The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You / Live-Action Films

• Used in several of the horror Anthology Films made by Amicus Productions.
  • Torture Garden ends with Dr. Diabolo, a distinctly playful Satan, saying that it's only sporting to give his clients a chance of escaping his domain; "...but will YOU?"
  • In the 1972 Tales from the Crypt, Ralph Richardson's gloomy Crypt Keeper dispatches all his unwilling guests to a Fire and Brimstone Hell, then turns to camera and says "Now, who's next?...Maybe - you?...".
  • Asylum ends with a triumphant psychopath welcoming a new victim and addressing us with, "Got to keep the draughts out...as - Dr. Starr - used to say..."
  • At the end of The House That Dripped Blood, the real estate agent Stoker looks into the camera and asks if you would consider yourself a suitable tenant for the house.
• In the 2015 horror Mockumentary The Atticus Institute, one of the Institute personnel tells his interviewers that even they, who are making the movie, as well as anyone who may watch it, are only letting themselves get pulled into the evil force's malign sphere of influence by doing so.
• William Castle, director of The Tingler and several other films, was famous for using these kinds of audience-threatening gimmicks to draw in audiences.
  • Patrons for Macabre got $1000 life insurance policies at the door in case they should "die of fright" during the show.
    • In The Screaming Skull, they were guaranteed a free casket.
  • Theaters showing The Tingler would even have a device called "Percepto" fitted to the bottom of seats that would vibrate at this point in the film, and actors planted in the audience who would scream and faint, and be carried out of the theater by actors dressed as nurses.
  • In screenings of House on Haunted Hill (1959) he arranged for skeletons to drop from the ceilings of certain theaters and float towards the audience. The subsequent shot of Vincent Price reeling his skeleton puppet back in is held for an unusually long time, as it was meant to coincide with the real skeleton in the theater being pulled back into place.
• The trailer for Day of the Dead (1985) took place in a movie theater where an audience is watching said film, this is supposed to be our real world. Yet there is a zombie in the front row, that seemingly looks like Bub, eating popcorn. The audience left the theater. Subverted since the zombie didn't attack them and just went on to eating popcorn.
• During an interview for the 2016 Deadpool movie, Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool's actor) is talking with the host about whether the movie will be rated PG-13 ("family friendly") or R. The host talks about how great it is that the studio is leaning towards the former, and then Deadpool himself walks on camera and punches the host's lights out. Considering what Deadpool is capable of, he should have seen that coming. ^note  Yes, it's really Ryan Reynolds in costume
• An in-movie example happens at the beginning of Demons 2, when a young girl watches a movie about a Zombie Apocalypse caused by virulent Demonic Possession, a demon inside the TV pushes its way out into the real world and turns her, triggering a new outbreak. It seems just like a gimmick at first, but then you realise YOU'RE watching the same kind of movie she was...
• At the end of The Devil and Daniel Webster, Old Scratch is examining his book of sinners looking for a deal, rubs his chin as he ponders — and then looks up, smiles at the viewer, and points his finger in an obvious, "You're next."
• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has a dreamwalking Wanda possess her alternate self's body in a tense and unsettling scene. However, after she's opened her eyes in the red hues of the Scarlet Witch, her attention turns directly towards the camera as if to acknowledge the presence of the audience before moving on with her plot.
• Drive-In Massacre. Near the end a fake public address informs that the serial killer of the movie is loose in the viewer's theatre, and urges the audience to not panic as the police are on their way.
• Fallen starts with a narration from the dying protagonist, before the film tells us How We Got Here. By the end, it is revealed that A: The narrator isn't the protagonist, it's the Big Bad who is possessing the protagonist and thus has his voice. B: That the protagonist's Heroic Sacrifice is for naught, and the Big Bad survives. C: The Big Bad mocking the audience for missing the Chekhov's Gun at the start implying his survival and D: An Implied Death Threat to the audience ("See you around") and Paranoia Fuel footage of streets filled with random people, any one of whom could be possessed by the Big Bad.
• In Final Destination 4, Janet's death in the second premonition has her watching a 3D movie, only for an explosion in the theater under construction on the other side of the screen to destroy the theater she's in, killing her and several other moviegoers as sharp debris literally comes flying out of the screen. For bonus points, it happens just as an explosion goes off in the movie she's watching. And given that Final Destination 4 is itself a 3-D Movie, it also applies to the audience.
• The Gamers is a film following the comical exploits of some students playing Dungeons & Dragons in their dorm. At the end of the film, their own characters come bursting into the room and slaughter them down to the last.
• The narrator of George of the Jungle occasionally corrects actions by the characters and even argues with them. In the sequel, one such fight ends with the narrator physically removing Lyle from the story!
• The Great Train Robbery (1903) might be the Ur-Example for film. It doesn't even fit into the plot: just that at the end (or the beginning, depending which cut you're watching), a rough-looking bandit aims and fires his revolver at the audience. Some people fainted when this was first shown.
  • The first movie ever shown publicly is also a candidate to Ur-Example, depending on what you may call a "movie". L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat, the Lumiere Brothers' first film, began with a train heading straight for the camera; people dove out of their seats during the screening.
• In Gremlins 2: The New Batch, the Gremlins break out of the movie and assault the projectionist, forcing them to run a naturism movie. They are eventually stopped by Hulk Hogan and the movie proper resumes. When the movie was released to video, the sequence was changed to the Gremlins breaking into the TV and being defeated by Stock Footage of John Wayne. The theatrical version with Hulk Hogan is restored for the DVD release.
  • In the novelization, the Brain Gremlin hijacks the book to talk about the Gremlins' hopes and desires. He is cut off by the novelist, David Bischoff, managing to axe his way through the locked door of the room where he keeps his computer, and Brainy decides to git while the gitting's good.
• The original House on Haunted Hill (1959) ends with one of the characters facing the camera and stating that the ghosts will come for "you" next.
• A splice between this and Leaning on the Fourth Wall is Kevin McCarthy near the end of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) screaming "You're next!" at the audience.
• John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness. The film you just watched is the one which is driving people insane!
• The entire plot of Last Action Hero is this.
• The Last Horror Movie is based around this trope. The entire premise is that a real-life serial killer has taped over the slasher movie you rented, and when you finish watching the film, he's going to come and kill you, too. Unfortunately, the effect is spoiled somewhat if you bought the film on DVD.
  • Although it might work somewhat if you pirate it off the Internet.
• The original ending of Little Shop of Horrors (which is in the director's cut) where Audrey II crashes through the screen of the film and laughs as the camera (audience) goes closer and closer into its gaping maw.
• in The Matrix Reloaded, during the Burly Brawl, a Smith clone infects Agent Thompson. After his transformation into a Smith clone is complete, both Smith clones stare at the fourth wall for a moment, almost as if they're preparing to turn the viewer into a Smith clone.

• In the 1987 movie Anguish, a teenager (in-universe out-of-universe) in a movie theater watching a horror film about an insane eye doctor (ostensibly the same movie as itself) gets a scalpel in her eye when the character on screen throws it at the camera.
• This is also the basis of the plot for Midnight Movie.
• In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, "A Famous Historian" who narrates after one scene is slaughtered by Arthur's knights. This leads to the police investigating (and arresting the entire cast at the end of the movie). The movie also inverts this by letting Arthur and his knights escape from a cartoon monster when the animator dies of a heart attack.
• The Neverending Story has this in-universe. Bastian thinks he's just reading a book of fiction, but discovers the events in it involve him and his reality.
• In an Older Than They Think example, Reefer Madness closes with Dr. Carroll, ostensibly addressing a meeting of concerned citizens, saying:
  "We must work untiringly so that our children are obliged to learn the truth. Because it is only through knowledge that we can safely protect them. Failing this, the next tragedy may be that of [looks to his right] your daughter....or [looks to his left] your son....[points right] or yours....[points left] or yours....[points into the camera] or yours!
• On YouTube there is a video of J-Pop group Morning Musume watching The Ring in absolute horror... so when a girl with black hair and a white robe pops out from under the TV and starts lumbering towards them, they FLIP OUT. Funny stuff.
  • The American remake plays with this. The movie ends with Rachel guiding her son into making a copy of the tape to save his life. When he asks what will happen to the people who see it, the camera zooms into the video screen and forces the audience to watch the tape again, implying that it's us.
  • Even without that implication, one of the reasons this film was an international success is surely that it plays on the fear behind this trope: not only are these "fictional" horrors real, they're coming to get you.
  • The DVD version of The Ring has a special feature that lets you watch the video in its entirety. Once started, it cannot be stopped by any means whatsoever, except unplugging your DVD player. After it's finished and you return to the title screen of the DVD, it plays the sound of a phone ringing.
  • In Japan, the release of Sadako 3D 2 came with a tie-in smartphone app that allowed Sadako to escape through the phone and attack the audience at various points throughout the movie.
• The sheer nature of how The Rocky Horror Picture Show has evolved allows for this - while the movie plays on the screen, actors bring the story to life around you... or in the case of the bedroom scenes, on top of you.
• Rubber is a Mind Screw of a movie that wreaks havoc with the fourth wall... and ends with all the "spectators" (the movie audience) being killed and the implication that our reality is threatened as well.
• During one showing of Scream 2, whose opening features a couple stabbed to death during a preview of the Show Within a Show Stab, a woman was stabbed by the man sitting next to her, just as in the movie.
• The last line of the 2013 film Shadow People, about possibly-imaginary dark entities that cause people who hear of their existence to die of fright in their sleep, strongly implies that the film's audience, having now learned about these creatures from the movie, will soon expire in the same way.
• Darkly true in-universe in Sinister, where pictures of the baddie are the baddie.
  • And it just so happens that right before the credits roll, the baddie notices you. Oh shit..
• This trope is the basis of the plot for Stranger Than Fiction.
• Played for Laughs in Student Bodies, which otherwise would've been rated PG. Midway through the film, we get a public service announcement from an executive who explains why the film is rated R, capped off with an F-bomb that presses the MPAA's Berserk Button so hard that their white stripe rating card doesn't even wait until the end of the film to appear, showing up immediately after the executive cusses out the audience at the request of the producers.
• The movie The Stuff advertised itself with "public service announcements" warning viewer that the Stuff was real, dangerous, and something to be avoided at all costs.
• Trick or Treat. The film's Big Bad is an evil spirit of a rock musician who occasionally can reach into a TV screen and kill people in the broadcast.
• In strictly-POV movie Unfriended, after it's revealed that Blaire was the one who posted the video that eventually caused Laura Barns to commit suicide, Blaire's bedroom door squeaks open and two sets of fingers wrap over her laptop. It's the undead body of Laura Barns, closing the laptop and lunging at the screen. Cue credits.
• In the obvious parody of the "Twilight" saga, Vampires Suck ends the movie with a crazed werewolf fangirl (read: girl who is a fan of werewolves) strikes Vampire!Bella in the back of the head with a shovel. As Bella gets up, the fangirl gives a much appropriate Oh, Crap! before the camera goes to her POV as Bella attacks her and the audience.
• The end of Videodrome. The main character ends up in a room with a television playing a clip of him putting his gun to his head and pulling the trigger. As he does, the screen explodes and intestines pour out. Immediately afterwards, the clip starts playing out around him. He puts the gun to his head. Bang. Try watching this on your own television in the middle of the night. It's fun.
• Wes Craven's New Nightmare involved Freddy escaping into the "real world", so that a new movie had to be made to imprison him again. The earthquake was written into the script before it occurred for real. Robert Englund plays both a fictionalized version of himself and Freddy Krueger, who is listed as "himself" in the end credits.
• The Wizard of Oz: When Dorothy is trapped in the Witch's castle, she sees an image of Aunt Em looking around for her in the Witch's crystal ball. Dorothy futilely tries to call out to her, but Aunt Em fades away, only to be replaced by the Wicked Witch who mocks Dorothy and then turns to cackle directly at the audience as if to say, "You're next!"
• The ending of The Woman in Black, where Jennett looks directly at the camera, implying that your children will die next.
• It: In both adaptations, Pennywise pulls this in-universe when the heroes research him.
  • It (1990): As they look through a book of historical photos, he takes over one of them (making it colour in the process), threatens them, and then reaches out of the book to scare them.
  • It (2017) replaces this with a slide reel. It starts moving of its own accord, focusing on the image of a woman whose face is covered by her hair... which gradually starts shifting to reveal Pennywise himself. The kids knock the projector over, at which point he vanishes...and then jumps out of the screen, the size of a truck.
  • In the reboot, a meta example could be interpreted by the librarian in the scene where Ben reads about the town history. If you interpret that she's looking at Ben, it's just a creepy moment. If you think she's looking at the audience, it's goddamn terrifying.
  • Also from the reboot, throughout the film, Pennywise's eyes are positioned such that one of them is looking at the camera. In other words, IT can see the audience, and IT is watching them. And that's not an effect: Bill Skarsgård can actually do that.
  • At one point in the reboot, Pennywise somehow grabs control of the camera, so it remains focused on his dancing and thus making it seem like the background is vibrating.
• A non-horror (but not less chilling) version of this trope is seen in Sunset Boulevard, as Norma Desmond, after going insane from killing her lover, is tricked into believing she will shoot a scene of her long-desired Salome movie. She then delivers a speech in which she states: "You see, this is my life. There's nothing else: just us, and the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark", while looking straight at the audience, then says she's "ready for her close-up" and proceeds to her finale, in which she walks right towards the camera as the image blurs.
• One scene in Fight Club features Tyler reciting Project Mayhem's mantra about how you aren't special to the audience. It becomes so intense that it rocks the very celluloid that the movie is printed on in its projector, including the soundtrack.
• Played with in The Blob (and its remake) when it enters a theater playing a horror movie, attacking first the projectionist in the booth, and then the audience in the theater.
• At the end of The Devil's Messenger, Satan points directly at the camera while saying how the mortals will destroy the world with the formula Satanya and John will deliver.
• In Shredder Orpheus, a majority of Hades' brainwashing, soul-sucking broadcasts are aimed directly at the viewer, and the DVD menus have frequent, staticy cut-ins of the EBN logos.

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