Now That Was Just Stupid

There's something that's been bothering me about horror movies that doesn't seem to be going away. It especially bothered me in Zombieland. For being really tricky, clever people, Wichita and he sister certainly did a lot of really stupid things. And why did they do them? To increase suspense.

Dramatic irony is when the audience knows something that the character doesn't. So say in a horror movie, the camera might show the killer waiting around a corner while the character does not even know that the killer is in the building. This is suspenseful, this is dramatic, and this is one of the most powerful pulls horror movies have. But it's also not done correctly probably somewhere around half the time.

In some movies you might see something along the lines of: We know there are zombies here, but we're still gonna leave the doors open, turn all the lights on, and wonder around in the open without our guns. Then, suspense builds as we see zombies getting closer and closer to the area were we know our protagonists are wandering about, blissfully unaware of the approaching menace.

This is NOT dramatic irony. Let's look at the definition again. Dramatic irony is when the audience knows something that the character doesn't. In the situation I just described, it might appear that this definition is met. After all, the characters aren't aware of the approaching zombies. The audience is. Thus, dramatic irony is created, right?

Wrong.

Because the characters may not know that those specific zombies are approaching, but they damn well know that the everybody has turned into zombies, that zombies are fucking everywhere, and that if you let your guard down for a single minute (even just to go to the bathroom), you could be dead. They know better than to be wandering around open spaces with the lights on and no weapons available close by. They know better. But they do it anyway. This is an example of a character being intentionally stupid in order to artificially build suspense. And it doesn't really build suspense, at least not for me. I just find it annoying and distracting. And I guess you can argue that people will let their guard down from time to time. And that's true. But letting your guard down is a lot different than intentionally doing things you know are stupid in order to build suspense.

Is this not bothering anyone else?