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Oh, the latrine of general anxiety.

The most egregious of all mirror scares is the useless mirror scare, and I hate it. It makes me seethe. Should I get angry at movies? No, it's an issue I'm working on by ensuring I only watch movies while petting a stuffed bunny to keep me cool. But this one is just dicktastical. The useless mirror scare occurs when the OH MY GOD etc appears in a mirror that the character in the film doesn't even see -- they're just passing the mirror or looking the other way or whatever. This happens in movies like Stir Of Echoes, which you knew sucked because Kevin Bacon never dances in it or even attempts to start dancing in it. In this case, the scare is solely for you, as a viewer. But who the fuck are you? I'm not actually in Kevin Bacon's house eating Skittles and drinking a gallon of Mr. Pibb; I'm doing that shit at home in my underwear. Don't stop the flow of the movie just to scare my ass, as I'll turn this hogwash off and watch funny dog videos on YouTube. I don't give a shit.

Lions Gate Entertainment

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Just two-step for a second so that we can get this shit over with, Kevin.

Again, this kind of scare is effective. If the scrotum-faced nun with bleeding gums shows up in a mirror all of a sudden, you'll jump, but you'd jump if someone woke you up by farting directly in your ear, too. It's not an actual part of the story, and it seems entirely pointless if you even consider it for a moment. If the ghost is here to torment the hero, why show up in a mirror that no one in the confines of that fictional universe is looking at? That's like baking a cake in the hopes someone whose birthday it is pops by for a visit. Unless the filmmakers in these instances are suggesting that the ghost really was trying to scare the hero but the hero just missed it and the ghost has shitty timing or aim or some such. If that's the case, let me know, Hollywood, so that I don't accidentally by a ticket to Mirrors 3: Inept Poltergeists.

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It's Spring Break! You know what that means! Hot coeds getting loose on the beaches of Cancun and becoming imperiled in all classic beach slasher ways: Man-eating shark, school of piranhas, James Franco with dreadlocks. There are so many films about vacations gone wrong, it's a chore to wonder if there's even such a thing as a movie vacation gone right. Amity Island and Camp Crystal Lake are out. So what does that leave? The ship from Wall-E? Hawaii with the Brady Bunch? A road trip with famous curmudgeon Chevy Chase? On this month's live podcast Jack O'Brien and the Cracked staff are joined by some special guest comedians to figure out what would be the best vacation to take in a fictional universe.

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