Editorials
If They Made Horror… Hypothetical Horror Films From 8 Non-Horror Directors
There are many directors out there who will probably never make a horror film, but are stylistically idiosyncratic enough that we can safely assume what it might be like if they tried. With any luck, someday one of these hypothetical films will become a reality. Except the Judd Apatow one. No one wants that.
Head inside for the breakdown!
Quentin Tarantino
*A Quentin Tarantino horror film will undoubtably have a great soundtrack filled with music both anachronistic and tonally mismatched with the material in just such a fashion that it becomes the coolest thing you’ve ever seen.
*It will be violent, but not body count wise. Each kill will matter more than we’re used to in horror films because the long conversations leading up to them will be filled with tension and dread.
*The killer will wear an outfit familiar to fans of 1970s cinema and utilize a weapon familiar to fans of 1980s cinema while struggling with mental issues familiar to fans of 1960s cinema.
*Everyone dies at the end. You think there’s going to be a final girl, but she dies too.
*Feet.
Wes Anderson
*Wes Anderson’s horror film will utilize a highly affected form of onscreen violence that at once looks silly and amateurish, yet chills thanks to its deadpan execution.
*The main character will likely be a well dressed, highly intelligent, deeply depressed female, born into a wealthy family plagued with issues stemming from a rascal patriarch who would rather go out and have fun than raise a family.
*The dad will be the first kill. Then, at the end, the dad will be revealed as the killer. He faked his death. He will be played by Bill Murray. Serial killer Bill Murray will seem funny at first, but in the film he will actually scare the crap out of you.
*Awesome soundtrack, but don’t listen to it around your redneck family members.
George Lucas
*A George Lucas horror film will utilize heavy green screen work and rely on special effects to tell the story in purely visual terms. As a result, not only will you not care about the characters, but the violence inflicted upon them will not even be clear due to all the busy noise onscreen.
*Actors will look and sound exactly like actors from any other bad horror film.
*No T. No A. And no B. And by ‘B’ I mean both Butts and Blood.
*Probably more horror film creatures on screen than we’ve seen since Nightbreed. Or Monsters Inc, which this film will be just as frightening as.
Christopher Nolan
*If Christopher Nolan directed a horror film it would take place in a dangerous prison where some of the inmates are insane and others are quite sane, but you never quite which characters are which. And you never will, either.
*6/9ths shot in IMAX.
*The killer is a woman. Actually, each kill in the film is from a different woman.
*At the end, the character you thought was the main character all along turns out not to have been the main character after all. The main character was someone not actually in the film.
Tyler Perry
*If Tyler Perry directed a horror film, it would totally scare the piss out of you. Like, it would make you question life’s worth.
*The killer is definitely a woman. As are all the people she kills. The guys in the film are just like, “Man you b*tches are crazy,” as they drink beer and talk about sports.
*Soundtrack written by Tyler Perry. The CD claims it has ten tracks, but it’s just the same song at ten different tempos.
*When someone gets stabbed, their blood looks like sweat.
*The killer’s murder weapon will be a sharpened tampon. The film will not appear to know how weird and messed up that is.
*Very likely to have the same ending as Psycho, if you catch my drift.
Judd Apatow
*If Judd Apatow directed a horror film it would be nearly three hours long with only a couple of kills.
*Lots of sex, though. Plus, everyone talks to each other with highly affected vulgarity. If not for these two factors, we’re looking at an easy PG rating.
*The killer would be a ghost that haunts a family. Each family member is a member of Judd Apatow’s actual family. Seth Rogen plays the dad, but he’s given a darker beard and larger nose, so he looks more like Judd Apatow. We’ll see his penis at one point, too.
*You think the killer is going to be nervous and unsteady Jason Segel, but it’s actually singer-songwriter Jackson Browne.
*Cut out the profanity and nepotism and add a better soundtrack and this could also be Cameron Crowe’s horror film. If it’s really super good, however, then it must be James L. Brooks’ horror film.
Michael Bay
*Michael Bay’s horror film will not screw around when it comes to gore, murder, and mayhem. The disrespect for human life on display will be remarkable.
*Everything looks orange, but it doesn’t matter because it takes place during Halloween.
*Typical slasher sex pot girls walk and talk like normal humans, except they’re constantly bent over, showing us their butts. So they look kind of like really hot elderly people.
*The killer is a mass murderer rather than a one at a time slasher type. Instead of having a traditional final girl, this film has a final Marine.
*Totally, 100% critic-proof.
J.J. Abrams
*The J.J. Abrams horror film will have a killer who fills you with fear and dread despite looking like someone you could easily beat up.
*Rather than be its own story, the film will instead pay homage to John Carpenter by copying the stuff he did without reverse engineering why any of it actually worked.
*Michael Giacchino’s score will be incredible, though hampered slightly by Abram’s demand that it emulate Carpenter’s synth scores as much as possible.
*Nothing regarding the killer and what he does will be revealed in marketing, leading everyone to hunger for knowledge regarding his identity. Turns out it was the gardener.
*Lens flares catch a priest on fire.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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