A Few Absolutely Useless Life Lessons Learned From Nostalgic Teen Horror Films

Always open the door to strange men and definitely hang out in shadowy areas when there's a serial killer on the loose.

I-Know-What-You-Did-Last-Summer

by Jess Commons |
Published on

In the best news we've heard so far today, it turns out a remake of I Know What You Did Last Summer is in the works. Putting aside the fact that the film's actually old enough to be remade (insert minor freak out about getting older and out of touch here), we’re basically just chuffed we've got an excuse to revisit all the ’90's horror flicks from our youth.

Here's a few life lessons we picked up from watching them that were 100% totally wrong.

**Always trust the new girl

**

Once the gang in The Faculty manange to get their heads around the implausible fact that alien insects are taking over their teachers’ brains (I mean literally anything could happen after that right?) they do the right thing in forming a group of uninfected teens to make sure they have each others’ backs right? But to trust the new girl who showed up *literally *as teachers started murdering each other to be in said group? C’mon now. Obviously ‘Marybeth’ turned out to be less adorable new girl and more queen overlord of an alien planet trying to take over Planet Earth. Maybe next time choose a government body to start your earth takeover rather than a local high-school alien friends? Just saying…

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Teen sex parties are nearly always a great idea

ICYMI (and there’s literally no excuse if you did), Cherry Falls was about the sleepy suburban town that was rocked when a serial murderer started targeting virgins as victims on his killing spree. Obviously now with hindsight the kids can probably see that the absolute worst thing to do to stop the murders would be to have a massive sex party in an abandoned house so all the virgins left in the town could lose their virginity and ergo be immune to the murder’s sadistic needs. Obviously, the murderer turned up to the party, and obviously he murdered like a million of them. FFS, guys. Amateur hour or what?

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Getting murdered is way better than spending a few years in prison

All the gang in I Know What You Did Last Summer needed to do to set the police on the right track was confess. Just confess. Sure they’d been drinking a couple of beers down and the beach when they hit that guy and tried to dispose of his not quite dead yet body (a life lesson in how to behave in itself) but once the first dude is murdered (weirdly played by Johnny Galecki of Big Bang Theory fame) surely the only thing to do is confess, set the police on the right track and have the whole thing cleared up in four to five years with minimal jail time. But, hey, if a series of grisly murders that wipes out an entire friendship group in a matter of days is how you want to play it? Go right ahead.

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Policemen are useless, don’t ever bother with them

Dewey Riley probably did less for the reputation of the police force than any news story about kettling. Time and time again over the course of the four Scream films, this halfwitted loon fails hard at the job he’s trained to do – only to be saved by a bunch of helpless teenagers. Sure he'd occasionally demonstate a moment of genius that did help to save the day in the end but if you were Neve Campbell would you expect your local friendly policeman to only be effective like, 10% of the time while you had to figure out the rest? I think not.

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** Follow Jess on Twitter @Jess_Commons**

This article originally appeared on The Debrief.

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