On the web show "Welcome to the Basement", for the 2015 Christmas episode, Matt and Craig watched the holiday horror film "Black Christmas". Some months back, I saw this episode (indeed, I saw the episode shortly after it was uploaded), and afterwards I came across a quiz of "What Horror Movie Character Are You?" I took the quiz, and my results are as follows:
My character is the wrongfully accused weirdo. The audience is led to believe that I was the killer through most of the movie. My chances of survival aren't good; while I might survive the first movie, if there's a sequel, I will be dead for sure by the end of that.
Considering myself as a movie character, and especially as a character in this role, that does sound about right - the not surviving the sequel part. What strikes me as being the most-likely course of events is this: following the events of the first film, I am overwhelmed with feelings of resentment towards the people around who had falsely accused me of wrongdoing. This resentment gradually morphs into outright paranoia, and in the years (I'm figuring a few years go by in-between movies) that passed in the movie-verse between the two films, I degenerate into mildly-crazed kook. This really doesn't help my case when the killings start up again.
I figure my death will take place about halfway through the film (based on the idea that I did survive the first film). I've work out who the killer is, but am killed shortly thereafter, and was only able to leave a few cryptic notes behind that will point the main characters in the right direction. At first, these notes are dismissed as nothing more than the scribbles of a lunatic gone off the deep end. It isn't until about 2/3's of the way through the film that people really start to take my notes seriously.
The reason I was reminded of this quiz was that there was a question that stuck with me. The question was to select a murder weapon; one of the options was a garage door. Now, I imagine that a garage door has been used as a murder weapon in a horror movie (I don't have the slightest idea which one). However, I just don't see a garage door as being a murder weapon. Admittedly, my opinion on this matter is heavily biased by the fact that the garage door (or at least the mechanism that raises the door) for our garage is, pardon my language, utter crap.
You press the button on the opener, the door will rise up about halfway, then come to a shuddering halt. Press the button again, the door lowers back to the ground. Press the button a third time, and the door rises up again, except this time you put your hand underneath the door and are applying upward pressure to keep the door moving so it can get all the way up!
We had someone come out to fix the garage door (or the mechanism) a few weeks back, which is why I was thinking of garage doors, which led me to think of this quiz, and also about the impracticality of a garage door as a murder weapon.
I realize that we, the audience, are expected to suspend our disbelief to a certain extent. Things happen that are unrealistic or impractical; that is to be expected from movies (with the possible exception of documentaries). Film-makers may take a few creative liberties with science and machines, and are banking on the fact that of the people watching, about 75% won't know that that's not how that works or would go, and of those who do, about 90% won't care enough to write in and complain that they did it wrong. There is always the small but vocal minority of whiners; that, sadly, is a constant across pretty much everything.
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