How to Survive a Horror Movie

put the car in "d" set the compass to "n" and get the "f"out of there

Some people say "if we split up,we can cover more ground"-with blood

So I suggest you stick close, pay attention, and avoid breaking the Terrorverse's only commandment: Thou shall not be stupid.

if you're a teenaged babysitter caring for a mute toddler in a remote Maine cabin during a once-in-a-century blizzard while and escaped killers (bearing a strange resemblance to the handicapped boy you and your friends bulled of an embankment and left for dead all those years ago) roams the woods, you're probably in a horror movie.

From this moment on, nothing is what it seems. You're not a human being, you're a character- and filmmakers are doing everything in their power to kill you even now. Supernatural powers and curses are real, and numbers like 666 and 237 can kill you just as easily as a butch knife. Log cabins are slaughterhouses, cornstalks are antennas for evil, and aliens never, ever come in peace.

In the real world, babysitting is a groovy way for young people to learn responsibility (and earn a little pocket money). In the Terrorverse, it's a plot device used to kill teenagers.

10 PLACES TO NEVER, EVER, EVER GO UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES Rooms lit by a single hanging light bulb. Rooms lit by nothing. Any graveyard that isn’t Arlington National Cemetery. Summer camps whose annual counselor murder rate exceeds 10 percent. Maine. “The old_____________.” Hotels/motels that aren’t part of giant international chains. Upstairs. Downstairs. Any log cabin anywhere on the face of the earth.

Big budget. Really? If you are in a horror flick, it’s almost certainly alien or satanic in nature. But it’s more likely that you’ve made the common mistake of misdiagnosing a “psychological thriller” as a horror movie. If so, heed this advice: If you’re looking for your child, he/she probably never existed. Also: your husband did it.

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

Sloths. There's actually nothing to suggest sloths are evil, but seeing as they're the only animal named after a deadly sin, it's probably best to avoid them.

Mess with Texas. No live human being could mess with Texas. If you succeed in messing with Texas, it's a sure bet you're as dead as a Junebug in July.

And so I wrote this book as a tribute to these most pathetic of creatures, in hopes that I might succeed in two noble pursuits: 1) helping even one person meet the horror movie odds, and 2) avoid being evicted from my apartment for back rent.

Someone gave it to me as a gift.” Yikes. Getting a book called How to Survive a Horror Movie as a gift? That’s like your spouse signing you up for life insurance “which you’ll probably never even need.

Anything with a beat is meat,

This house … is clean. —POLTERGEIST (1982)

Minions of Satan don’t react well to the Eucharist.

Depart then, impious one! Depart, accursed one! Depart with all your deceits, for God has willed that man should be his temple!

The Catholic Church created strict guidelines for the rite of exorcism back in 1614—guidelines that have remained largely unchanged in 400 years. However, one notable amendment came in 1952, when priests were warned not to confuse mental illness with demonic possession

According to the laws of early twenty-first century cinema, anyone speaking Japanese is in a horror movie.