Editorials
It Fell From the Sky: One of Horror’s Best Remakes, ‘The Blob’ Turns 30!
Sometimes the success of a movie hinges completely on its timing. When the remake of The Blob crash landed into theaters on August 5, 1988, it didn’t quite earn even half of its budget back. It was a flop. Perhaps audiences were tired of creature features, as the golden age of practical effects were winding down. Perhaps it was just a slow period at the box office. For whatever reason, what should’ve been a success simply wasn’t. Though the film did eventually build a cult following upon home video release, The Blob still doesn’t have the popularity it should have received 30 years ago. It’s a damn shame. One of the best horror films to emerge from the ‘80s, this horror remake is the perfect blend of characters worth rooting for, fantastic special effects, gruesome kills, and a ton of heart.
One of the ironies of this film’s failure is that it came directly on the heels of one of horror’s most beloved films of the decade; A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. Released a year apart from each other, both Dream Warriors and The Blob featured screenplays co-written by Frank Darabont (The Mist, The Walking Dead) and Chuck Russell, with Russell serving as director. Both films share that spirit of fun and a cast of characters the viewer loves to root for, but The Blob manages to do it even better.
Shawnee Smith’s Meg Penny remains one of horror’s most overlooked and underappreciated final girls to this day, though I suspect it was this movie that led to Smith’s casting in Saw (give her more roles, please). She begins the narrative as the sweet cheerleader and ends as an amorphous blob fighting badass by the film’s end. It’s a brilliant role reversal when paired with Kevin Dillon’s Brian Flagg, the tough outcast who’s ultimately revealed to be a big softie. The clever character work that Darabont and Russell do with both leads is great on its own, but the first act twist with football player Paul Taylor (Donovan Leitch) is absolute brilliance.
Everything about Paul screams “hero.” The definitive nice guy who does everything right (except choose his friends wisely), Paul and Meg seem like the perfect team to lead the front lines against the amorphous man-eating amoeba from space. They do the right thing without hesitation in taking the homeless man to the clinic when they run across him on their first date, the first brush with the Blob, when Brian Flagg would rather flee to avoid dealing with the police. No one would have suspected Paul to suffer such a gnarly death, and so soon.
That’s a large part of what makes The Blob so effective, even 30 years later; this weird pink blob from space kills at random. No one is safe. Not the nice guy, not the caring Sheriff Herb Geller (Jeffrey DeMunn), not even children. Granted, even the bad guys die too, like would be date rapist Scott at the scene of his own crime. But this monster has an insatiable appetite, and anything in its path enters its buffet line. Dying in horror movies is never easy but being digested whole by this monster must rank among the worst.
Special makeup effects artist Tony Gardner (Zombieland, Cult of Chucky) deserves a lot of accolades for how great the effects look, and how well this film still holds up today. The deaths are memorably icky, from Paul’s unnerving digestion to the massive theater feast, this Blob functions like a massive stomach breaking down food with acid. The death of the poor waitress, though, who escapes to the phone booth to call the Sheriff for help only to find him already there, is brutal. If you haven’t yet seen this movie, I’ll let you discover how that plays out. It’s one of the best death sequences of all time.
The Blob is one of horror’s best remakes in existence. It pays proper homage to the 1958 original but shed much of the cheesiness in favor of loveable characters and glorious practical effects. The updated origins of the creature work even better than its 1958 counterpart. Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out how horrible Kevin Dillon’s mullet is in the film, but don’t hold it against him. Russell pushed him into it, and his character is great regardless of ‘80s hairstyles.
Stunning practical effects work, a great story with great characters, and a huge sense of fun, it’s a shame that The Blob doesn’t have as big of a following as it should have. It’s also a shame that it’s never quite gotten a proper release (Arrow, Scream Factory, anyone; I’m begging for a proper collector’s edition here). This is one of my all-time favorites, so I’m clearly biased, but I don’t know that anyone could ever be disappointed with The Blob. Yet, if you somehow need even more incentive, then give it a watch to pick up all the Stephen King references Darabont snuck into the script. Either way, even 30 years later, The Blob is still an underdog, and one of horror’s all-time greatest.
Found footage movies rely on immersion and a particular kind of suspension of disbelief in order to scare viewers, so it stands to reason that playing along with the “kayfabe” of it all is necessary for these movies to be effective. However, despite being something of a purist when it comes to in-universe recordings, I’ve come to accept that traditional productions can benefit from the occasional injection of found footage thrills.
For instance, Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation makes genius use of the analog gimmick in order to trap us in the titular rooms alongside our main characters before effortlessly switching back to a more cinematic language. In honor of these dynamic films that manage to combine the best of both worlds, today I’d like to share six other hybrid horror movies that successfully incorporate found footage into their scares!
For the purposes of this list, “hybrid” horror movies are defined as any flick that shifts between diegetic recordings and traditional filming techniques for a significant amount of time (or at least for pivotal scenes).
As usual, don’t forget to comment below with your own hybrid favorites if you think a particularly freaky one was missed.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. The Last Broadcast (1998)
Internet critics may have overstated the influence that Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler’s The Last Broadcast had on The Blair Witch Project, but the found footage subgenre still owes a huge debt to this underrated piece of avant-garde filmmaking. However, while the movie sets itself up as a documentary about the disappearance of a group of cryptid-hunters attempting to track down the Jersey Devil, things take a darker and much more grounded turn towards the final act.
I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoilers, but suffice to say that the jarring shift in perspective actually helps to sell the idea that everything we’ve seen before the finale was an attempt at using filmmaking to manipulate the public perception of a “real” incident.
Not bad for a movie with a $900 budget!
4. Cam (2018)
When you consider just how much the internet affects our daily lives, it’s strange that we don’t see Screenlife elements pop up in more movies these days. For instance, Isa Mazzei & Daniel Goldhaber’s highly underrated Cam only works as a freaky parable about online sex-work because it masterfully balances Madeline Brewer’s intimate moments with highly immersive segments within cyberspace.
While one might argue that the entire film could have been produced as a Screenlife experience, the hybrid approach allows the filmmakers to explore our main character’s life beyond the screens – with the duality of modern human existence actually becoming a recurring theme in the story.
3. Banshee Chapter (2013)
Most of H.P. Lovecraft’s popular stories were told in the epistolary format (where the text is presented as an in-universe compilation of letters or personal notes), so it makes sense that a spiritually faithful adaptation of his work would incorporate elements from the modern-day equivalent to epistolary fiction – found footage!
That’s why Blair Erickson’s Banshee Chapter is such an effective scare-fest, as this hybrid adaptation of From Beyond -retold through a conspiratorial lens as it references MK-Ultra and even secretive numbers stations- immerses viewers in a mind-bending tapestry of Cosmic Horror that blurs the line between fiction and reality.
2. The Deep House (2019)
The underwater setting does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s The Deep House, with the film being especially uncomfortable if you’re already scared of tight spaces and being deprived of oxygen. However, even the universally unsettling elements of the flick only work because the POV often shifts into claustrophobic footage courtesy of our main characters’ GoPro cameras.
Telling the story of a couple of YouTubers who encounter a haunted house at the bottom of an artificial lake while vacationing in France, The Deep House’s first-person exploration sequences contain some of the film’s scariest moments. In fact, I’d argue that the movie didn’t even need ghosts, as becoming trapped in the titular House already sounds like a fate worse than death.
1. Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)
My personal favorite instance of filmmakers successfully managing to combine traditional cinematography with POV filmmaking, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, is proof that the two formats can co-exist if the right story comes along.
After all, what better way to conclude a mockumentary all about reality getting increasingly more cinematic than by ditching the found footage gimmick altogether during the finale? Not only does this shift in presentation work on a conceptual level, but it also elevates Behind The Mask into a proper Slasher, which is probably why we’re so excited for that long-overdue sequel!
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