Juliet Bennett Rylah is a writer and editor for a number of news outlets, including We Like L.A. and The LAnd Magazine, but is also an avid horror movie enthusiast.
One day, she noticed how many movies have this pretty obvious (and somewhat ridiculous) theme of sexually aroused men being seduced by murderous women (or murderous female monsters) and then, surprise, murdered to death. Or transformed into vampires. Victimized, the word I was looking for was victimized.
So, she went to Twitter to share some of her observations regarding this trope, saying “Men in horror movies are always like wow, a sexy lady just emerged from the woods/bog/cave/lake etc. and wants to kiss me? Nothing suspicious about this!”
Rylah mentions a number of films (and dumb horny men in them), including Trick 'r Treat, It Follows, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Hellraiser, and many more.
Each tweet also included some hilarious comments and remarks from Rylah herself. Most of the time, she voices what’s going on in the minds of the male characters before their impending doom, but there are also other comments like her saying where she herself would have probably died.
Rylah also provided some context on how there are also mythologies that are based on seducing men:
“The baobhan sith gets you when you have horny thoughts. The patasola gets you in the wilderness. The sayona gets cheaters. A lot of sexy monsters are just hungry. The folklore is to try to encourage you to NOT be seduced by a sexy monster, but as many of you have shown… you are horny for monsters.”
She did, however, also point out that this list doesn’t say that all men in real life make poor decisions—it merely points out how a trope was used repeatedly in ridiculous ways.
Many people found this to be a rather entertaining list. Rylah’s Twitter thread made some headlines and garnered over 28,000 likes with over 5,000 retweets.
Many in the comments pointed out some other movies that used this same trope, adding to the list of dumb guys in horror films, while others were discussing the nuances of the genre.
You can check out more by going to Rylah’s Twitter thread, but before you go, let us know what you thought about this in the comment section!
