Monday, May 15, 2006

Ghosthunter L's Paranormal Movie Cliches

In the past two weeks, I saw two different "Based upon a true story"-style paranormal movies: The Entity and The Uninvited. While I really enjoyed The Entity, The Uninvited had so many paranormal cliches. Heck, take it back, even The Entity wasn't entirely cliche-free. Al, the head of DCMAG, always jokes that watching paranormal movies with me is a riot. As a ghost hunter, I think I just get driven crazy by all of the "Hollywoodness" of them sometimes, LOL. Thinking about all of the haunted movies I've enjoyed in the past, here's my preliminary list of paranormal movie cliches:
  1. The whole damn family's seeing ghosts and the dad is the holdout. Crap truly hits the fan, he finally sees stuff himself and then he's a believer. Way to trust your family, man!
  2. Ghosts moving like marionettes--jerky and choppy.
  3. Mom/dad/sister/brother is being attacked by something unseen. Whoever else that is witnessing this is just standing there instead of trying to help them.
  4. The whole damn family's seeing ghosts, but won't stick up for the person who's being deemed "crazy."
  5. Untraumatized kids. Crazy stuff's happening at home, but they still go to sleep just fine.
  6. They always find the gravestones/cemetery/graves/bones on their land at the last minute.
  7. The kind psychic they just happen to come across in their everyday life who shows them "the way."
  8. People getting picked off one by one by vengeful ghosts. That'd be a heckuva news story.
  9. Ghosts accompanied by thick fog/swirling portals/crazy colored lights.
  10. They're told to "go into the light" and they just GO.
  11. You can't kill what's not alive in the first place.
  12. The psych who always proclaims everything's a hallucination/repressed thoughts/mental
  13. You can't trap and contain them.
  14. Don't just stand there screaming. RUN. And then, please don't trip.
Feel free to add more, because I know I will...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Too funny that I read this today, because my Godfather and I discussed this exact subject last night! Don't forget my personal fave; there is always a Satanic Cult involved.