Jump scares and a low budget bring in the big bucks for the horror genre. There’s no mistaking the appeal of a hastily thrown together studio cash cow. But sometimes a horror movie actually tries, and misfires.

5. Showing us your lame ass monster

The best example that comes to mind is Insidious. It is supposed to be a terrifying demon, and was one up until they showed his Sith Lord face. Anything the audience imagined when the demon was only a shadow in the night was far more compelling than the ridiculous cartoon they conjured up. Darth Maul was already a joke in his own franchise, why emulate this poor design? Pennywise from It subverted this and probably played a key role in a generation of clown phobias. He’s just the right mix of the innocuous and the unfathomable because what is seen on the surface is just the tip of the creepy iceberg. Consequently, Pennywise lost his charm as a giant spider. Unless your monster was designed by H.R. Giger, don’t show it to us in clear lighting. It can be a movie ruiner.

4. Relying on children to do your dirty work

There is absolutely nothing inherently scary about children. You could beat up a whole room full of kids. And even if they were zombies, as the comedy Cooties employs, they are still runty creatures of lesser cognitive development. If certain elements of childhood are used, such as the victims of Freddy chanting in a sing-song way that he’s coming to get you, then the juxtaposition can be effective. Child actors tend to be way too cute for these parts. Casting directors have to remember that they’re aiming for unsettling possessed scions of evil, not someone to model JC Penney catalog jeans.

3. Being out of touch with those damned millennials

Some horror scripts are written by people that have never interacted with a person below the age of 35. They sit in a board room in Burbank, vaguely speculating about the lives of teenagers. Having no grasp of current technology, they often fudge large portions of anything involving young people, mobile devices, and computers. The only people who regularly make conference calls are doing so for their corporate jobs and work with at least one Cheryl.

Old people are convinced that young people abuse emojis and chatspeak, yet it’s always Aunt Stacy on facebook who posts in all caps with “C” and “U” in place of words. Dammit, Stacy, stop posting Minion memes about how men won’t date you. If they know about hacking, they think a basement troll with a faux hawk can smash the keyboard and decrypt something that the global math and crytographic community hasn’t been able to figure out in months. Even TV series like Darknet, which rely on viewers to be somewhat internet savvy, have a bit of trouble with the basic portrayal of its subject matter.

2. Writing a radically unfaithful adaptation

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson has been adapted for screens four times, and four times have screenwriters shat on this beloved horror novel. These movies get made by riding on name recognition, and often have little to offer. The movie Lawnmower Man was supposedly based on a Stephen King short story. I read the story, and it’s about a satyr-like creature who is the embodiment of the Greek deity Pan. The movie resembles a scifi version of Flowers for Algernon much more – it’s about a man who goes from simpleton to hyper intelligent. Stephen King tried to legally remove his association with the film because of how far it missed the mark. Shows like The Walking Dead struggle with spreading out too little source material over too many episodes, making many episodes feel like nothing happens except for a cliff hanger ending. The adapters are often poor storytellers, wanting to surprise the audience with their own plot twists. Unfortunately they are not as clever as is necessary. Instead of taking a tried and true plot and adding flourishes, they trash it and keep only a few pieces, like the main character’s name. Did you know that the veiny zombies in I Am Legend were vampires in the book? Absolutely nobody asked for this change. Speaking of I am Legend…

1. Leaning on Post-Production and CGI

Javier Botet is the contortionist responsible for memorable horror favorites such as Mama and the Medeiros girl from [Rec]. He has very pronounced symptoms of Marfan syndrome, which have caused his limbs to be very thin and elongated. It is a pity that his performance in Mama was overshadowed by hideous CGI. Just like Michael Bay is guilty of washing his visuals in the orange/teal color scheme, horror film makers bathe their scenes in olive, sepia or dark blue. It’s ugly, it’s lazy, and I bet it costs a bunch of studio money for no payoff. CGI is for finishing off a polished product, not constructing what isn’t there, or fixing what you were too lazy to shoot.