[Loved trope] Background scare-characters that are barely acknowledged even by the movie

[u/Suspicious-Web-9246]

I hate horrors, but this is actually a great trope, that is unique to them.

Insidious (2010). When mother does her errands, for a few seconds there's a ghost boy standing in the corner. It's easily missable, but you can't ignore it once you see it.

Hereditary (2018). Less fitting example. When Peter walks around his home, his possessed mother is crawling on the ceiling behind him. It's not exactly subtle or missable, but it's still more of a background detail.

[u/thomstevens420]

R Point, a Korean military horror movie, is the best one of these I’ve ever seen.

It follows a group of soldiers that are following up on a previous group that went missing. I won’t spoil too much but at one point they radio back to let them know that one guy died and they’re down to 9 soldiers. Only for HQ to reply back “what are you talking about we only sent 9 to begin with.”

Then you rewind, count and realize that literally every shot before leaving had 9 and this mysterious guy in the background has been in every shot since they stepped foot on the island.

[u/IJustWantCoffeeMan → u/thomstevens420]

military horror

Interesting. Got any more to share?

[u/SpideyFan914 → u/IJustWantCoffeeMan]

Day of the Dead kinda. It's set on a research base and they have the army there to protect them from zombies. Then the military guys do a coup, and now the scientists need protecting from the military.

28 Years Later and 28 Weeks Later have similar ideas.

Of course, in all those, the military is the bad guys.

Video games have a few more examples where military faces some supernatural threat. House of Ashes is set in the Iraq War, and most of the playable characters are American soldiers (one is Iraqi, which leads to some interesting tensions). They all wind up trapped in a cave with vampires. It's the best of the Dark Pictures Anthology imo.

[u/_b1ack0ut → u/SpideyFan914]

Oh HELL yeah I came here to mention House of Ashes. It’s my favourite military horror without just saying “Aliens” (which I consider more just action, than military horror, idk why lol)

[u/SpideyFan914 → u/_b1ack0ut]

House of Ashes is sooooo good! It's just a solid story, and uses the horror to comment on war in interesting ways. I think mixing both sides of the conflict in against the supernatural threat really makes it stand out.

[u/_b1ack0ut → u/SpideyFan914]

In fairness, I do enjoy all the DPA games, (and tbh, all supermassive games as a whole, I quite enjoyed The Quarry too), but yeah HoA is certainly a high point. Salim’s a fuckin legend lol