Ten things I have learned from horror movies.

"If you step on a nail, that's gonna suck, but if you're scared enough, it's not gonna slow you down one bit."

Perhaps I am much more of a manly stud-boy than I was when I was ten years old, but at that age, an ill-placed bit of construction debris in an overgrown field found me with a rusty sixteen-penny nail pointing out the top of my chuck taylors and covered in my own blood. And I remember screaming, taking about four steps and falling over, and the next memory is being carried by my father, and the memory after that is the emergency room. And I'm pretty sure I was scared enough.

Also, if the House is trying to keep you inside by locking the doors and/or the evil Something has locked the doors so you can't go out them, go out the freaking windows, they are breakable. I don't know HOW many times I have been left saying, over and over, "There's a window right next to you. And a chair to throw through it. Or a television. OR EVEN YOURSELF." ARGH.

(I even had to deal with this in a videogame at least once. The superstrong character party was locked into a house! They couldn't get out! But there were FLOOR TO CEILING WINDOWS RIGHT BEHIND THEM. But NO, they had to search the room they were locked in for a POSSIBLE SECRET DOOR.)

That was actually the thing that made me adore Donna's mother in Doctor Who: when her dad was being gassed inside the car she smashed the damn windshield with a hammer. So sensible! So obvious!

This applies to action & scifi movies - heck, all genres - but I learned it from horror movies:

Do not run in a straight line away from the falling tree/car chasing you down the street/crashing spaceship/rolling boulder/etc. If it is coming at you in a straight line - if at all possible. DO NOT BE ON THAT STRAIGHT LINE!