1) The virgin. There's always that girl in every film who would ONLY wears white panties and would never in her life be caught dead indulging in alcohol or hallucinogenic drugs or *gasp* SEX! She's the one that always lives at the end because she's "pure." Goody two shoes bitch.
2) The loud ass black person. When you see black people in horror films, they're rarely the intellectual, nerdy types. They're always cracking jokes or threatening to whup the killer's ass. They're the bad mo-fos that is always there as back up (and comedic relief) to the preppy white jock guy. And they're also one of the first people to die.
3) The slutty girl. This girl is the antithesis to the virgin. Her main purpose, besides gratuitous nudity, is to provide the perfect contrast and to attempt to convince the virgin to engage in sinful behavior. She usually dies with her breasts out whilst having sex or AFTER having sex.
4) The jock/preppy guy. Self-explanatory. He is the asshole of the group who frequently makes fun of the other characters and turns being a douchebag into an Olympic sport. He's usually very good-looking and is likely dating the slutty girl. You expect him to survive because he's able to hold his own throughout most of the film. Alas, he always dies eventually and in spectacular fashion.
5) The drunk/stoner. This person exists solely to provide us with more reasons why hedonism is bad. This guy is unable to string together more than one declarative sentence at a time because he is usually high as a kite and/or drunk off his ass. He typically dies because he is far too under the influence to fight back.
6) Modern technology suddenly decides to stop working. Now that we live in the world of cell phones and WiFi, in the 21st century of horror films, those things never work when you need them to. In older horror films, the car always doesn't want to start. It didn't matter how new the car was, the character just couldn't get the engine to turn over. In newer films, cell phones mysteriously lose their signals and the internet also goes down. Perhaps that person has Sprint and uses Comcast internet. It would explain soooo much!
7) The Harbinger. Cabin in the Woods touches on this one. This stereotype is usually a creepy old man who warns our characters not to go where they're going or is there to tell them this long scary story about the house they're staying in. Afterwards, he usually dies or disappears from the story entirely. This character serves no other purpose but to make everyone uneasy about their little vacation in the middle of nowhere, because staying in a creepy-ass house miles away from civilization isn't enough to make them feel uneasy.
8) The Know-it-all. This person is an expert on whatever monster or killer is after the group. He's the horror movie addict who quotes Stephen King as if he's the modern day Edgar Allen Poe. This person believes that by following "rules" that he saw in some film will save him. Um, no.
The biggest stereotype of all in horror movies is the need of our characters to vacation in some extremely isolated location. Who in the hell told the characters the it'd be a be a good idea to rent a house on the side of a mountain where you need to park your car and then walk for an hour to get to the house? How about staying on your own private island 10 miles from town and the only way in or out is a small speedboat (which also suddenly decides to stop working) or a seaplane (that also doesn't want to work when you need it.) Why, why, WHY do people do this in horror movies?! When my friends and I took our vacation to Myrtle Beach (and each of us fit one of the stereotypes above to a certain degree) we rented a house where we were SURROUNDED by other houses that were also occupied. If some shit went down, we had somewhere to run.
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