Why Does No One In Horror Movies Believe The Female Protagonist? – HuffPost

Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Invisible Man.

Theres a horror-movie trope that drives me nuts, and I need to talk about it. Here goes: No one believes the protagonist being haunted, stalked and/or unnerved until its too late. The doubters almost always die or turn out to be the villains perpetuating the terror, making their disbelief an annoying contrivance. And yet horror movies are obsessed with this dynamic, even reliant on it, especially if the protagonist is a woman.

Take The Invisible Man, which debuted at No. 1 this weekend. Leigh Whannells contemporary spin on H.G. Wells 1897 novel casts Elisabeth Moss as Cecelia Kass, a San Francisco architect who flees an abusive boyfriend (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) in the dead of night. The boyfriend, Adrian, is a wealthy visionary in the field of optics. After ostensibly committing suicide and leaving Cecelia his fortune, a spectral Adrian starts showing up in the invisibility suit hed engineered. He injures her, drugs her, jeopardizes her important job interview, murders her sister (and a bunch of other people) and gets Cecelia committed to a mental ward. She insists Adrian faked his death, but no one Cecelia encounters buys a word she is saying, instead assuming shes suffering some kind of trauma-related breakdown.

This sort of incredulity has become a narrative fallback thats rarely deployed judiciously, serving mostly to create artificial conflict among otherwise civil characters, or else to paint a womans anxiety as improbable.

Universal PicturesElisabeth Moss in "The Invisible Man."

Theres never any doubt that Cecelia is being haunted. Within about 20 minutes, we see her interact with Adrians ghostlike form. But the movie leaves everyone else, including her childhood friend (Aldis Hodge) and his college-bound daughter (Storm Reid), to assume Cecelia is going crazy, which seems like an unfair way to treat a woman who has made clear that her ex is a hyper-controlling bully capable of loathsome deeds.

And thats the thing. Horror movies often feature female protagonists, and often those women are surrounded by people who impugn her soundness of mind. Theres some realism to this device: Historically speaking, women who make allegations of battery, assault or intimidation havent been heard. The Invisible Man is certainly tapping into Me Too-adjacent gender constructs, but it diminishes some of its own heft by having Cecelias friends and relatives play the same shes mad! notes again and again. Moreover, these fatty redundancies weigh down the plot. Whenever someone challenged Cecelias integrity, I wanted to scream, Get on with it! Theres haunting to be had!

Mistrust isnt unique to the supernatural. Just about every serial-killer movie has someone who refuses to heed warnings about the roving maniac in question. The detective (Chris Sarandon) in Childs Play could have saved a lot of time if hed believed Karen (Catherine Hicks) when she warned him about evil little Chucky. Monster flicks have a similar tendency, as evidenced in Aliens, which opens with male executives doubting Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) when she tells them she spotted extraterrestrial eggs. The trope is so common that entire psychological thrillers are premised on malicious men making their wives seem unreliable, as in What Lies Beneath and Double Jeopardy.

Michael Ochs Archives via Getty ImagesCatherine Hicks in "Child's Play."

Not to be all Kumbaya about it, but if the audience knows the protagonist is telling the truth, arent things more fun, more invigorating and more spine-tingling when others at least play along? Like in Rear Window, when a photographer (James Stewart) spying on his murderous neighbor (Raymond Burr) recruits his girlfriend (Grace Kelly) for his amateur investigation. Or in It Follows, which dares to imagine a group of young friends willing to help their pal (Maika Monroe) when she reveals shes being stalked by an entity only she can see.

Of course, sometimes the protagonists isolation is the whole point, and thats a different circumstance. A prime example is Rosemarys Baby, wherein the titular mother-to-be (Mia Farrow) suspects her husband (John Cassevetes) is colluding with Satanists eyeing her unborn child. Rosemary is segregated amid a cabal of scoundrels, pointedly told her fears are unmerited. No one not even her doctors respects her point of view, presenting womanhood as inherently perilous. Because we immediately sense that Rosemarys suspicions are true, the story derives suspense from her inability to find help.

CBS Photo Archive via Getty ImagesMia Farrow in "Rosemary's Baby."

Sometimes I wonder if horror-movie characters like Cecelias friends have never watched horror movies. Dont they know that the person who doubts is the person who dies? That gaslighters are always villains?

Now I know what youre thinking: Would you believe someone who said, with manic frenzy, that her deceased partner is tormenting her? To which I say, sure, why not? What cant be disproven cant be disqualified. Maybe more people should believe loved ones who say theyre being haunted. (Just a suggestion!) Anyway, even if youre not sold on the whole ghosts thing, this is a movie were dealing with.

Its not the sheer disbelief thats the problem; its the ubiquity of that disbelief. Nearly halfof Americansthink spirits, demons and other metaphysical beings are real, yet so many horror films depend on characters whose companions and local law enforcement dont trust them. Making matters worse, they present womens despair as hysterical. Runny mascara and quivering intonations are somehow shortcuts to implausibility.

Maybe in an age influenced by Me Too and misinformation, more thrillers can skip this oft-unnecessary friction, especially something like The Invisible Man, which aims to shift power from the abuser to the abused. Maybe its time to believe the ghosts.

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Why Does No One In Horror Movies Believe The Female Protagonist? - HuffPost