The glaring problem with horror movie tropes...

[Doingtheboxerbeat]

It's always the women and children. Whether it's a haunted house or doll/teddy /clown toy or a demonic spirit - it mostly targets the child and no one believes them.
Or the same can happen with the mum and her husband doesn't believe her.

And then in the slasher ones , the primary target is the schoolgirl/cheerleader - so that's women and children combined.

What's worse about this, is that it's fictional so it all comes from someone's imagination , and they see us as societies fodder. I can't believe I haven't thought about this before .

And don't get me started on the black people in horror movies.

Anyone else agree?

I mean Final Girl is a trope but I think you are reading too much into this. I find just as many male and female victims but the final survivor tends to be a woman.

This is also true, the smart, sensible, studious type, but it's probably someone else's reaction to the above trope.

You say that...

But I feel like on Dead Meat there is often more a majority of Blue on the Pie Chart

There’s reams of study on women in horror and it’s not as straightforward as you’re making out. For one thing, women and children (and black people etc) are often victims of abuse by monstrous elements in society so why wouldn’t a horror dramatise that in a heightened way, which often allows for some kind of catharsis? You might as well ask why children are often the protagonists of dark fairytales, and it’s less about us getting off on kids in jeopardy than us identifying with them and following their arc, which again often has a redemptive element, even if the horror persists (as it does in life). Sure there are super basic horrors with little merit that are just about objectifying and gore, but often there’s a lot more to it and it’s a safe place to play out our nightmares, one of which is that we are society’s fodder, and this is a more gripping way to grapple with that than an earnest documentary or depressing drama. There’s also interesting work subverting tropes by female filmmakers and tomes like House of Psychotic Women that dig into the complexities if you’re interested in exploring beyond the surface rage.

In a way the trope of the woman who is disbelieved is subversive (or at least potentially subversive) in that it 'says the quiet part out loud' - i.e. it directly references the credence-deficit that society requires women to labour under.

It's an open acknowledgement that, if you are a woman, you are less likely to be believed, more likely to have your observations discounted as manifestations of craziness/trauma/gullibility/etc, more likely to mistrust your own perceptions (in the face of all the scepticism around you), and consequently more vulnerable to being gaslighted .
Similarly, the fact that so few male characters are put in this position in horror films squarely reveals their 'epistemic privilege' , the default assumption that what they perceive to be the case is the case.
I'm not enough of a horror nerd to be able to give good examples of feminist directors who exploit this accidental acknowledgement of epistemic injustice, but presumably there are several?

I'm a horror fan but it does frustrate me that, even in many of the films that purport to subvert some of the more obviously sexist tropes, when the camera lingers on a character's drawn-out fear it's almost always a woman.

Plenty of men are victims in horror and often in more gruesome ways but that extended shot of someone running, hiding, crying or being tortured by the killer or demon or whatever tends to be a woman.

Open to hearing of exceptions!

The final target is usually a woman, but plenty of men end up getting killed in the process, a lot of the time, at least, and there are lots of films, notably The Wicker Man, where the man is the main target. That being said, I do get your point, and a lot of horror veers into misogyny.

I haven't see too many where the kids are the main target, but rather where the kids are the scary thing, but I suppose it depends on what you watch.

What an amazingly insightful and intelligent post. I completely agree.

I love a good film but it pisses me off with women actors.
Especially when they are screaming i think why are screaming at this point love id be quite if i was you.