by Adam Rockoff
When The Blair Witch Project was finally released, it grossed almost $250 million worldwide—the most profitable film in history up to that time.IV
Like clockwork, the backlash began almost immediately. Since the film wore its low-budget aesthetic on its sleeve, it was practically immune from attacks on its professionalism. But its originality was fair game. Hard-core fans point to its similarity to Cannibal Holocaust, in that both films use faux documentary footage, allegedly discovered by fictional characters in the film. Both Sánchez and Myrick denied having seen the film until Blair Witch was finished. There’s no reason not to believe them, since Cannibal Holocaust is not a film typically found on most bookshelves, even among devotees of the genre. Still, Sánchez admits that had he previously seen Deodato’s film, he might not have made Blair Witch.
More damning were reports that the duo had actually ripped off The Last Broadcast, an even lower-budget film that came out less than a year before. Again, Sánchez and Myrick pled ignorance. If you ask me, Blair Witch was the best thing to ever happen to The Last Broadcast, because as a film, it’s barely watchable. Plus, it’s not even the same idea. Blair Witch is all found footage. The Last Broadcast is played as a straight documentary about a murder that occurs during a search for the Jersey Devil.
Of course, the general public knew nothing of these mini-scandals. To them, The Blair Witch Project was something very, very new, and they embraced it wholeheartedly (although probably not the viewers who vomited in the aisles). The inevitable ancillary gravy train followed: books, comics, Blair Witch action figures (despite the fact that she’s never shown in the film), video games, clothing, jewelry in the shape of the ubiquitous stickmen, and even a “soundtrack” purported to be a mix tape found in the car of one of the missing filmmakers.
Then there were the parodies, from the legally-mandated-to-be-unfunny Pauly Shore–hosted Bogus Witch Project to the breast-obsessed Bare Wench Project. My favorite, however, is the homemade Blair Warner Project, about the most fuckable Facts of Life character, who in real life became a born-again nut and child abuse advocate (just to be clear, not an advocate for abused children, but a proponent of abusing them). Before she completely disappeared from the public eye, she came down with West Nile virus and had a mental breakdown on the reality show Survivor.
The Blair Witch Project’s most enduring legacy, however, was the impressive number of high-quality films that co-opted its handheld, faux-documentary style, from modestly budgeted domestic terror (The Last Exorcism, The Devil Inside, The Chernobyl Diaries, Apollo 18) to foreign films and their inevitable American remakes (the REC series and Quarantine) and Hollywood blockbusters (Cloverfield) to cable television specials (Animal Planet’s Mermaids: The Body Found). None of these, however, captured the public’s imagination like The Blair Witch Project—that is, until a film of even humbler means came along.
Displacing its stylistic predecessor as the most profitable film ever made (over $193 million on a budget of $15K), Paranormal Activity has an even simpler premise than Blair Witch: a young couple use their camcorder to record the ghostly goings-on in their home. Never had a static camera been used to such terrifying effect.
Paranormal Activity didn’t just launch the directing career of Oren Peli, then a software developer; it also marked former Miramax executive Jason Blum’s first foray into horror. Ever since, no one has been more synonymous with the genre. Through his company Blumhouse Productions he’s been the driving force behind many of the most successful films and franchises in recent years.
Unlike nearly every other film series, in which the law of diminishing returns inevitably kicks in, the Paranormal Activity films continue to get better. I liked the sequels even more than the original. And I loved the original. The third installment is my favorite, followed by Paranormal Activity 4 and then 2. In January 2014, the spin-off Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones debuted, while another chronological sequel is in the works.
It seems inconceivable, but Paranormal Activity almost never saw the light of day, at least in its current incarnation. Initially, DreamWorks acquired the film, always intending to remake it with a far bigger budget. After all, in 2002 they had remade Ringu as The Ring to the tune of nearly a quarter-billion-dollar gross worldwide. Plus, who ever heard of a studio actually releasing a film that cost less than a typical day of craft services? However, Peli and Blum convinced studio execs—usually not known for their foresight—to first screen the original film with an audience. When the suits saw the reaction, they wisely decided the most prudent course of action would be to simply release it as is.
While we’re on the subject, I guess it’s as good a time as any to discuss easily the most polarizing post-Scream trend. I’m probably in the minority here, but I don’t have a visceral hatred of remakes. Of course, they’re no longer called remakes but “reimaginings,” as producers feared the connotation of the former. I echo the sentiment of Stephen King, who when asked by George Romero what he thought about Hollywood ruining his books replied, “My books have not been ruined. They’re on the shelf right behind you. You can read ’em if you want to.”V There might not have been a good reason to redo The Omen—other than a cash grab—but I can promise you that the next time I watch the film my enjoyment of it will in no way be lessened because of the dreadful Liev Schreiber/Julia Stiles version. Plus, it’s easy to forget that some of the genre’s most beloved offerings—from Carpenter’s The Thing to Cronenberg’s The Fly to any number of Hammer’s monster movies—are themselves remakes.
Although Joel Silver’s Dark Castle Entertainment was founded in 1999 with the mandate—at least at the beginning—of updating William Castle’s oeuvre for the twenty-first century, it was Marcus Nispel’s 2003 remake of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that opened the floodgates. Instead of embracing the low-budget roots of the original, the new ChainsawVI looked like the $10 million production it was. Sweaty old Franklin was replaced by the beautiful people, and Tobe Hooper’s reliance on insinuation was replaced by exsanguinations. Purists cried foul while a new generation pushed it past the $100 million mark, epitomizing the discrepancy between the perception of the film (and remakes in general) and its actual reception. Additional sequels followed, but one was a prequel and another was simply a remake in 3-D (I think, but, honestly, I’ve lost track).
Lest one assume that Chainsaw was an anomaly, Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake all but laid that theory to rest. The announcement of Dawn was met with an even greater uproar than that of Chainsaw, primarily because of Dawn’s status within the community. Chain Saw is a classic, for sure, but Dawn is one of the genre’s “message” movies. Although I personally might not subscribe to the theory that every shopping-mall ghoul with a taste for flesh is a wry comment on consumer culture, Romero’s legions of fans do. Ironically, once the reimagined Dawn came out, it was received fairly well, possibly because it was so far removed from the look and feel of its predecessor that fans had no reason to feel protective.
Similar to Chainsaw, Dawn grossed just north of $100 million at the US box office. Whatever uncertainty there may have been about the viability of sequels was now put to rest. They came out of the gate fast and furious. Within the next ten years, we had remakes of The Toolbox Murders, The Amityville Horror, The Fog, When a Stranger Calls, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, The Wicker Man, Black Christmas, The Hitcher, Halloween, Sisters, April Fool’s Day, Day of the Dead, Prom Night, Terror Train, My Bloody Valentine, Friday the 13th, The Last House on the Left, The House on Sorority Row, The Stepfather, The Crazies, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Piranha, I Spit on Your Grave, Night of the Demons, Mother’s Day, Fright Night, The Thing (again), The Evil Dead, and Carrie. And this is to say nothing of all the American remakes of successful foreign films, from The Grudge and Pulse to Quarantine and Let Me In.
With so many, the quality ran the gamut. Prom Night and April Fool’s Day were watered-down versions of their predecessors, while ironically, Train was much meaner and unrelated
to the original Terror Train. Piranha and My Bloody Valentine were fun updates. Some, such as The Wicker Man, Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street, were completely unwatchable. One or two, such as The Hills Have Eyes, even came close to surpassing the original. For whatever reason, I seemed to like the ones that everybody else hated the most; call me crazy, but I really enjoyed Black Christmas and The Amityville Horror. Read some of the reviews; you’ll clearly see I’m in the minority.
There is, of course, a big difference between a straight remake, which updates a film’s basic story, themes, and/or characters for a contemporary audience, and trying to recapture the zeitgeist from long ago. It’s a lesson Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez learned the hard way.
It was one of those can’t-miss ideas that was so perfect there was no way it could succeed. The two friends and collaborators were screening a double feature in Tarantino’s home when they decided to make one themselves. It would be called Grindhouse, a love letter to the titular temples of bad taste that inspired so much of their careers. The package would include two feature films—Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Tarantino’s Death Proof—as well as faux trailers directed by their spiritual collaborators Rob Zombie, Eli Roth, and Edgar Wright.
Despite the remake fever in the air and surprisingly positive reviews from critics—who probably didn’t much care for the films but wanted to seem hip to their appeal—Grindhouse didn’t even earn back half its modest budget on its initial release. This was shocking to almost everybody except those who actually understood the appeal of the grindhouse—some people actually like their turds unpolished.
It was like Woodstock ’94—bigger, louder, and safer than the Summer of Love. But sometimes, you just want to fuck in the mud.
Give the Weinsteins credit (Dimension distributed)—they refused to allow Grindhouse to die a slow death. They split up the two films for their foreign theatrical release, tried the same tactic for the domestic home video premiere, and finally slapped them back together as they originally appeared for a bonus-feature-laden special edition Blu-ray. All of this helped recoup some of the losses, but it didn’t ease the sting of what was ultimately a very expensive—and foolish—bet on nostalgia.
In the end, isn’t this what all these remakes are really selling—nostalgia at the expense of quality?
I don’t think anybody believes in the posterity of any of these remakes—be they the good, the bad, or the downright ugly. As Tony Timpone wrote in a 2007 Fango editorial (as quoted in Reel Terror), “Will we really want to watch the Texas Chain Saw Massacre remake (the one that started the craze) ten years from now when the original is still far superior?” The answer is self-evident. And in twenty, thirty, and forty years, new generations of horror fans will still seek out the original. In many ways, this is good. Not only will it foster an appreciation of horror cinema for successive cinephiles, but objectively, Hooper’s film is simply better.
Now, here’s where things get tricky. Show of hands: how many of you have seen the film ATM? Although I can’t see you (unless you’re reading this on some sort of E-reader with a front-facing camera and high-speed Internet connection, and we’ve worked out a really creepy arrangement), I assume not many, since after playing in a couple of theaters the film went straight to home video and then Netflix, which is where I discovered it. Don’t ask me what compelled me to watch it one night over the thousands of other low-budget movies I could have chosen to stream. But I’m glad I did. Directed by David Brooks, ATM is unquestionably one of the most accomplished debut features I have ever seen, an absolutely terrifying tale about three coworkers trapped by a psychopath inside an ATM vestibule. At the risk of sounding like ATM’s press rep, it’s a nearly flawless film.
Unfortunately, unless Brooks eventually becomes Wes Craven, once Netflix chooses to bump ATM from its lineup, very few people are ever going to see it. To again quote Timpone, “Entertainment and movies have become so disposable. They don’t have the staying power they used to have . . . There’s not enough time for these gems to shine and build up a fan base. They don’t have the staying power of the classics.”
Now let’s take a film like Eaten Alive, Tobe Hooper’s follow-up to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It’s a fun film, grimy and sleazy. You can almost feel the bayou heat radiating from the screen. Yet by any conceivable metric, ATM is a far superior film. But getting back to our point about longevity, which of these films will be screening at retrospectives when all of us are long gone?
Maybe I’m comparing apples to oranges. Some might even accuse me of having no appreciation for the classics—and I’m including esteemed trash like Eaten Alive, which has been elevated to cult status, among the classics. On the contrary, I have tremendous respect (even an unhealthy admiration) for such films. Even for ones that make Eaten Alive look like The Rules of the Game. I think they should be remembered, celebrated, and preserved.
My fear is that in elevating the lesser films of the past, we’re liable to overlook the best of the present. The danger in this isn’t so much that we’re going to miss out on some wonderful films—although this is certainly unfortunate—it’s that the already meager funding for horror films is going to dry up. For investors with no particular affinity for the genre, their involvement becomes a value proposition. It used to be that prospective financiers would gravitate to horror because of the historically high returns. Today, this is no longer true; comedy is just as appealing a genre on which to roll the dice.
I’ve seen this scenario play out firsthand in the career of a director friend of mine, Jeremy Kasten. Since his 2001 debut feature, The Attic Expeditions, Jeremy has forged a nice career for himself with the subsequent horror movies All Souls Day, The Thirst, and the remake of H. G. Lewis’s The Wizard of Gore. All his films have a kind of European sensibility, at once beautiful and thematically challenging. They might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but there’s no denying he’s an impressive talent. And yet, Jeremy struggles tooth and nail to get his next film off the ground, taking editing gigs and directing episodes of reality television. Now, of course there’s nothing wrong with this—in fact, it’s how I make my living—but in an earlier time he would have had the career trajectory of a Stuart Gordon or a Richard Stanley, visionaries whose films, good or bad, were always interesting and who could afford to ply their trade outside of traditional channels. If Hollywood didn’t want to finance their films, then fuck ’em, they would make ’em another way. That’s how it felt back in the day, when you never had to wonder if Carpenter or Romero would make their next film. It was expected as a matter of course. But now there are no guarantees, and even the masters struggle to get their films greenlit. More and more, it seems as if there really are only two types of pictures being made today: the $200 million blockbusters that can leverage their marketing and distribution muscle to virtually guarantee a profit, and the microbudget films that can’t help but make money. The middle is getting squeezed. Although I can already think of a handful of films that are the exception, I promise you that nobody—and I mean nobody—in Hollywood is optimistic about the future of midsize horror productions.
The counterargument is that there’s a current crop of filmmakers who are consistently creating important and provocative work, and they seem to have no trouble getting their films made. Eli Roth and Rob Zombie can practically have their pick of projects, while Jason Blum seems incapable of failure. The team behind the V/H/S films also appears to be doing fine for themselves. Ti West has carved out a niche as a master of quiet horror (The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers) after a disastrous turn with the sequel to Roth’s Cabin Fever. Adam Green’s Hatchet was a love letter to the horror films of his youth and the first real slasher franchise of the new millennium (although I much prefer his excellent survival film Frozen). With Dog Soldiers, The Descent, Doomsday, and Centurion, Neil Marshall could become his generation’s Jeff Lieberman, a highly respected but idiosyncratic director who expertly skips between genres and whose
films are more admired than they are successful. Lucky McKee may never again duplicate the pathos of 2002’s May, but he seems more than content to continue to adapt the novels of Jack Ketchum to critical acclaim.
In my proposal for this book, which you’ve just slogged your way through, I originally planned to call this final chapter “Through the Crystal Ball”—a forecast about what the future of horror holds.
It would have been a very short chapter.
My final question to everybody I interviewed—from the people who make the movies to the fans who pay their hard-earned money to see them—was, “Where do you see the genre going from here?” I want to yet again invoke William Goldman’s enduring maxim “Nobody knows anything.” And nobody did. Tony Timpone was the only one who even attempted something specific. He hopes we’ll see a quality big-budget horror film that spares no expense in service to the story and manages to transcend the genre itself, like how The Godfather is far more than just a mob movie and The Searchers hardly just a Western. As an example of a film that could possibly fit the bill, he cites Guillermo del Toro’s long-gestating At the Mountains of Madness.
The truth is, Tony has no idea. And if he doesn’t, then nobody does.
I certainly don’t. In fact, I have a legal pad right next to my computer on which I was jotting down ideas. Here are some of the random thoughts and non sequiturs scribbled on the page: Clowns. Priests. Resurgence of what classic monster? Mummy? Creature from Black Lagoon? Technology—how can it hurt us? Cronenberg—body mod? Cheap movies made on iPhones. Movies by request—one maker, one viewer. (Author’s note: I have no idea what that could possibly mean. I think I wrote it down when I was drunk.) Sharks? People love sharks but no one can outdo Jaws. Will Green Inferno bring back cannibal films? No, animal rights groups now too powerful. Remake The Funhouse and Aussie Fortress. Cool invisibility experiments happening. That news story about kids in London taking experimental drugs—looked like Elephant Man. Gotta be something bad about those e-cigs. Mind control shit? Anthologies? Gotta break out, V/H/S great but too small.
