You’re walking to your car late at night when you hear a noise. It could just be the wind rustling the trees, but it could also be something else. Your body tenses. Your breathing becomes shallow. All your senses get a little sharper. When you make it safely to your car, you notice you’re trembling, your palms are sweaty and the hair on your arms is standing on end. Your flight-or-flight instinct kicked in, just like it’s supposed to.

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Now imagine those same physical changes happening when you aren’t in a potentially dangerous situation. Imagine it happening every time you leave the house. Every time you introduce yourself at a work function. Every time your partner is 15 minutes late coming home. Your brain and body race far ahead of the facts, so you feel as if there’s danger around every corner.

If that sounds like you, you may be experiencing hypervigilance.

We talked to psychologist Susan Albers, PsyD, about hypervigilance: What it is, what causes it and what to do if it’s negatively impacting your life.

What is hypervigilance?

Dr. Albers describes hypervigilance as a heightened state of awareness. “It’s your brain’s way of protecting you by scanning the environment for signs of danger and being extremely aware of your surroundings” she says.

To be clear, hypervigilance isn’t a diagnosis. It’s a symptom that occurs with a wide range of different conditions — both mental and physical. It’s perhaps easiest to think about hypervigilance as a natural instinct gone awry.

“Hypervigilance is a basic human survival mechanism,” Dr. Albers explains. “It allows us to sense predators and threats to our safety. But with hypervigilance, you’re feel like you’re constantly under threat.” Put differently, the amygdala — the part of your brain that’s responsible for managing emotions — is on overdrive.

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Perpetual fight-or-flight

You’ve probably heard of the fight-or-flight instinct. It’s a mental and physical response to perceived danger. In an attempt to survive, our bodies undergo big physiological changes when we’re threatened. Certain processes — like digestion — slow down. Meanwhile, Dr. Albers says, our bodies get flooded by adrenaline.

“You have higher blood pressure, your heart rate increases, your pupils dilate and your body prepares itself to respond to the threat,” she explains.

All of these changes — and others — serve an evolutionary purpose. You may become pale or flushed, for example, because your body is diverting blood to your brain and limbs. Your muscles may tense up or tremble, primed to react quickly if needed.

When our frontal cortex — the part of our brain that makes decisions — gets flooded with hormones, Dr. Albers says it produces emotions that “are so intense that they knock out any logic or reason.”

These automatic responses are beneficial when we find ourselves in genuine danger. But for people who are hypervigilant, fight-or-flight is the default mode. The result is physical, mental and emotional discomfort.

Hypervigilance causes

There’s a long list of medical and mental health conditions that can trigger hypervigilance. That list includes:

Dr. Albers says that hypervigilance is sometimes just a personality trait. “Sometimes, a person is just more aware and mindful of their environment or other people’s feelings, but if hypervigilance is chronic or severe, it’s usually a symptom of a mental health disorder.”

Hypervigilance is also strongly linked to childhood trauma. According to Dr. Albers, that has a lot to do with the fact that, as we grow up, our brain develops in a way that’s responsive to our environment.

She gives the example of a child growing up in an abusive home. “The child is immersed in an unpredictable environment,” she illustrates. “Maybe their parent is sometimes in a good mood and then — out of the blue — becomes enraged or violent. That child will learn how to pick up on very subtle clues because knowing what state their parent is in helps keep them safe.”

When it comes to person with a history of trauma, hypervigilance is about self-protection, about preventing a traumatic situation from happening again.

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Examples of hypervigilance

Hypervigilant behavior looks different depending on who you are and its underlying cause. All of the following are potential examples of hypervigilant behavior:

Hyper-fixation on your surroundings

This kind of hypervigilance is especially common for people who’ve experienced violence — especially if they’re living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Perhaps they have to sit with their backs against the wall to ensure nobody can sneak up behind them. Maybe they have to sleep with the lights on. Perhaps they feel it necessary to have a weapon on hand at all times. They may also have a particularly strong startle reflex, jumping at the slightest noise or motion.

Hyper-fixation on the thoughts and feelings of the people around you

Dr. Albers says it’s common for a person who’s hypervigilant to watch the people around them diligently for slight changes in behavior, tone, cadence, body language, written communication or even sentence structure.

“These individuals tend to do a lot of overanalyzing of people’s moods and their expression — even things like text messages,” she explains. These traits are especially common in people who’ve endured abuse or been exposed to violence.

Hyper-fixation on your own body or mind

It doesn’t get as much attention as some other forms of trauma, but medical trauma is very real. Dr. Albers sees it frequently: People who’ve experienced severe illness (their own or a family member’s), major medical procedures, mental health crises or an extended hospitalization or disability can become aware of their own bodies to a degree that’s detrimental. It can cause hypervigilance-related health anxiety.

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A minor ache or pain may get them concerned that their cancer is out of remission. A bad day could be misinterpreted as a sign that their depression’s returned. The result can be a vicious cycle: All that worrying causes physical symptoms that are, well, worrying.

Catastrophizing

“When a person catastrophizes,” Dr. Albers says, “they’re creating a narrative in their head in an attempt to understand a situation. But that narrative gets spun in a negative way.”

A hypervigilant mind tends to be preoccupied by worst-case scenarios. Not getting a call back within a couple of hours may get read as a sign that a loved one has died and a slow response to a message signals the end of a years-long friendship.

The tendency to catastrophize may make it hard to let one’s guard down and enjoy happy moments. When life is going really well, a person living with hypervigilance may find themselves anxious, waiting for the next shoe to drop.

Avoidant behavior

It’s normal to change your behavior in response to a traumatic experience, but a person who’s hypervigilant takes that natural response too far.

If, for example, a person’s in a bad car accident, it’s understandable that they’d want to buy a car with a top safety rating. Never driving again — even if it means losing out on job opportunities, missing family vacations and relying on others for transportation — is an overreaction. In extreme cases, a hypervigilant individual may go on to develop full-fledged agoraphobia — a fear of places, people or situations that they see as threatening.

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Hypervigilance can also impact your education, career and other areas of your life. “Some people have difficulty trying new activities or even learning new things because they’re afraid of not being good at it,” Dr. Albers notes. “They might worry that other people will judge or not like them if they aren’t perfect.”

Insecurity

Hypervigilance is all about identifying, responding to or preventing threats as soon as possible — whether those threats are real or perceived. For people with a history of trauma that can happen in many different ways.

Hypervigilant people may struggle with clinginess, people-pleasing, emotional regulation problems and trust issues. They often neglect their own needs (or even suppress elements of their identity) to avoid conflict. The concepts of relationship OCD and good girl syndrome tend to fit neatly under this umbrella.

“Hypervigilance makes it hard for people to relax at all. They always feel awkward or worried that they’re doing or saying something wrong,” Dr. Albers says.

How hypervigilance can impact your life

One of the things that makes hypervigilance difficult to deal with is the fact that it’s a legitimately helpful instinct. We should all be hypervigilant in certain situations. But when we’re in nonstop fight-or-flight mode, it can wreak havoc on our bodies, our minds and our relationships.

The physical, mental and behavioral impact of hypervigilance

The impact of one’s body being constantly flooded with adrenaline and cortisol is no small thing.

“Over time, you become exhausted,” Dr. Albers says. “You may experience frequent physical illness, you may have difficulty sleeping, you might find yourself eating too much or not enough. You can even experience gastrointestinal problems from your body being in constant fight-or-flight mode.”

The result of all that pressure? Your mental state — and even your behavior — may change. You could find you struggle to pay attention when that’s not been an issue in the past. You might be more irritable, more inclined to fight with others or more likely to have emotional outbursts. You could isolate yourself from others or experience mood issues like depression.

All too often, people struggling to sleep, regulate their emotions or endure chronic stress turn to substances to cope. While it may seem to help in the moment, self-medicating ultimately makes things worse — especially if there’s an underlying mental health issue involved.

Hypervigilance’s impact on relationships

When it comes to relationships of all kinds, hypervigilance is a double-edged sword.

Dr. Albers concedes that an individual with hypervigilant tendencies may notice negative behavior, lying or red flags more quickly than the average person. “Hypervigilance can prevent a lot of conflict,” she says. “An individual who’s hypervigilant might hear a slight shift in someone’s tone and know not to go there.” It may also help you to spot someone whose behavior doesn’t add up, preventing you from getting into a relationship that could be dangerous or hurtful.

While hypervigilance can protect you from conflict or danger, it can also hurt your relationships. In some cases, Dr. Albers adds that hypervigilance prevents people from getting close to or trusting others. It can also have the opposite effect: It can promote an anxious attachment style. “Needing constant reassurance can drive other people away because they know everything’s fine, but the other person keeps reading into the situation and making assumptions.”

To make things more complicated, hypervigilance may cause somebody person to be overly sensitive to feedback, or to be emotionally volatile. Needing to provide constant reassurance can be frustrating, exhausting and — in some cases, for some people — insulting.

Hypervigilance can be self-perpetuating

Another thing that makes hypervigilance difficult to deal with is the fact that those gut feelings sometimes end up being valid.

“People with extreme hypervigilance can be so tuned in to what is happening that their feelings end up being spot on,” Dr. Albers recognizes. That kind of positive reinforcement can be damaging because it can lead a person who’s hypervigilant to accept their understanding of the world around them.

“If a person who’s hypervigilant has enough experiences where they’re spot on, it can almost start to feel like that they can predict the future,” she continues. “That becomes problematic because it leads to over-analyzing, making assumptions and anticipating the worst. Nobody’s gut instinct is always 100% right and we can’t know or control the future.”

Coping with hypervigilance

If hypervigilance is negatively impacting your life, there are lots of ways to address it. Dr. Albers suggests the following:

Therapy. If you think you’re experiencing hypervigilance, Dr. Albers recommends working with a mental health professional to address it. “Working with a counselor can help you identify your triggers and better understand how and why those triggers create a sense of panic and hyper awareness,” she says. Therapy is also a great place to work on distinguishing between feelings and facts, as well as unravelling any past trauma that might be influencing you in the present.

If you think you’re experiencing hypervigilance, Dr. Albers recommends working with a mental health professional to address it. “Working with a counselor can help you identify your triggers and better understand how and why those triggers create a sense of panic and hyper awareness,” she says. Therapy is also a great place to work on distinguishing between feelings and facts, as well as unravelling any past trauma that might be influencing you in the present. Self-soothing and grounding exercises. If you’re struggling with hypervigilance at a specific moment, Dr. Albers suggests calming yourself with deep breathing, counting, self-talk or whatever self-soothing or grounding activities you find helpful. “Calming down the fight-or-flight response’s going to help you stop catastrophizing, think more rationally and be present in the moment,” she explains.

If you’re struggling with hypervigilance at a specific moment, Dr. Albers suggests calming yourself with deep breathing, counting, self-talk or whatever self-soothing or grounding activities you find helpful. “Calming down the fight-or-flight response’s going to help you stop catastrophizing, think more rationally and be present in the moment,” she explains. Mindfulness. Self-soothing and grounding are great coping mechanisms for the times when you find yourself on high alert, but it’s just as important to reduce your overall stress and anxiety level. Mindfulness is a great way to do just that. “When engaged in mindfulness,” Dr. Albers says, “you focus on what’s happening on the inside instead of on the outside.” Instead of closely watching someone’s else behavior to decode what they’re thinking or feeling, mindfulness redirects you to your own thoughts and emotions. When practicing mindfulness, you try to look at situations neutrally without judgment. There are many different ways to be do that, so choose an activity that resonates for you.

Self-soothing and grounding are great coping mechanisms for the times when you find yourself on high alert, but it’s just as important to reduce your overall stress and anxiety level. Mindfulness is a great way to do just that. “When engaged in mindfulness,” Dr. Albers says, “you focus on what’s happening on the inside instead of on the outside.” Instead of closely watching someone’s else behavior to decode what they’re thinking or feeling, mindfulness redirects you to your own thoughts and emotions. When practicing mindfulness, you try to look at situations neutrally without judgment. There are many different ways to be do that, so choose an activity that resonates for you. Medication. Some people need extra help calming down their nervous system — especially people experiencing hypervigilance as a side effect of a physical condition like thyroiditis.

Some people need extra help calming down their nervous system — especially people experiencing hypervigilance as a side effect of a physical condition like thyroiditis. Limiting alcohol and caffeine consumption. Have you ever noticed a jittery feeling after overdoing it on the coffee-front? Dr. Albers says caffeine can increase anxiety which, in turn, can feed hypervigilance. Alcohol doesn’t mix with most mental health issues, including anxiety, so it’s best to steer clear of it when you’re struggling with hypervigilance.

The bottom line

Hypervigilance is what happens when our natural flight-or-flight instinct goes into overdrive. People who are hypervigilant are in a constant state of anxiety. It isn’t a diagnosable mental health condition, but it’s a common feature of a wide range of physical, psychological and thought disorders. Causes range from childhood trauma and personality disorders to physical conditions like hypothyroidism. Hypervigilance can be physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting. It can make daily life and relationships difficult.

If you’re experiencing hypervigilance, consider reaching out to your primary care provider or a mental health professional for help. You may also benefit from limiting your caffeine and alcohol intake, starting a mindfulness practice and learning self-soothing techniques you can use to ground yourself in the present moment.

Verywell / Brianna Gilmartin

The negativity bias is our tendency not only to register negative stimuli more readily but also to dwell on these events. Also known as positive-negative asymmetry, this negativity bias means that we feel the sting of a rebuke more powerfully than we feel the joy of praise.

This psychological phenomenon explains why bad first impressions can be so difficult to overcome and why past traumas can have such long lingering effects. In almost any interaction, we are more likely to notice negative things and later remember them more vividly.

As humans, we tend to:

Remember traumatic experiences better than positive ones.

Recall insults better than praise.

React more strongly to negative stimuli.

Think about negative things more frequently than positive ones.

Respond more strongly to negative events than to equally positive ones.

For example, you might be having a great day at work when a coworker makes an offhand comment that you find irritating. You then find yourself stewing over his words for the rest of the workday.

When you get home from work and someone asks you how your day was, you reply that it was terrible—even though it was overall quite good despite that one negative incident.

This bias toward the negative leads you to pay much more attention to the bad things that happen, making them seem much more important than they really are.

What the Research Says

Research has shown that across a wide array of psychological events, people tend to focus more on the negative as they try to make sense of the world.

We tend to…

Pay more attention to negative events than positive ones.

Learn more from negative outcomes and experiences.

Make decisions based on negative information more than positive data.  

It is the “bad things” that grab our attention, stick to our memories, and, in many cases, influence the decisions that we make.

Motivation

Psychological research suggests that the negative bias influences motivation to complete a task. People have less motivation when an incentive is framed as a means to gain something than when the same incentive will help them avoid the loss of something.

This can play a role in your motivation to pursue a goal. Rather than focusing on what you will gain if you keep working toward something, you’re more likely to dwell on what you might have to give up in order to achieve that goal.

Bad News

Additionally, studies have shown that negative news is more likely to be perceived as truthful. Since negative information draws greater attention, it also may be seen as having greater validity. This might be why bad news seems to garner more attention.

Politics

Differences in negativity bias have also been linked to political ideology. Some research suggests that conservatives may have stronger psychological responses to negative information than liberals. Some evidence, for example, has found that people who consider themselves politically conservative are more likely to rate ambiguous stimuli as threatening.

Such differences in the negativity bias might explain why some people are more likely to value things such as tradition and security while others are more open to embracing ambiguity and change.

Examples of Negative Bias

The negative bias can have a variety of real-world effects on how people think and act. Do any of these situations and events seem familiar?

You received a performance review at work that was quite positive overall and noted your strong performance and achievements. A few constructive comments pointed out areas where you could improve, and you find yourself fixating on those remarks. Rather than feeling good about the positive aspects of your review, you feel upset and angry about the few critical comments.

that was quite positive overall and noted your strong performance and achievements. A few constructive comments pointed out areas where you could improve, and you find yourself fixating on those remarks. Rather than feeling good about the positive aspects of your review, you feel upset and angry about the few critical comments. You had an argument with your significant other , and afterward, you find yourself focusing on all of your partner’s flaws. Instead of acknowledging their good points, you ruminate over all of their imperfections. Even the most trivial of faults are amplified, while positive characteristics are overlooked.

, and afterward, you find yourself focusing on all of your partner’s flaws. Instead of acknowledging their good points, you ruminate over all of their imperfections. Even the most trivial of faults are amplified, while positive characteristics are overlooked. You humiliated yourself in front of your friends years ago and can still vividly recall the event. You find yourself cringing with embarrassment over it, even though your friends have probably forgotten about it entirely.

Where Negative Bias Comes From

Our tendency to pay more attention to bad things and overlook good things is likely a result of evolution. Earlier in human history, paying attention to bad, dangerous, and negative threats in the world was literally a matter of life and death. Those who were more attuned to danger and who paid more attention to the bad things around them were more likely to survive.

This meant they were also more likely to hand down the genes that made them more attentive to danger.

The evolutionary perspective suggests that this tendency to dwell on the negative more than the positive is simply one way the brain tries to keep us safe.

Are You a Pessimist? Take the Quiz

Try our fast and free test to help you identify if you or someone you know may have a pessimistic mindset.

Development

Research suggests that this negativity bias starts to emerge in infancy. Very young infants tend to pay greater attention to positive facial expression and tone of voice, but this begins to shift as they near one year of age.

Brain studies indicate that around this time, babies begin to experience greater brain responses to negative stimuli. This suggests that the brain’s negative bias emerges during the latter half of a child’s first year of life. There is some evidence that the bias may actually start even earlier in development.

One study found that infants as young as three months old show signs of the negativity bias when making social evaluations of others.

The Brain’s Response

Neuroscientific evidence has shown that there is greater neural processing in the brain in response to negative stimuli. Studies that involve measuring event-related brain potentials (ERPs), which show the brain’s response to specific sensory, cognitive, or motor stimuli, have shown that negative stimuli elicit a larger brain response than positive ones.

In studies conducted by psychologist John Cacioppo, participants were shown pictures of either positive, negative, or neutral images. The researchers then observed electrical activity in the brain. Negative images produced a much stronger response in the cerebral cortex than did positive or neutral images.

Because negative information causes a surge in activity in a critical information processing area of the brain, our behaviors and attitudes tend to be shaped more powerfully by bad news, experiences, and information.

Effects

While we may no longer need to be on constant high alert as our early ancestors needed to be in order to survive, the negativity bias still has a starring role in how our brains operate. Research has shown that negative bias can have a wide variety of effects on how people think, respond, and feel.

Some of the everyday areas where you might feel the results of this bias include in your relationships, decision-making, and the way you perceive people.

Relationships

The negativity bias can have a profound effect on your relationships. The bias might lead people to expect the worst in others, particularly in close relationships in which people have known each other for a long time.

For example, you might negatively anticipate how your partner will react to something and go into the interaction with your defenses already on high alert. Arguments and resentment are often the results.

When it comes to relationships, it is valuable to remember that negative comments usually carry much more weight than positive ones. Being aware of our own tendency to fixate on the negative is also important. By understanding this natural human tendency, you can focus on finding ways to cut other people a break and to stop expecting the worst.

Decision-Making

The negative bias can have an influence on the decision-making process. In their famous work, Nobel Prize-winning researchers Kahneman and Tversky found that when making decisions, people consistently place greater weight on negative aspects of an event than they do on positive ones.

This tendency to overemphasize the negative can have an impact on the choices that people make and the risks that they are willing to take.

When imagining scenarios involving either gaining a certain amount of money or losing the same amount of money, the risk of loss tends to loom larger in people’s minds. People often fear the consequences of the negative outcome more than they desire the potential positive gains, even when the two possibilities are equivalent.

People have a stronger negative reaction to losing $20 than the positive feelings they have from gaining $20.

People Perception

When forming impressions of others, people also tend to focus more on negative information. For example, studies have shown that when given both “good” and “bad” adjectives to describe another person’s character, participants give greater weight to the bad descriptors when forming a first impression.

How to Overcome Negative Bias

The negativity bias can take a toll on your mental health, causing you to:

Dwell on dark thoughts.

Hurt your relationships with loved ones.

Make it difficult to maintain an optimistic outlook on life.

Fortunately, there are steps you can take to change your thinking and fight the tendency toward negative thinking, including:

Stop Negative Self-Talk

Start paying attention to the type of thoughts that run through your mind. After an event takes place, you might find yourself thinking things like “I shouldn’t have done that.” This negative self-talk shapes how you think about yourself and others.

A better tactic is to stop those thoughts whenever they begin. Instead of fixating on past mistakes that cannot be changed, consider what you have learned and how you might apply that in the future.

Reframe the Situation

How you talk to yourself about events, experiences, and people plays a large role in shaping how you interpret events. When you find yourself interpreting something in a negative way, or only focusing on the bad aspect of the situation, look for ways to reframe the events in a more positive light.

This doesn’t mean ignoring potential dangers or wearing rose-colored glasses—it simply means refocusing so that you give fair and equal weight to good events.

Establish New Patterns

When you find yourself ruminating on things, look for an uplifting activity to pull yourself out of this negative mindset. For example, if you find yourself mentally reviewing some unpleasant event or outcome, consciously try to redirect your attention elsewhere and engage in an activity that brings you joy.

A few more ideas to get your mind off negative thoughts:

Go for a walk.

Listen to upbeat music.

Read a good book.

Savor Positive Moments

Because it takes more for positive experiences to be remembered, it is important to give extra attention to good things that happen. Where negative things might be quickly transferred and stored in your long-term memory, you need to make more of an effort to get the same effect from happy moments.

So when something great happens, take a moment to really focus on it. Replay the moment several times in your memory and focus on the wonderful feelings the memory evokes.

A Word From Verywell

The negativity bias can have a powerful impact on your behavior, but being aware of it means that you can take steps to adopt a more positive outlook on life. Taking a more mindful approach that involves being aware of your own tendency toward negativity and consciously elevating happier thoughts to the forefront of awareness—this is one of the best ways to combat negative bias.

Ruminating on the negative can take a serious toll, so taking steps to combat this bias can play a role in boosting your mental well-being.

Money problems can be unavoidable, and we may have no choice about being in debt.

Fears about paying debts, bills and essentials such as food and electricity can be very stressful. If we feel responsible for sending money back home or are the only earner in our household, we may feel burdened and isolated.

Feelings like this can make it harder to cope with everything, including the money problems themselves.

There are things we can do to help prevent financial problems causing issues with our mental health.

We might feel ashamed of what we’re going through, which may make it harder to tell anyone, leaving us feeling alone with it. The truth is, we’re never alone with money problems. Research shows they are one of the most common and serious sources of stress for many people.

Even if our finances are impossible to change, sharing our fears with another person who’s not involved and who you trust is likely to help us feel less alone and overwhelmed. This may help us to see new ways forward.

If we are struggling financially, including with debt, it can be helpful to talk about it with an expert at a charity that offers free money advice. They are very experienced with what can go wrong with people’s finances and what may help.

It can be really helpful to ask for help before any debt becomes unmanageable. But getting help will benefit everyone.

Here is a list of organisations that offer free advice about financial problems, created by the charity Money and Mental Health.

Talking with one of these free, expert advisers could also lead to you finding out about new possibilities, such as benefits you’re entitled to, your legal rights, ways to reduce the size of your debt repayments and other ways to save money.

Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Netflix, Universal Pictures, 20th Century Studios

This list was originally published on June 26, 2020. It has been updated to include more movies with terrible trips.

Disappointed that you’re not able to get away anytime soon? Just remember that vacations aren’t always all they’re cracked up to be. Imagine one right now: A trip, in your fantasies, probably involves you floating in a pool, reading a novel, and logging off for a full week. In reality, though, it’s all traffic jams, airport security, and screaming kids — and don’t forget the stress of figuring out finances and planning. It’s just not worth it.

And as the following films show, those aren’t the only risks. To help you feel more at ease when it seems like everyone is heading out of town without you, we’ve put together a list of movies that showcase the absolute worst-case scenarios for trips of all kinds: accidents, deaths, dinosaurs, and torture abound.

The Evil Dead (1981)

Maybe nothing can put you off planes, road trips, islands, or beaches. But if nothing else, you can at least be dissuaded from taking any invitations to isolated cabins in rural areas. In The Evil Dead, a group of students go on vacation in a cabin that is absolutely teeming with demonic energy. It is infested from the get-go. If you took the creepies and ghoulies out of this cabin, it would simply fall apart and there would be nothing but a pile of wood, and actually, that would be better.

When two dumbass members of the group find a Sumerian version of the Book of the Dead in the cellar alongside an archaeologist’s tape recorder, they do the smart thing and play the tape, thus resurrecting a demon entity. Everything goes to shit, obviously, and from there it’s a lot of murder and demon activity and possession. It’s just relentlessly chaotic and traumatic in a way vacations probably shouldn’t be, so to spare yourself the trouble, just don’t go anywhere.

National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983)

It is (probably) a fact at this point that no one entity has made more cash off the back of badly executed vacations than the National Lampoon series. Vacations: European ones, Vegas ones, Christmas ones, summer ones, it’s hard to keep track of just how many bad trips Chevy Chase can go on before he calls it quits. In the first of the Vacation installments, Clark Griswold (Chase) wants to spend more time with his wife and kids (always the first mistake) and suggests a trip to a theme park in California. If you thought you might be safer on the ground, you’d be wrong: Griswold insists on driving across the entire country. They crash, they get stuck, a family member dies (classic). It’s a whole mess, and it’s just not worth it.

Weekend at Bernie’s (1989)

If your boss invites you on vacation, do not go. There are no free rides, no good bosses, and no positive way for this to end. In Weekend at Bernie’s, which has perhaps been referenced more times than it has been watched, two colleagues (Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman) discover insurance fraud at their company. When they inform their CEO, he offers them a trip to his beach house for Labor Day, but is actually planning to have them killed. Instead — surprise! — Bernie is murdered by the hitman.

When guests rock up for a yearly party, they don’t realize that Bernie is dead. Sensing an opportunity to get some use out of the fancy house, Larry and Richard pretend Bernie is still alive, keeping his sunglasses on and entering into escalating ridiculous scenarios to keep up the pretense. Do you really have the energy for all that?

Thelma & Louise (1991)

The first true female road movie, Ridley Scott’s Thelma & Louise quickly makes clear the reasons why women don’t tend to go on trips alone. Best friends Thelma (Geena Davis) and Louise (Susan Sarandon) decide to get away from their boring lives with a weekend getaway in the mountains. After a stranger assaults Thelma, good friend Louise does him in, but things escalate to a point where they have to decide whether to give themselves up or run forever.

Of course, you can’t run forever, and eventually they drive off a cliff. Thelma & Louise offered a nuanced conversation on assault long before we were having them regularly, and there are arguments to be made that dying was better than losing their freedom. Still, though, that’s not a decision you’ll have to make if you just stay put and avoid the crime spree in the first place.

Jurassic Park (1993)

You’re dying for a getaway, even if it’s work-related, huh? How does a nice, dinosaur-infested vacation on Maui sound? Jurassic Park isn’t necessarily a vacation for anyone, but it is a good fable for the dangers of taking up just any old rich dude on his offers of free board on his island: Chances are he wants you to be a witness to some moral quandaries.

In Jurassic Park, that moral quandary is over whether human beings have the right to play god: can, and should, humans bring back long-extinct animals from the dead? If they do, what happens next? In the case of Jurassic Park, the answer is a lot of carnage, fear, and rain. Plus the worse you behave, the worse the punishment you endure at the hands of nature. The moral is: Don’t bring back dinosaurs from the dead, and don’t go on any vacations before considering every outcome.

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

In the black comedy Little Miss Sunshine, starring Greg Kinnear, Steve Carrell, and Toni Collette, the Hoover family is flat broke and fighting constantly. When daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) gets offered the chance to participate in the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant, the entire family reluctantly agrees to go, including the color-blind wannabe pilot son (Paul Dano), the recently suicidal uncle (Steve Carrell), and the grandfather (Alan Arkin) who has been training her himself. The trip is a disaster: screaming, drugs, car failure. The death of a relative leads to the theft of a corpse. Olive loses her competition, rendering the journey pointless. You could argue that the wholesome unity the family finds through their distress makes the vacation a success. But is it really worth the drama?

Snakes on a Plane (2006)

While I have seen Snakes on a Plane — maybe even twice — I did have to look up the plot to write this, so convinced was I that it did not have one. Essentially, a man is being escorted on a plane from Hawaii to LAX to testify against a gang boss. The gang boss, not thrilled, arranges for a crate of venomous snakes to be placed in the cargo hold and for the passengers’ leis to be sprayed with a pheromone that will ignite the snakes’ bloodlust.

That is a lot of effort to go to to kill one man, and cynical minds might think that it’s almost as if the entire plot was written based off the one-line premise of “snakes … on a plane.” Putting aside that, and the impossibility of getting a load of snakes onto a plane post-9/11, it still poses some risks. You could go all the way to Hawaii for a paradise-island vacation, think you’re safe on the trip back home, only to be brutally murdered by a malevolent snake before you reach LAX. Snakes on a Plane didn’t do to air travel what Jaws did to beaches, but if airport chaos isn’t enough to keep you off an airplane, maybe this will do it.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

Going on a blissful retreat to Hawaii, paradise on Earth, never seems to end the way anyone is expecting. In Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Peter Bretter (Jason Segel) runs there in a tornado of self-pity and flagellation after a humiliating breakup with his girlfriend, the titular Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell). While on his trip, Peter runs into Sarah and her new rock-star boyfriend, Aldous Snow (Russell Brand), which really only makes things worse. From there, the vacation is a series of mishaps, downs, and sad realizations. Imagine spending upwards of hundreds of dollars on a holiday, only to run into your ex and a new boyfriend with an inexplicably grating accent? You’re safer staying home — and if your ex is showing up there, you’ve got bigger problems.

The Hangover (2009)

While bros quoting Zach Galifianakis basically ruined The Hangover in 2009, it is still pretty enjoyable in and of itself, even if you find yourself preempting most of the lines. As we all know by now, the film follows three friends on a bachelor party in the aftermath of a big night out as they work backwards to figure out what happened. The conclusion — that they were accidentally roofied — is less hilarious in 2020 than if you were a teenage boy in 2009. However, it’s still a lesson in the myriad ways that an innocent vacation can go wrong. Even if you’re as careful as can be, like Alan, you can still end up getting lost, taking the wrong drugs, getting obliterated, getting attacked by a tiger … the possibilities are endless.

Spring Breakers (2012)

Things are tight, financially, for most people who aren’t grubby billionaires right now. That makes it harder for anyone to get away on vacation, but what you probably shouldn’t do is emulate the behavior of any character in Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers. After a bunch of college students fail to make it to spring break (my heart bleeds), they opt to rob a local restaurant instead of like, washing cars. Once they make it to Florida, things only get worse. It’s a real after-school special for the consequences of drugs, crime and threesomes — it’s a slippery slope, starting with just wanting to get on vacation and ending in murder, jail, and chaos. Just! Stay! Home!

Sightseers (2012)

Possibly because it’s British, Sightseers is criminally underrated. A dark comedy directed by Ben Wheatley, Sightseers will put you off even a short trip. It follows a couple, Tina and Chris, on a countryside caravan vacation (very normal in the U.K., exactly as boring as it sounds). After Chris kills a man with his car over a littering disagreement, he gets a taste for blood and murders basically anyone he’s annoyed by or jealous of along the way. If that wasn’t enough, Tina gets carried away doing some murders, too, which leads to some more fighting between them and an eventual suicide pact gone awry. It’s very bleak, very violent, and while it’s funny to watch, it’s more than enough to dissuade you from getting in a caravan and going to the middle of nowhere. You don’t really know your partner until you’re trapped alone in a small space together, and Sightseers is a quarantine step too far.

Midsommar (2019)

No matter how bored you are, no matter how desperate for some kind of getaway from your life, if anyone offers you the opportunity to go to a remote Swedish village, just say no. In fact, remote villages of any kind are usually a no-no — they’ve always got some kind of weird rituals that they’ll expect you to partake in. In Ari Aster’s Midsommar, a traumatized student is invited to attend a midsummer celebration with her friends at another friend’s commune. The group members take mushrooms (another no-no, especially if you’re already traumatized) and start to witness some pretty horrific things taking place for real. There’s no point upsetting you with the details, but it’s nasty, and it makes a strong case against European jaunts anytime soon.

Us (2019)

When you think of what could go wrong on vacation, your brain likely goes to some pretty pedestrian places: missed flights, lost luggage, expensive taxis, language barriers. Have you considered, as Jordan Peele’s 2019 horror Us asks you to, that there might be a doppelgänger waiting for you? In Us, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) is understandably traumatized when she runs into a carbon copy of herself. Later, on vacation with husband Gabe (Winston Duke) and their children, they are confronted by their doubles, learning that their sadistic counterparts are the “Tethered,” sharing a soul with their look-alikes while living in the shadows. The Tethered (actually genetic clones), are sick of being ignored and go on a wild rampage across the USA — and everything that happens in between is more than messed up. Again, it might seem unrealistic, but at least you know your scissor-wielding doppelgänger isn’t at home.

Destination weddings often drain your bank account and throw you into the middle of nowhere with a bunch of relative strangers — what’s not to love? In Palm Springs, directed by Max Barbakow and co-produced by Andy Samberg, two strangers, Nyles and Sarah (Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti), meet at Sarah’s sister’s wedding, but it turns out Nyles has already met Sarah before — at this exact wedding. He’s stuck in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over again, a glitch that Sarah gets trapped in as well. It’s a sci-fi rom-com that plays up its desert setting, complete with a big drug trip and frequent floats in the pool. While it all ends well, I don’t know that many of us would have the means to learn quantum physics and break the time cycle. So why risk it?

Bad Trip (2021)

Sure, any vacation that you actually plan is likely to have a higher success rate than a spontaneous road trip. In Eric André’s hidden-camera comedy Bad Trip, directed by Kitao Sakurai, best friends Chris (André) and Bud (Lil Rel Howery) take a road trip from Florida to New York City so Chris can confess his love to his high-school crush. It all starts out bad enough when they decide to steal Bud’s sister Trina’s (Tiffany Haddish) car, leading to a cross-country chase. What happens next is kind of a messed-up mutant love child of Nathan for You, Jackass, and Borat with pranks, stunts and every embarrassing fuckup you can imagine. Unsurprisingly, André consulted with Sacha Baron Cohen, Nathan Fielder, and Jeff Tremaine (whose company Gorilla Flicks produced the movie) to make it as uncomfortable as possible — something you can avoid by staying home.

Old (2021)

The events of the past few years — pandemics, politics, Supreme Court rulings — are enough to make anyone feel beyond their years. You might be tempted, with all that going on in the world, to head off to a secluded beach and try to heal and recoup your health and happiness. What if, though — hear me out — the beach is actually rapidly aging people? And the resort is a front for a pharmaceutical-research team spiking guests’ drinks so they can perform lifelong medical trials in the space of a day? That, for some reason, is just what happens in M. Night Shyamalan’s 2021 thriller Old. It might sound ridiculous, and you might be willing to take that chance so you can have a little break during your messy divorce, but it’s probably not worth the risk.

The Trip (2021)

With everything going on in the U.S. right now, Europe might seem like a safer bet. However, as Midsommar proves, it’s not actually that much safer on that continent — and the Norwegian movie The Trip seals the deal while taking into account the lessons learned from Sightseers and The Evil Dead. First: Do not go to a cabin in the woods. Second: Do not ever go on an isolated trip with the intention of fixing your marriage. Don’t. In Tommy Wirkola’s The Trip, a husband (Aksel Hennie) and wife (Noomi Rapace) secretly plan to murder each other during their getaway. However, things get even worse, and three fugitives take them captive. Just don’t go anywhere, and don’t trust anyone.

When Airbnb first became a thing, there were plenty of people who struggled to get their heads around the idea of renting a room in some stranger’s house. There were so many terrible things that could go wrong, but Barbarian takes a nightmare scenario to a whole other level. In writer-director Zach Cregger’s indie horror, Tess (Georgina Campbell) is upset to find out that the Detroit rental home she’s staying in the night before a job interview has been double-booked by a man (Bill Skarsgård). While Skarsgård plays creepy well (see: It, John Wick: Chapter 4), he’s a red herring — there’s another, scarier villain to this story. Sure, Tess isn’t on vacation per se, but this movie might make you rethink booking that short-term rental. You never really know what’s missing from the listing — nor what dwells inside the basement.

If you had a rich friend from your past who invited you to stay on some crazy Greek island, you’d go, right? Weird intricate puzzle aside, nobody turns down a free vacation, even in the middle of a raging pandemic. In Rian Johnson’s follow-up to Knives Out, Daniel Craig reprises his role as detective Benoit Blanc, now tasked with solving a mystery for tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton), but this whodunit is (of course) much more complex than it at first seems. Glass Onion is fun and silly and a shiny reminder as to why you should never, ever trust a rich person offering something gratis. It’s only ever going to go badly — especially if said free trip is on a remote private island.