Question for the folks complaining about characters doing stupid things

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I agree that stupid character tricks are the basis of many horror movies, and I fully expect a character to do something dumb that gets them into trouble, but it seemed over the top in this one... I mean each character just kept doing stupid over and over and over.

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Are you guys new to horror or something? Characters doing stupid sh!t that ends up getting them killed has been a ubiquitous plot device in horror at least since the 1960s. If someone had a problem with that it seems odd they'd be much of a horror fan in the first place.

I have to agree that the characters were doing stupider stuff than your average horror movie. I've seen smarter characters in a SyFy original movie. Examples:

--you see a guy with a bloody axe walking toward you. Instead of running, you walk up to him and ask what he's doing?

--you find the bloody corpse of your partner hanging from a ceiling, yet you don't draw your gun?

--you see a crazy man on the roof of a car, instead of shooting him when you attacks you, you let him kill you?

--you're a police officer and you see a person being attacked five feet away from you. Instead of shooting the attacker, you stare with your mouth open?

I could list dozens more. But I think you get the point. The stupidity of these characters was so off the wall that I can't shrug my shoulders and say, "Meh. It's a horror movie".

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The issue was these characters took stupidity to a whole new level. I can't think of a horror movie where the HERO murders someone for trying to kill the monster. Or where the heroine hands the monster a shotgun?

Stuff like that is what ruined it for me. I get say... your typical Friday the 13th victim isn't a genius, but come on! They aren't THAT dumb

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I'd say the tone has a lot to do with it.

Doing something stupid doesn't just further the plot, it gives you a reason to root against the victims. So in that sense, doing stupid things in a horror movie is like having sex, doing drugs, etc. It makes it 'okay' for them to die.

The problem is, with Perkins' 14, the main character is sympathetic. He's ruined by the loss of his child, we see him sobbing in anguish, trying to protect his family, etc. All that strips away any sense that we're in for a "wild ride" with lots of dumb, fun splatter. The lead character more human than your average pack of dead teenagers, more sympathetic, grounded and real.

So, since he's not drawn as an idiot caricature walking victim for the first half of the movie, it's really weird to see him and all the others basically lose all sense of self-preservation in the final act. It's like the writer couldn't figure out how to keep the plot going, so he just had everyone do really uncharacteristically stupid things.

The problem is essentially a tonal shift. If the characters were dumb all the way through, most of us wouldn't have noticed. But here it's like after the second act they develop a grudge against self-preservation.

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