A floorboard creaks, a low demonic whisper beckons our heroine. Her hand trembling, holding her breath, the young girl slowly inches her door open and peers out. Armed with the light on her phone or flashlight, she steps outside to investigate, while you, the audience, scream inwardly at her stupidity.

Why does she have to go out where she knows for sure is some unearthly weirdo lying in wait for her? They’ve left enough clues: the handprint on a foggy mirror, her things knocked off her nightstand, and you know, choking her as she sleeps.

We’ll tell you why. She’s cried and yelled and complained and thrown up and snotted all over her parents/friends/siblings, and they think she’s just on her period. Perpetually. Young girl – or older woman – most likely stressed; of course, she’s hallucinating rather hysterically.

Behind every final girl is a man who didn’t pay attention to what she was saying. And sometimes sassy moms and sisters. However, while mom and sister and friend might come around sooner than later, it takes at least one death to make a believer out of dad/ brother/ boyfriend.

Here you may argue that over time, women in horror have taken the lead in combating monsters both real and imagined. We’ve got Laurie Strode from the Halloween franchise, and Sidney Prescott from Scream, but while the former created the final girl trope, the latter played on it in an attempt to flip it.

A final girl is always smart, she is responsible, possibly a virgin or at least not promiscuous. While we’re all for this trope, because at least the female lead is not some waif with a haunted doll she has become too attached to, it just sets a different kind of example for what kind of people may or may not defeat the forces of darkness at their best, and simply survive at their worst. It also frustrates us, because this absolute pillar of her school, community, friend’s group tries to make people understand that there is something happening that doesn’t feel right, and they simply brush her off as paranoid (or on her period, as it is one and the same).

Let’s examine some releases in the recent past, and you will recognize the theme that runs through all of them.

Things Heard And Seen (2021) sees couple Catherine and George move into a new home where she senses the presence of another being, whom her child actually sees, only to be dismissed by George as stressed and bulimic.

In Aftermath (2021), Kevin and Natalie try to salvage their marriage by moving into a new home which was a total steal, as the result of the murder-suicide that took place there. Natalie feels stalked by something that is not entirely human or explicable and is dismissed by Kevin because of her strained mental health.

2016’s Within is quite similar to the aforementioned: with the adults or men hiding the reason they got the house dirt-cheap (always murder-suicide), and the women and children complaining about being creeped on and scared.

Flip through any horror film with a new house, or a mysterious baby (The Omen – 1976) or doors slamming open by themselves, and you will find people who believe and those who dismiss them, and then a bunch of gory deaths.

At the most, the flakiest character will believe our protagonist, which takes away even more credibility from their assertions. All of this was best explored in Cabin In The Woods (2011), which everyone should just watch as a quick Horror 101 lesson.

Horror is really such a good allegory for life: you have to stay calm, you have to play fair, and you have to listen when people talk to you. If someone is telling you they are uneasy about a situation, feel scared, or outright like they are in danger, pay attention. Yes, they may be stressed, depressed, or even on their period sometimes, but if someone is trying to communicate, you have to listen.

Don’t wait for your (hypothetical) wife to be thrown out of a window by a satanic nanny or your house and dog to burn down, or for you to lose people important to you before you think, ‘oh crap, maybe I should have listened’.

Horror is really such a good allegory for life: you have to stay calm, you have to play fair, and you have to listen when people talk to you. If someone is telling you they are uneasy about a situation, feel scared, or outright like they are in danger, pay attention. Yes, they may be stressed, depressed, or even on their period sometimes, but if someone is trying to communicate, you have to listen.