Editorials
Why You Should Spend This Weekend at Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights!
On Friday, September 15th, I was fortunate enough to attend Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights on behalf of Bloody Disgusting in Los Angeles, California. During my visit, I witnessed a Stephen King nightmare unspooling before my eyes, came face to face with Henrietta fresh out of the fruit cellar, and was chased by many, many pig- men. When it comes to Halloween time in the great city of angels, there are many places where you can choose to spook yourself and watch some of your favorite cinematic icons cut and slash their way across the screen, but the most exciting event of all is without a doubt Halloween Horror Nights.
First, I hit the red carpet, where I chatted with some of my favorite people in the horror industry, including Tobin Bell, a.k.a. “Jigsaw” from the SAW series, who told me that his favorite entries in the franchise are the ones where Jigsaw punished his victims out of karma for bad behavior, and Jason Blum, head honcho of Blumhouse Productions, who refused to tell me almost anything at all. With Blumhouse taking over the Halloween franchise, placing David Gordon Green in the director’s chair, and returning Laurie Strode herself, a.k.a. Jamie Lee Curtis to her famous role and John Carpenter himself behind the scenes strumming up new tunes and looking over the script, I was eager to learn as much as I could from Blum himself, but all he would tell me is that his favorite entry in the Samhain inspired franchise is the original entry, John Carpenter’s Halloween. Malek Akkad, however, was a bit more willing to open up. When placed under pressure about when exactly the new entry will fall in the timeline of the series, the renowned Halloween 4 and Halloween 5 producer told me that this will be the eleventh film – whatever that turns out to mean. It’s a confusing response, but when the question was asked so clearly, one can’t help but take the man at his word. I also had the privilege of speaking with a few other starlets, including Frank Grillo, star and writer of The Purge who beamed happily over the recent announcement of a Purge inspired television show, Happy Death Day director who told me about his Groundhog Day inspired slasher film, and John Murdy, creative director of the Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights, who excitedly spoke about all of the new additions to his park, citing The Shining inspired maze as his personal favorite.
Watch our video from the red carpet here!
Up next, I was told to meet Leigh Whannell at the Globe Theater, which was decked out with spooky candles, smokey trees, screens in every direction playing footage of the new mazes, and people like Slash and Vanessa Hudgens and the members of The Losers Club casually wandering around, making merry sport of the Halloween spirit. From there, a bus brought me over to the “Insidious: Beyond the Further” maze, which I walked through with Insidious stars Leigh Whannell and Lin Shaye leading the way, and composer/consistent Conjuring universe creature man Joe Bishara close behind. This haunted attraction, along with the Saw inspired maze, were both interesting not only because they paid attention to the little details of the franchise, with the Saw maze even going as far as to have actual (fake) saws flying out at you as you carefully dodged their swinging chains and made your way through the house, but also because they both gave insight to fans for what to expect from the upcoming installments in each series. Insidious 4 may not be out in theaters yet, but anyone who dares to venture into its darkly lit strikingly good interior will get a sneak peek into the upcoming film, and learn a little bit about what we horror fans can expect from the latest entry in one of the many James Wan inspired creations.
I loved all of the little details in the “Ash vs. Evil Dead” maze, which not only rewards fans of the show with intricate snippets from the series (you even enter the maze through Ash’s dirty old trailer), but also because it’s littered with homages to the original series, most notably Evil Dead 2, where you will actually be attacked by a crazed Henrietta stumbling deadite, and also get to see her in her fullest form, as the giraffe-like Henrietta with an elongated neck and buck teeth snapping at you as you stroll by.
However, my favorite maze of the evening, without a doubt, was definitely “The Shining” inspired haunted attraction. Although it may not be as frightening as the “Titans of Terror” killer maze which beckons back to the big dogs of the horror world, a.k.a. Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare On Elm Street, Leatherface from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th franchise, or as oddly intriguing as all of the pig-men running around in the “American Horror Story: Roanoke” inspired maze, the little nods to the impeccable Stanley Kubrick horror film we all know and love really make it the most memorable of the entire Halloween event. Anyone who knows and loves The Shining will find joy in this little-personified homage to the classic slow burner – at one point, you’re even in the infamous bathroom where Jack witnesses a beautiful woman morph into a hideous monster, and it’s hard not to get a kick out that. Even the carpet is accurate to the film. You can tell just by looking at it how much love John Murdy has poured into his little creation – not to mention how many gallons and gallons of blood.
No matter your overall preference when it comes to the park, horror fans will not be disappointed with the outcome of their trip to Halloween Horror Nights this year. Sure, you can go see a movie on the big screen at New Beverly (which is a great option as well), or you can head down to Dark Delicacies and purchase some of your favorite Stephen King novels (another solid choice, really, these are all great choices L.A. is the best), but why not spend an evening living out your fears in real life? Go wander through the Scare Zones, get lost in the Toxic Tunnel and become terrified as you watch what appears to be real tourists being yanked out of line and demolished by demons in fiery pits in the Urban Inferno. No matter what’s your poison, Halloween Horror Nights is guaranteed to have something special in store for you, which is why it should be at the top of your list to visit this weekend, and every weekend, until the holiest of holy days is finally bestowed upon us: October 31st, Halloween, the greatest day of the year.
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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