I've been watching a lot of Murder, She Wrote lately, and it has a fairly formulaic structure. Within the first few minutes a problem is introduced and the wacky group of characters are introduced. It's in these moments that I can usually pin point whose murder J B Fletcher is going to be solving. It takes me another twenty minutes or so to figure out who did it.
The killer and the person killed are nearly always introduced at the very start of the show.
This formula can be seen in a lot of other crime or mystery based dramas. Heck, even my beloved Scooby Doo uses it. It's rare when we have no idea who's under the mask.
It's even easier to pick up these hints when watching multiple episodes at a time. Until I actually started binge watching Murder She Wrote, I almost never picked up on the subtle clues that were peppered throughout, but once you know what to look for (usually a throw away line about some important piece of information that the character in question shouldn't know about) that leads to picking out the killer way before the big reveal.
Horror movies follow a similar patter that has now been deconstructed to death (let's conclude that this pun was intended). Cabin in the Woods is the most famous modern example. The iconic Scream even has a scene where the character Randy lists all of the rules that keep you alive in movies. Since Randy follows the rules, he gets to live to the sequel.
Re-watching these movies, I start to pick up on the hints of what led to a person dying. Either they broke one of the cardinal rules of horror movies ("don't have sex, don't drink or do drugs, and never, ever say you'll be right back") or they made a mistake that led them right to the killer.
Real life isn't entirely like horror movies or 60 minute mystery shows. The hero isn't always around to stumble across a dead body and piece together the clues like a prefect puzzle. Real life is messy, chaotic, and even senseless.
However, that doesn't mean that there aren't patterns that don't emerge when horrible events do occur. Humans like patterns, our brains are built to recognize them (even when they aren't there, but that's another blog post). It could be a person's search history, the posts they tweet on Twitter, the groups they like on Facebook, or if they're on an FBI watch list.
These patterns that our brains detect have helped our species survive and thrive. It's why some people are extremely intuitive and know when to listen to their "gut". It's why we sometimes get a creepy feeling that tells us that danger is around in an otherwise perfectly normal setting.
I sometimes feel like Sid and the cameraman trying to tell Randy, who's screaming at movie Jamie Lee Curtis that Michael Myers is right behind her in a movie, that Ghost Face is behind him with a knife. I can see the danger, but there's nothing I can do about it. I can't change a story that's already been written.
But isn't that how some of us who watch scary movies or murder mysteries feel when we know what's about to happen? We've figured out who and where the killer is and can do nothing to help the victim. We're just watching events unfold on a screen, wishing, praying that our favorite characters will survive.
We know the patterns and unless we're willing to do something about them, the horror movie killer will keep coming back.
If you liked this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y'all like hearing from me.
Until next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment