Back in my formative years, when traveling repeatedly from my home to summer camp up north I settled on two rules that have held me in good stead throughout my entire life.

First, if I couldn't recognize what was on my plate, I wouldn't eat it. Second, any restaurant that felt the need to include the words 'Good Food' on their sign was not a restaurant that would ever have me as a patron. The reasons for rule number one should be obvious enough.

Rule two? The thinking basically went that if they felt the need to tell me that their food was good it meant that they didn't have any faith in my ability to arrive at that conclusion myself and that, therefore, it probably was not. This is a concept that I deeply, sincerely wish movie PR people - particularly horror PR people - would come to understand and accept.

Memo to everyone out there working on movie trailers: there are few things in life less frightening than a person saying "I'm scared". If there's something in your film that really is scary, you won't need to tell me.  I'll already know.

Now, people do stupid things in trailers all the time and this one crops up from time to time but it seems particularly prevalent right now.   The lady-friend and I went on a friendly outing to check out My Bloody Valentine 3D a couple nights ago and while that film avoids doing the "I'm scared" thing in the trailer - coming only as close as calling itself 'horrific' - it does so on at least one occasion in the body of the film itself and boasted a pair of previews ahead of time that goes into this irritating territory.

Offender number one? The Uninvited, the American remake of a stellar Korean horror film which has, bizarrely, been re-titled for American audiences and given the name of an entirely different Korean horror film.  This trailer makes all kinds of mistakes, most of the "this is the most un-frightening horror trailer ever" variety, and I can only presume that the trailer editors through the "I'm scared" line in to differentiate the film from the substandard episode of Dawson's Creek that it mostly resembles up until that point.

Offender number two?   The Haunting In Connecticut. Now, to be fair, this looks like a much better film that The Uninvited on pretty much every level. Better atmosphere, better cinematography, better setup, more jumps, more convincing cast. The trailer's pretty creepy, really, which i what makes that line even more irritating. It's not needed.It adds nothing. All it tells me is that the power that be don't trust that the film will do its job unless they spell everything out in painfully obvious fashion.

Now, this may seem a petty thing to gripe about, and there are some significant exceptions - the original Japanese version of The Grudge, for example, is incredibly effective precisely because it tell the audience in advance who will die in each sequence, leaving you to squirm and anticipate the how and when - but the thing for me is that film is a visual medium and if you have to tell me something that should be plainly visible on screen - particularly something as basic as 'you're watching a scary movie' - then you've failed. And failed badly. Either that or you just think I'm a moron.  And either option isn't all that good.