12 Feet Deep - Two idiots decide they absolutely positively MUST go swimming in a pool after it's closed. An incredibly contrived sequence of events happens so they get stuck in a pool. So the movie can happen.
Frozen (not that one) - Three idiots decide they absolutely positively MUST get on a ski-lift after it's closed. To the point of bribing the operator who for some stupid reason doesn't say anything. Do the movie can happen. Also, Wolves are not that aggressive. They are typically shy and avoid humans.
47 Meters Down- Arguably the most believable scenario on this list. It's still really stupid.
Fall- Two idiots decide to climb an abandoned radio tower without proper equipment that would make escaping their predicament trivially easy. Stop me if you've heard this one before
The film revolves around a couple who is trapped in a 6 meter deep pool after the water is drained out. Their situation worsens when a crocodile enters the pool with them.
Open Water 2: Adrift: Everyone jumps off a yacht for a swim without lowering the ladder first, leaving a baby alone onboard while six adults are trapped in the water. The entire movie happens because nobody remembered the boat has really high sides. So the movie can happen.
I really hate the koth episodes where hanks friends act like absolute morons, Hank is seen as the antagonist, and then he saves everyone. Just fraustrating to sit through. Still, a million times better than a Peggy episode.
So about that. People jumping off a yacht in the middle of the ocean and forgetting to put down the ladder is the only one of these scenarios I have ever heard of actually happening.
I honestly don't get why there isn't another ladder that doesn't need to be deployed. Just a simple set of bars attached to outside of the hull somewhere. It would be slippery at the bottom but it's better than not having any way to get on the boat.
Yeah, you should realistically always have someone on board, whether it’s staff or not. Even anchored boats can float fairly far away, and it can happen a lot quicker than you’d expect, especially when you’re in the water distracted.
The first movie is actually not that much of a stupid scenario, which the protagonists are not the actual idiots, they go on a deep-diving excursion in the middle of the ocean and by accident they get left behind by the crew who took them there.
The original is less contrived and actually based on a real life tragedy: a couple gets separated from their scuba group and, due to improper safety procedures, the boat leaves without them leaving them stranded in the middle of the ocean.
Iirc, the boat left without them in the first one.
Edit: in fact, the “sequel” was actually written before—and had nothing to do with—the original movie. But when the original movie was very successful ($55 million on a $500k budget), they slapped the name on an existing script, made the movie, and released it.
The sequel made $6 million on a $1 million budget, so they did it again a decade or so later after 47 Meters came out and made $60 million. They slapped the Open Water name on another movie about a shark cage and released it. But the third movie made less than $1 million, so it’s probably done now.
Especially the one on the radio tower. I've seen enough videos of daredevils climbing towers like that or skyscrapers without any gear just to show they can.
I was yelling at the TV for like half of that movie lol.
I wasn't even a 'pro' climber, I just knew the basics of how to properly explore remote/abandoned places. I just couldn't believe someone would actually bring the equipment they did yet not know how to use it.
Like, did they just look up a list on Google or something and then go "Okay, this looks good!"
irl that’s only gonna get more and more realistic from here
“Hey __(AI assistant)__, what equipment do I need to climb a cell tower?”
“To climb a cell tower, you’ll want a harness, proper clothing, ropes, and carabiners.”
“Where can I get carabiners?”
“You can purchase carabiners at any retail store such as Walmart, Home Depot, or your local hardware store for less than ten dollars.”
And stuff like that. For those who are unaware, cheap carabiners you use for keychains are NOT the type of carabiners that you use for climbing. Regular carabiners are not rated to hold the weight of a person and will be perfectly happy to snap and drop you to your death
There's a real life version of this. Dude was a freeclimber who would do shit like do pull-ups at the tops of towers. Well one time (while filming for this followers), he didn't have the energy to pull himself back up and couldn't get a good grip with his feet. He fell off the tower, landed on a ledge about 40-50 feet below, and died. No one even knew until the next day when a window cleaner found him. Sounds like a plot from the show "911".
In defense of the film's protagonist, she was in a terrible mental state due to her husband's death; it was her friend (who had a secret affair with her husband) who coerced her into it, which is also quite idiotic on the part of the friend to take a woman in a poor mental state to an unprotected tower.
In the defense of Frozen-not-that-one, the lift operator leaves (for the life of me I can't remember why) and tells another operator who takes his place that there are still a few people up there. He sees a couple of stragglers come down the mountain and assumes that's what the other guy meant, so he shuts it down.
No, the bosses were forcing him to work the next weekend which he had already requested off. So his friend covered for him while he ran off to deal with that. Friend then was an idiot.
And not just a few it was specifically three people. Then unfortunately for the main characters the guy didn’t know another three people were already on their way down so it was six people the new guy needed to wait for before shutting the ski lift.
This like my favorite trope. I can't get enough of it. I don't know why, but movies about people getting stuck in dumb places are my jam. And yes, I am looking forward to the whale movie.
Only reason i'm not going to watch that movie is because of thalassophobia. It's interesting premise although physically impossible. Even blue whales gullet is only a size of a grapefruit.
The whale in the movie is a sperm whale which is a toothed whale that can swallow humans whole.
They just don’t hunt humans
Killer whales(even tho they are dolphins but being honest most dolphins are closely related to whales)
Are also able to shallow humans whole.
Now would the movie actually happen?From the plot given it’s actually possible.The whale isn’t actually hunting the human, the human just got in the way of a hunt and thus got crossed on the crossfire.
I dive and actually got certified for rescue diving on the beach he gets eaten at.
It’s ludicrous and I don’t know how to feel about it. Part of me what’s to watch it from a b movie perspective but another part of me just wants to shake my head and sigh
Yeah same here. I love the “trapped in a small, single location” stories. Especially when you’ve got a strong lead that is capable of carrying the entire story on their own. I think I’ve seen pretty much all of these types of movies because I’ve run out of new ones to find.
That said; for whatever reason I’m not a fan of the many “trapped on water and sharks are circling” tropes. I don’t know why. I love the trapped aspect, I like the being stranded at sea aspect, but add a shark to the mix and it doesn’t interest me.
I thought frozen was good and entertaining. I do agree that the wolves being aggressive was dumb but thats like sharks being agressive, its just movie logic.
He did not try to talk his dad out of it. The misinfo specifically was that he was scared to go but went to make his dad happy - which came from an estranged aunt who ran to the media before we even knew what became of the divers, who proceeded to write a book about it immediately after.
The mother said that she gave up her seat so her son, who loved the Titanic, really wanted to go. The son had even brought a Rubik's Cube with him because he wanted to set a record for fastest solve at the deepest depth. One of the documentaries about the disaster even shows his Titanic memorabilia, including a mounted Titanic LEGO display kit.
I'd also like to add that, while I would in no way say I think trusting this was a smart decision, the CEO lied his ass off about how safe it was and the whole venture was given an air of legitimacy by having a very famous Titanic expert, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, attending, which he had done before.
Fun fact, the scene where the whale eats the guy was completely improvised. It was just supposed to be a movie about a guy peacefully scuba diving, but then the actor portraying the whale just went crazy and ate him and the director decided to just keep filming instead of helping.
I remember seeing the trailer for this a few days ago and was kinda interested when I realised it was a movie about the horrors of the ocean…
Then the squid came along… then they both got swallowed by the whale… then I realised it was a survival story about fighting a squid inside of a whale’s stomach… and then the dumbest title ever showed up.
To be fair about the title, a whale fall is an actual term for a whale carcass that sinks to the ocean floor creating a whole ecosystem of things that feed on it.
I read the book. Other than a pretty wild case of wrong place wrong time, the author went out of the way to make the premise as plausible as possible.
sperm whale is one of the only whales capable of swallowing a human (has to be unusually big whale and small human, but possible)
it's an accident while hunting its actual prey, a struggling, fighting giant squid
the tight space, crushing muscles, limited air supply, complete darkness, stomach acid, multiple digestive chambers are all accounted for and the source of all the tension and problems
Where it really lost me was the pseudo-religious near-death-experience of the character's missing dead dad helping him out and also maybe the dad is the whale.
So I work at a theater where we have servers that have to be in the theater for most of the movie. I also have a phobia of whales. This trailer took me by surprise and I am really hoping I don't have to work it.
As I recall, in “Frozen,” the chair lift was being shut off early due to inclement weather. The operator was relieved and told their replacement three people were still on the lift. The latter mistakes three other skiers for the main trio and shuts down the lift without doing their due diligence.
Also, while certainly more rare than say bear attacks, wolf attacks on humans aren’t unheard of, either, especially when the latter are wounded and bleeding as was this case in this movie. They’re more likely to go after someone in the latter scenario.
While admittedly the whole plot is a bit contrived on paper, it could definitely happen in real life.
I can’t handle the fact that this movie ends with the survivor sending a letter to the survivor of the first fall about doing another free climb like it’s a goddam marvel movie
I'm still just in awe at the level of logistics-tracking the writers pulled off in able to make the situation happen without feeling contrived. Everything lined up just right to leave Kevin home alone.
I feel like it's a good example of the "swiss-cheese" model of disasters. Yeah, lots of things had to go wrong for the accident to happen...just that occasionally they do all line up, and you never hear (or make movies about) the times when they didn't.
Guy decides to parachute onto the devil's tower as a publicity stunt, his plan to get back down is for a rope dropped out of an airplane to land on devils tower so he could use it to get down, rope misses, he spends a week on top having supplies air dropped to him(apparently it was a very special rope that couldn't be arranged quickly enough to try dropping him another rope) until a rescue could be organized:
https://www.nps.gov/deto/learn/historyculture/first-fifty-years-george-hopkins.htm
Protagonist is swallowed by a sperm whale and somehow survives. Since sperm whales don’t eat humans, it’s written into the plot that he got stuck in a giant squid’s tentacles and then the whale ate it.
If you’re gonna be this over the top, could at least have named him Jonah or Geppetto
couldn't you just lie on your back in the first one? it seems like there is basically enough room for your body, and if that's tarp then you can push it out a bit more. On flat unmoving water you can float basically indefinet to the point of falling asleep and being okay, so just do that? Biggest danger of water is the water itself moving above you so you need to struggle to be alive, but not sure how I see the danger here
Edit: I just noticed the floaty ring line thing in the background that make up the 'roads' of the pool, literally hang onto them and relax lmao what is this movie
Haven't seen it either so I skimmed the Wikipedia synopsis, and it's not that they are trapped there for one night, they're apparently being kept there by somebody maliciously over more than one night and at one point the cleaning system is turned on and they could get suffocated by chlorine.
I've actually watched it (don't... It's not good) and IIRC they're actually stuck there for potentially a full season because the pool is closed for the winter holidays or something. Drowning isn't their biggest issue, starvation, thirst, and hypothermia are.
Someone knows they're trapped there and is deliberately fucking with them instead of just getting them help.
Even then, if the pool WAS closed for winter, that wouldnt mean the pool doesn’t need maintenance. Either it would need to be drained or constantly monitoring its pH levels so that you don’t get a nasty surprise coming spring.
My man, I don't expect you to believe me, but that isn't even the stupidest part of the movie.
The stupidest part is when they decide to stab the thief who, while she is fucking with them, is LITERALLY THE ONLY PERSON THAT KNOWS THEY ARE TRAPPED, leading to her almost killing them with a cleaning cycle.
And I know what you're thinking - "how did they stab her when they're trapped in a pool? That must be very stupid in and of itself" and you are correct, sir
It's been s while since I watched it, but she was diabetic or whatever and was about to pass out from low blood sugar. Probably would have been fine otherwise. Just hungry and a little cold when they get out.
You can very much get hypothermia in an indoor pool. It's colder than your body and draws out heat much much faster than air. 12 hours in an unheated pool would be very dangerous, with no way to get food. The water is also chlorinated, so you wouldn't even want to drink that.
You’re assuming these stories haven’t actually happened before OP, which shows you have a very optimistic opinion of the intelligence of thrill seeking idiots.
Seriously. OP seems too naive to have too much faith in people's brain. That, and if read enough news you know just the right amount of bad luck can get you into any unfortunate scenario irl.
Anyway, for op's prompt, I vote 127 Hours. (Oh, wait...)
Backcountry. It’s essentially a PSA on what NOT to do to avoid a bear attack disguised as a thriller movie. One of the main characters breaks every single rule in the book and gets eaten by the bear. It’s a pretty gnarly scene though, and kudos to the filmmakers for not overly-relying on CGI.
Rich morons decided to go on a tiny submarine vehicle operated by a gaming controller to visit the titanic...oh wait that wasn't a movie that was real.
There's a Bollywood movie called Trapped where a bachelor dude moves into an apartment on the top floor in a vacant high rise building that is still under construction because the cost is cheap, making him the only occupant in that building. One day, while hurrying to get to a date, he leaves his keys outside the apartment's door, and a gust of wind makes the door shut with hs keys outside. He is now essentially locked within that apartment, his phone is out of charge, intense rains and faulty wiring (since the building's still under construction) cause a loss of electricity, and there's no one who can hear or see him for miles due to high his flat is in that tall vacant building.
The story goes into how he is stranded there as the water and food supply dwindles out, causing him to feed on insects that roam around at his place, try to hurl his furniture from the building to make people try to save him, scrawl a help letter in his own blood and throw it from the window, burn his clothes in hopes that the fire alerts people, and ultimately make an escape by scaling down the high rise building without any ropes or harness, which can lead to his death.
The movie funnily tried to circumvent the whole guard thing by showing the guard being comically incompetent at his job. For instance, the movie shows the dude moving into the apartment while the guard was snoring, so the guard had no idea some dude has moved into the apartment.
And at one time he had earphones on with his back turned, which caused him to miss the dude hurling a damn cupboard from his flat which came crashing onto the ground. I'm genuinely curious what kind of earphones can mask a damn cupboard falling from a height of 30-40 stories lol
Frozen actually had an explanation, the lift operator that sent them up had another guy take over and told him there were 3 people left. The second guy mistook three other people for the ones that got stuck so he shut it off. They wanted to go on one last run before their trip was over, that's not that contrived.
Frozen is based on a true story (Edit: it is NOT based on a true story, I was mistake. This mistake makes several statements I make later really funny). Believe it or not, reality can be contrived, and wolves will totally eat someone who can't move or defend themselves
Most of these examples are realistic levels of stupidity on the behalf of the people involved
Also I definitely thought I was getting into the popular musical when I started watching frozen
Also that dude's dialogue and delivery in "that one scene" is too stupid to have been written by a writer. Argh! My legs! My legs are fucking broken! Oh my God owwww my legs arghh! I can't fucking move! My legs are fucking broken
People underestimate how dangerous a pack of hungry carnivores can get. Wolves will totally avoid groups of people, yes, until they realize these people are trapped or at a disadvantage, and at some point it's not unlikely that they'll stop being too scared of people and start attacking.
The issue with the wolves is they'd eat the first guy and then they'd be done and go find some place to sleep it off, not actively waiting to attack the others if/when they got down. Instead they just nibble on the first guy and then sit around waiting for the other two to fall.
I have a problem with your second one. In frozen, the ski lift operator did say something, he just got their snow gear mixed up with another group who looked very similar. Yes, wolves are 100% not that aggressive unless they’re rabid or starving. I agree with that part.
Okay, like, I get why you hate this trope. 12 Feet Deep and Frozen in particular are a little too ridiculous. But people are stupid and people have absolutely done shit like freeclimbing tall buildings with no gear or safe way to get down. People actually get themselves into these dumbfuck situations all the time.
I mean I don't think it's a good genre of movie by any stretch of the word, but a lot of them are realistic, unforch.
eta: after reading actual synopses of Frozen, that one also sounds pretty fucken feasible down to the lift operator failure, honestly. Human error has caused a LOT of insane accidents. The Smiler crash (that one rollercoaster accident) was almost entirely on operator error.
I'm mixed on this one. If the situatikn happens due to the characters doing something believably stupid and consistent with their character, I'm good with it. What I know about "Fall" would fit. If the scenario involves a complex web of people doing inexplicably stupid things, I'm probably turning it off.
I saw a clip of that 12 feet deep movie, and I was so confused.
So, the person who trapped them is leaning over the cover and one of the women stabs her through the pool cover?
.. why didn't she just cut open the cover and get out?
Frozen is actually a hilarious movie so it gets a pass from me. Like it’s so absurd and the acting is like, passable which makes it funnier imo. But it’s just so stupid that it works.
A whale captures a giant squid in its mouth. While passing by a scuba diver, the squid grabs the diver. The diver is dragged into the whale with the squid.
The Netflix series Keep Breathing pissed me off. I couldn't do it. It appears to loosely follow the plot of Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, which is of course a classic. I'm not sure how much of an influence it actually was in production, but I was looking forward to that type of story. Then it was just flashback after flashback, dumb decision after dumb decision. Something interesting would be just about to happen out in the wilderness, I wonder wh- OPE IT'S A FLASHBACK. I wanna see the challenges of survival, and maybe a bit of character development via flashbacks that are relevant to the current situation, but this just felt like it was trying to be two shows at once. It lost me.
I absolutely love hate-watching movies like these. There's not much of a better time than sitting down with my girlfriend and ranting about the plot holes and how stupid the characters are.
Fall was especially stupid to me because they made the vultures seem like these terrifying attack birds that will pick fights
In reality vultures are super docile and nature's janitors. They help keep disease from spreading by eating dead animals. Absolute slander on the movie's part.
Its been awhile since I watched Frozen so I could be wrong, but didnt they get on the lift while it was still open and the workers just didnt notice them and shut it down.
That's what people do. Most of reddit knows about nutty putty cave and John Jones. Hell, most thrill seeking hobbies are just controlled stupidity.
Saying they only did a stupid thing so the movie could happen is like saying "Frodo had to destroy the ring so the movie could happen". Like yeah dawg, that's how movies work. The stupid thing they did is believably stupid for people their age.
Honestly one of my favourite movie tropes bc they always emd up in stupid and completely avoidable situations.
Anyways I think The Desent fits this bc one of the characters changes the cave [from a well known easy one to an undiscovered one], doesnt tell the group and didnt tell park rangers where they were goin. So the group ends up trapped in a cave with monsters thst couldve been avoided.
The Elixir: First off, its a "zombie media doesn't exist in this world" movie so its inherently a lazy and contrived story. Like, that trope basically exists because the US has guns and The Walking Dead needed a way to nerf an armed civlian populace but this is an Indonesian movie and as far as I'm aware, civilian gun ownership is either not allowed or super restricted so it doesn't need to be applied here.
Regardless, this movie is idiot ball the movie so the plot can happen. A group of idiots get separated, one in a house and the other in a car. The car group honks the horn to get the house group's attention, drawing the horde to both their location instead of just going in quietly to get the rest of the group so they can gtfo. The car group then goes to the police station to escape the horde where they do scared gibberish at that cops and tell the cops there's a bunch of hurt people which makes the cops believe there has been a huge car accident and they go out unprepared, leading to all the cops aka the people who know how to use and have guns dying. The house group of idiots find a car to go to the police station that just happens to have broken brakes so they can ram a hole into the police station where the car group was hiding out in, letting zombies into a relatively secure shelter in order to progress the plot. And these idiots have been accidentally attracting zombies with loud noised and headshotting zombies all movie to kill them, but are so stupid they don't realize noise attracts them and headshots are what's been killing zombies until the climax.
The zombie effects in this movie are so good but the human cast is so infuriatingly stupid.
I wouldn’t call “stupid people doing stupid things” contrived. I’d say something like Primate. A couple teenagers have to survive a rabies infected chimpanzee, except the chimpanzee acts like he’s possessed by Chucky and not a rabid animal. That being said, 10/10 movie. No notes.
But most things movies happen so the movies happen.
Also, considering how often something happens IRL and I think "This would be too dumb and contrived to put in a movie", and also based on things heard from a relative that works in the ER, I am hestitant to say anything is too dumb to happen.
Haven't watched it, but wasn't Gerald's Game about a woman getting stuck handcuffed to the bed in a cabin in the middle of nowhere because the guy got a heart attack while doing kinky play?
To add a little bit of context, they started using cuffs when the husband got a bit bored of their vanilla sex life. They went to a cabin to rekindle some of the lost spark, but then the husband got very aggressive and started assaulting her. She kicked him in the nuts and the (stomach, chest?) and that's what caused him to have the heart attack.
iirc; 2 sisters/bffs are on vacation and decided to do a shark cage. Only to have the cable or something break sending them 47 meters down (heh heh get it) to the oceans floor with only limited air. Oh, and there's people hungry sharks circling them too
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u/Slow_Bowler8285 1h ago
The Pool (2018 Thai movie)
The film revolves around a couple who is trapped in a 6 meter deep pool after the water is drained out. Their situation worsens when a crocodile enters the pool with them.