Horror Films and Shelly Syndrome, A Not Too Serious Look at Tropes.

I want to take a short break from talking about individual films, and talk about a concept that I have brought up in most of my overviews. That concept is “Shelly Syndrome”, a term I introduced in my discussion on Evil Dead 2. The term “Shelly Syndrome” (SS) comes from the idea that a character is used as a way to pad out runtime, and crank up a bodycount. This character will usually have little lines, and sometimes even less personality. It’s an idea that has been around the horror genre for decades, and while it has been present even…