In the 1994 film, “In the Mouth of Madness,” directed by John Carpenter, there is one scene that I’ve never stopped thinking about. If you haven’t seen the movie, go watch it, then finish reading this.

The scene I’m talking about is when Sam Neil and Julie Carmen are in the car together, on their way to Hobbs End. She’s sleeping in the passenger seat. He opens the glove box, takes out a horn, and honks it in her ear to wake her up. Anything seem odd about that?

After seeing the movie a number of times I said to myself, why the hell does he have a horn in his car? Who carries around a horn in the glove box?

This scene confirms and reveals the true nature of what’s going on in the story in such a subtle way that you don’t notice it until you think about it.

The only explanation for why he had a horn in his car is that Sutter Cane wrote it that way.