Every time I see someone run into a forest in a movie I’m like “oh nice you’re good now” since it’s usually a large forest with a million different directions you could travel in and a million different things you can hide under/behind. But inevitably the pursuer walks or runs to the exact spot where the character is hiding. Does anyone else hate this?
Even leaving her for a day and then driving to the exact spot she happens to be at after she was walking all night
Yessss! Just watched this and felt the same way! She was out ALL night and they got to her area so quickly 🙄
Do you know the way to Bells Canyon?
The difficulty of searching for a person in a forest in a movie depends on whether its a horror movie or a missing persons crime drama. If it's the crime drama, absolutely impossible to find until the 4th sweep and half the county has walked hand-in-hand through a marsh with nightvision goggles and bloodhounds and a psychic hopped up on eucalyptus. But a person actively trying to hide in a horror movie: caught immediately. Usually by someone that somehow ended up behind them in a mostly silent forest. That's just how it works. Get with the program.
And in the crime drama it’s usually a dead body.
And as you would know, sometimes its not even the whole body - just a foot.
And half the time they discover it by tripping over it.
Now we're primed for that dolly zoom into their horrified face.
Unfortunately the crime drama version seems accurate. Here in Germany a 6 year old boy with severe autism went missing a couple of weeks ago. He slipped from his home while his dad was distracted. A neighbour's security camera filmed him walking into the woods. They haven't found him although they did all the things you wrote. Even had a Tornado fighter aircraft fly over with thermographic cameras.
And I should add that Germany does not have deep forests, we're very densely populated. The kid still totally vanished.
Tornado WHAT?!
The Tornado is a swing wing multirole jet fighter similar to the F111 Aardvark or F14 Tomcat.
And sometimes both in one. Person runs into forest and gets found immediately and murdered. People go looking for them and can never find them
😂
And the slower the killer walks the faster they catch the person
With Jason, Crystal Lake seems to possess him
I think that's actually a pretty good explanation for him. Like he's not "cosmic" but there's obviously forces at play that are mystical in nature and "unexplainable".
I kinda like how the remake has a tunnel network under Crystal Lake with an alarm system that lets him know where people are in the forest, which he then then follows and pops up out of a given hidden escape door to kind of explain his teleportation.
Is the remake worth a watch? Like idc if it's good as long as it's entertaining ya know?
But that's honestly pretty cool. Reminds me of old episodes of cartoons where they had secret tunnels at summer camps like Kim Possible lol
Definitely has the scariest Jason of the series imo. It also has some great kills, and yeah it’s cliche, but it owns up to it.
Honestly I prefer the version of him where he’s a revenant with obvious supernatural abilities
I thought the church ch, ch, ch,,ch, cha, cha, cha theme music was his sonar senses.
Hahaha yoooo I love this!!!
He can canonically teleport so it makes sense why he always finds them
Where that confirmed?
The Friday the 13th Game definitely as a feature of gameplay, and throughout the franchise where it's just physically impossible for him to catch up. His victims run, he walks and yet ends up somehow in front of them. I don't think there is any sort of logic running through this series. Sometimes he teleports and is a undead zombie and sometimes he's a man who can't.
Having just rewatched them all, part 8 is the only one where he is blatantly warping around like Nightcrawler but I think thats more because that movie sucks than an ability he explicitly has lol
8 also has him in extremely enclosed environments, so it’s particularly noticeable when he somehow managed to get in front of people.
For eg. The bit where the ‘rock chick’ of the cast is running down a short hallway, looks over her shoulder and sees him behind her, turns back to the front to keep running forward and Boom he’s already directly in front of her face.
Usually the issue is just how quickly he’d get around (for eg. From town, the the camp, to the cabins seemingly in less than an hour), rather than…being physically impossible. The remake gave him tunnels below the whole area to ‘explain’ it.
my favorite one was when he was chasing a guy who ran into a building and then we see that same guy fly out of the second floor window seconds later and that Jason was just...up there already lol
Fan theory does not mean canonical
Must be when that one sound clip happens. Kind of like with Nightcrawler and "Bamf."
"canonically"
Watch "Lovely, Dark, and Deep". You'll fear everyone you meet in the woods.
…The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep
-Frost
I sang a choral arrangement of this decades ago and it was so beautiful 😍 thanks for the reminder! (Not horror related haha sorry)
IKR? The poem is what made me choose the film. I memorized that poem and recited it in high school.
The film is perfect.
This part of the poem was also recited in the movie Death Proof
Ah, I forgot!! I'm due for a rewatch, I loved Deathproof when it first came out
Me too. I saw that and planet terror in the theater when they did the grind house double feature. It was really cool because they had the fake trailers in between the movies. Thanksgiving was one of them.
That's the idea of the film. The poem is about that time caught between life and death.
The film is brilliant BTW
I always feel the same way. Like you will definitely be good if you run into the forest. You could hide or get away so easy. How do they know which way you went? I don't know how they always get caught
Weirdly, Halloween Kills kinda averted the cliche.
They have Lindsay sprint into the trees and hide, not even that far away from where Michael’s standing , but Michael just sort of looks around and decides it isn’t worth it.
But that trilogy mostly made a point of Michael targeting people due to convenience. Sorta. Except when dramatically convenient.
When I take my cat to the vet she always goes to hide in a cubby under the sink. The vet staff laugh and say that all cats hide under there. They all have the same idea and see the same spot as safest.
I assume the forest thing is similar in that our human instincts won’t take us in any of these million different directions, but a very few that look the safest. I think from there we’d leave signs like trampled plants and snapped branches, making us easier to track. For that reason, this trope doesn’t bother me.
Depends on the movie. Ones where the hunter actually has some knowledge of teaching it definitely makes more sense
To be fair, it's a movie and watching them hide for an hour+ would probably be boring
Or it could be terrifying.
If done right, absolutely!
Could be forest critters coming after them, especially night time - ugh I'd hate to be lost in the woods at night bc you don't know what out there!
I’m saying it’s lazy to have them run and hide only for the person to walk to their exact location. Have something else happen like they fall into a trap or something or just have the escape to the forest be at the end of the movie
I hear ya, I guess since for horror, you really gotta suspend disbelief already, so it just doesn't faze me
I agree. The other person replied about suspending belief but to me a horror movie is better and more impressive when I don't HAVE to do that.
Like create a realistic-ish situation and I am waaaay more scared, especially if the villain had to do something smart to find the protagonist.
Check out “What Keeps You Alive” if you want a movie that takes place in the woods for a good bit of it but without that trope.
I know! The woods are a great place to hide Usually all you have to do if you wear neutral colors is lie down and cover yourself with leaves.
Or have it be something actually frightening, like it's a werewolf, and it's tracking you by scent. As the heroine is desperately hiding you can hear the creature snuffling and sniffing, and getting closer, closer in the dark.
Or you come to realize the creature is homing in on that weird statue you found in that creepy shrine.
Something that gives you a genuine terrifying sense of "what is going on? This doesn't make sense", but then also gives you a possible explanation and possibly way forward to thwart or subvert the threat.
That happens in Severance (among other traps.) Also the people running away are on a retreat from another country and are completely unfamiliar with the area. The killers however, live there and have survived in that forest/lodge for years, so it makes sense they would know better where to look.
I mean, if you are running from someone in a forest aren't you going to follow the easiest path that you can move the fastest on or will you risk climbing (making noise/possibly falling) by moving through the undergrowth/cluttered areas (making an obvious path) and risking slowing down? I understand and accept that trope in horror.
I mean it all depends. How far did the person get away initially into the forest? You understand in a forest it will be mostly silent other than bugs and animals. You would also hear echoes likely. A person's heavy breathing or breaking sticks wouldn't be all that hard to find if they were in the same vicinity.
Exactly. If you can hear a squirrel tear ass through the underbrush and up a leaning oak, you can hear a teenage camper screech and run off clumsily into a cluster of elm trees.
Honestly, if ever found in a horror movie situation of being chased in the forest. The safest thing to do would be to find thick coverage or brush and not move at all.
The Jötunn in The Ritual apparently couldn’t leave the forest.
So I’d like to know why it lived at the very edge of the massive forest and relatively close to a road.
It’s like fish that stay close to the top of the water to catch bugs that land on the “border”.
It didn’t seem to live there, and it’s hanging around in the deeper parts of the Forrest earlier in the movie. The village just seemed to have been on the edge, and it’s there for said ritual.
Its extremely easy to hide in a forest, but you have to be able to think clearly and access the situation. When people are in fight or flight mode and panicking, they aren't thinking. They're just running blindly and take the most obvious path, which the killer also follows. That sort of makes sense or at least its within the bounds of believability. The smart thing is to break line of sight, divert course completely, hide, and then try to circle back. Irrc, in the movie Becky (2020) actually does this.
Yes, but here's my thing about it... why are they flashing lights like beacons?
Never fails to annoy.
Yes! My thoughts exactly. Both the searchers and the hiders.
What about when a strolling killer keeps up with a sprinting victim? Does my nut in
Oh that’s a good one Although many predatory animals just mosey along the prey’s trail until it gets tired. Stamina vs speed.
The trope did give us that Nike commercial where the woman takes off running and just keeps going while the would-be slasher has to stop wheezing for breath.
This bothers me too, yeah. I know blah blah horror suspend your disbelief hiding would be boring blah blah, but there are plenty of other ways to move the plot along without the killer just strolling right up on their victim like friggin Pepe le Pew.
This drove me nuts in Eden Lake. For the most part they needed to run away in a forest from kids on bikes.
Eden Lake, the kids knew the forest like their playground, one of few movies where it made sense.
Especially at night. It’s basically pitch black. I was laughing at how well lit it was in the newest strangers movie. Don’t recommend seeing it in theaters btw
I have heard nothing but bad things about the new trilogy. What a shame, the first one was so good.
I’ll say it wasn’t that bad. The characters making horrible decisions was the annoying part. Other than that I think people are being dramatic. I found it enjoyable.
It’s very predictable. Corny writing and corny characters tbh
I recently watched Don't Go in the Woods (1981), and this happened repeatedly. It made me laugh.
There was a real life serial killer who would abduct women, fly them to his cabin in Alaska, let them loose and then hunt them down and kill them. He found and killed 17 of his victims, a couple escaped before being taken to the cabin, and one escaped him while being hunted but froze to death before being able to get back to help.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hansen
Presumably a serial killer that hunts the same woods over and over would know the areas natural choke points and geographic features. “Ok they couldn’t have gone that way because there is a raging river that cuts them off, it would be hard to go to the left over the mountains, and the two cliffs the direction they were running converge and choke down to a narrow pass a couple miles ahead. I can go around and beat them there”.
People are also a LOT louder in the woods than they think they are. I haven’t been deer or squirrel hunting since I was a kid, but it’s difficult to WALK quietly through the woods, crunching leaves and snapping twigs, much less haul ass and sprint with someone who is trying to kill you following you. You might be less loud running down an established trail that has all the foliage beaten down but, then you’re on a trail the person tracking you can follow too.
Wrong Turn. I’ve been in those mountains. Smart people would have difficulty navigating them, let alone the killers who were clearly…challenged. I like the movie but I did keep saying “there’s no way…”
But the Wrong Turn 'people' literally grew up in those mountains, hunting. I think it's fair to say they have a clear advantage against the tourists.
Yeah, but they still should have been able to hide somewhere.
There are a couple “cat-and-mouse thrillers” (Alone, What Doesn’t Kill You) that are guilty of this and it annoyed me so badly lol
The Forest w/Natalie Dormer. I wish they would do more movies about that
If you ever played one of those multiplayer horror games you know this is true af
I hate how they ALWAYS RUN UP THE FREAKING STAIRS!!! UMMM go OUT the door!!!!
It really seems like most of the time the character goes into the woods and then stops after a couple minutes of running and hides behind a tree or something. Or continuously looks behind them which slows them down and they get caught or trip and then get caught. Really need a movie where they just keep running while making some left or right turns and stop looking back every 5 seconds
This doesn’t count the Jason movies though, they did this but there are explanations as to why he finds them so fast. Different explanations per movie but makes enough sense for what it is.
One of the things I really liked about the Friday The 13th remake was that version of Jason having makeshift trip alarms set up so he knew where people were in the woods and the camp was over top of a mine with different exits to explain his "teleporting"
In reality, it is. So many people go missing with immediate search parties dispatched and they're never found, or found years later right where the searches had already looked. Lol
What I think is worse, but on the same level is when a character magically hides by crouching behind a counter or wheel of the car. I get it, it's a movie but c'mon.
So you watched the new Strangers movie too, huh?
😳😰
It would be, except that anyone fleeing trips and faceplants.
It's like that Geico commercial! Where 5 teenagers are being stalked by a serial killer and they pick the dumbest choices in the world to make to escape him and he just watches them scramble in stupidity as he stands there mystified. LOL
And a million different things to interrupt the pursuer's line of sight. And in the daytime a million woodland critters making a racket to cover the sound of the intended victim sneaking away. (Side question: How is it that squirrels sound like they're the size of bulldogs when they move around in the undergrowth?)
And tracking someone through the woods by their footprints, broken undergrowth etc not something you can just do without lots of practice, and certainly not while sprinting after your intended victim.
Felt the same way watching Wolf Creek
Depends so much on the type of trees, ground cover, soil, and lead time. You can move quickly on a trail, but so can the pursuer. Going off trail is slow and loud, and it can take awhile to be far enough off that you're unseen.
And when you are off trail, unless you know the place, you are now in danger of becoming lost. Often you cant see the path from off-trail, even if really close, so its easy to accidentally cross a trail or enter someones line of sight.
I do conservation monitoring which requires me to comb a forest off trail, and i track it. Im amazed that even when I try to take new routes the landscape funnels me into nearly the same route every time, despite no path.
When we think we are being aimless, we are likely following subtle clues like game trails, low brush, and contour lines. It makes sense that a pursuer would accidentally choose the same route
When i was a kid i got lost twice.My city is not exactly big but i still don't know how i could find my way to my house.Both times.And the second time was in the middle of the night.Maybe what you mention has something to do with it.
Damn. Good job! No, i think that's different, your subconscious knowing but not your active mind.
I'm talking about the landscape limiting off trail travel to select routes
Weird complaint, I'd rather watch the movie happen then people lost in the forest with nothing really happening.
There are ways to move the plot forward after someone escapes into the woods
It really depends on what movie you are thinking of. But usually not much is happening if the main characters are separated from each other in the forest and they can't find anyone. Because the killer or monster or whatever would have trouble finding them too sticking with your logic.
The entire movie would become about being lost in the woods and not whatever actual story the writer, director, etc. are actually interested in telling.
Just follow the noise.
Depends how big the forest is. In relatively urban areas a forest can be quite small.
I technically grew up with a forest out the back of my house but the specific area of the forest that was adjacent to my house, although it did connect to state park through a corridor if you headed West and crossed a river, was actually only about as big as a sports field at its thickest point. So like if you walked in a straight line through the forest out the back of my house you’d be in someone else’s backyard on the other side before you’d walked the length of a football field
So ridiculous. YOU CANT RUN FOREVER did the same thing. I thought after all the time JK Simmons was sitting in that car, surely that girl had a great head start but NOPE. 🙄
It’s not very hard to track someone running in the woods. Look for broken branches, disturbed ground, etc.
You're one of those people who says on slasher movies why not just move out go to another country LOL "It's a movie"
Not necessarily. Depends upon how much experience that person, the one doing the looking, has being in a forest.
For a forest ranger, hunting guide, biologist, hunter, or anyone who spends a lot of time in the outdoors, it would be easy.
Depends if they have a dog, or are a tracker.
…Make a movie where no one can find anyone in a tiny meadow; Child…
PLEASE MAKE THAT MOVIE
…I’ll wait to see your name on it.
Why do all of your Reddit comments follow a certain format with ellipses and semicolons and the word child?
…Child; are you feeling Square? Does it hurt…
I have literally never seen this happen in a movie. But I'm not much of a slasher person.
All the 80s slashers and the summer camp movies are like this.
Texas chainsaw remake (2003) is a good example.
I saw it yesterday in so yeah maybe it’s just a slasher thing. I wanna say I’ve seen it in other types of horror movies but I’m not sure honestly.
What was your opinion on it? I'm gonna see it with my Alist so it's guilt free if it's bad, but I've heard it's pretty boring.
I didn’t think it was boring. My biggest complaint was the characters make such terrible decisions it was kind of frustrating. Other than that it was like a reasonable remake of the first one. Nothing new but I enjoyed it.
Word good to hear. I heard it was all filmed as a mini series then they chopped it into 3 movies so I'm curious to see it.
The Strangers was not even on my radar. I've seen a few posts about it in here lately, but haven't even seen the trailer.
I guess it didn't grab my attention because the title sounds decidedly unsupernatural to me.
There's no supernatural element whatsoever.
Which is why it's so scary imo
Yes, that's what I thought.
One thing I don't get as well in real life it would be dead silent and so it would be really easy to find the general direction the person is running etc. Like forests are REALLY quiet. So if a character was to just hide in silence it would be so difficult to find them especially in the dark.
Funny you mention this, I just watched the movie Alone on Netflix and they were in a GIGANTIC forest, but somehow he always found her.