Get Out feels rational to me: the protagonist is smart and keen, he doesn’t follow the title’s wise advice as soon as he might but it’s understandable (he doesn’t want to ruin what he thinks is his shot at being well-liked by what he hopes will be his future in-laws), and in general there’s no big Idiot Ball moment for anyone I can think of.
Cabin in the Woods is a very thorough and very funny deconstruction of the typical “bunch of teens in an isolated location get picked off by some evil entity” plot, and it has a lot of intelligent meta commentary about the genre as well as characters smarter than average (in fact, there’s a plot point that lampshades their usual stupidity in similar movies instead).
Happy Death Day is perhaps not terribly rational but it’s a Groundhog Day style loop about a girl getting killed over and over again by some mysterious maniac, so obviously it’s a very puzzle-like kind of story. Dodge the sequel though, that one’s awful.
I’m not a particular fan of horror, but:
Get Out feels rational to me: the protagonist is smart and keen, he doesn’t follow the title’s wise advice as soon as he might but it’s understandable (he doesn’t want to ruin what he thinks is his shot at being well-liked by what he hopes will be his future in-laws), and in general there’s no big Idiot Ball moment for anyone I can think of.
Cabin in the Woods is a very thorough and very funny deconstruction of the typical “bunch of teens in an isolated location get picked off by some evil entity” plot, and it has a lot of intelligent meta commentary about the genre as well as characters smarter than average (in fact, there’s a plot point that lampshades their usual stupidity in similar movies instead).
Happy Death Day is perhaps not terribly rational but it’s a Groundhog Day style loop about a girl getting killed over and over again by some mysterious maniac, so obviously it’s a very puzzle-like kind of story. Dodge the sequel though, that one’s awful.