, after she has been terrorized a lot more. And the conversation goes like this:

Ring. Ring.
"Stop calling me, you freak!"
"Jenny! Jenny, I traced the call."
"Sheriff Average?"
"Jenny, I traced the call. It's coming from inside the house."
Jenny drops the phone and backs up. The audience sees the bad guy's shadow behind her.
"Did you hear me? I said it's coming from inside the house. Get out-"

Click. That was the sound of both the phone call ending and my TV turning off. I hope the character dies.

2. Many bad thrillers also have a point in the movie where the stalked person runs into someone they know, screams, and explains what is going on. That person mocks them, only to become the next victim. If your friend Jenny was screaming that somebody was after her and she was crying and worked up, would you really laugh? No, and especially not in today's world. But what really bothers me is the death of the friend.

Jenny thinks the killer is behind her. She runs into another room. She sees the back of Josh (because he always has some playful-sounding name), her friend from before who laughed at her when she cried that she was being stalked. A wave of relief passes through her. She calls his name but he doesn't respond. She reaches out and grabs his arm. When he spins around, she sees that an axe is in his forehead. She screams and runs away.

Wow, talk about irony. The disbeliever gets brutally murdered. Way to be original, Hollywood. This totally justifies your huge salaries.

3. Another classic mistake: Jenny somehow finds her inner strength and defeats the villain. It's one thing if Jenny survives by running away, or locking herself in a room until the police arrive, or finding a gun and shooting him. But it is so ridiculous when this puny girl is wrestling with a humongous man, overpowers him and then hatches a brilliant plan to stop him and get away. I'm not saying that women can't be strong or anything like that, but there's only a certain type of beefy, trained woman who can physically crush a 200-pound man who clearly has a background in disfiguring people with his bare hands.

The stalker has Jenny in a full body lock, but she somehow frees one of her hands and hits him in the face. Even though she could never wind up enough at this distance to make a dent, the stalker is taken aback and lets go of the body lock. He starts choking her, and then she head-butts him or pokes him in the eye just as she is about to suffocate. This throws the stalker completely away from her and she has a chance to get up and run away. He grabs at one of her feet and trips her, and pulls on her leg as she tries to flee. She kicks him off, because he is still on the ground, injured from her fists of fury.

After she gets away, she'll set up a trap so the stalker thinks she's in the bedroom, and then when he goes in there, she'll come up from behind and hit him over the head with a frying pan or something. Ludicrous! How can a girl, who can't even learn how to hang up a phone, figure out how to defeat a man twice her size with her own brute strength and a little pizzazz? I guess that’s just the magic of Hollywood.

Please, movie studios, I know it's been awhile, but maybe you should try writing a new story. There are only so many times you can use the same script before people catch on.