Chris Rock is behind the next Saw movie. And at this point, that shouldn’t even surprise us.
We are living in interesting, glorious times for the horror world, with horror movies shattering box office records, winning Academy Awards and crossing over into the mainstream in big ways. Many fans have referred to the current period we find ourselves in as something of a “golden age,” and you won’t find me disagreeing. But what’s most unique and interesting about this particular “golden age,” the most recent of many for the horror genre, is that several of its notable leaders started their careers doing the same thing: making us laugh.
The two horror films that have actually managed to earn Academy Awards nominations in recent years are Get Out and A Quiet Place, with the former being nominated for Best Picture and winning Best Original Screenplay. And they share the common link of coming from unexpected filmmakers: Jordan Peele and John Krasinski; Peele rising to prominence as one-half of the comedy duo “Key & Peele” and Krasinski becoming a household name thanks primarily to “The Office.” Peele of course followed Get Out with this year’s equally masterful Us, while Krasinski is currently at work on expanding the world of A Quiet Place with a sequel.
Whatever boxes we put them in based on their previous work, Peele and Krasinski broke completely free of them with their Oscar-nominated horror films, earning rave reviews along with incredible box office success by bucking expectations and blazing bold new paths. And they’re not the only comedians who are making names for themselves on the horror scene, as last year’s hugely successful Halloween, a direct sequel to the original film, was co-written by Danny McBride and directed by Pineapple Express helmer David Gordon Green.
As it turns out, McBride and Gordon Green are big time fans of horror movies, and they both proved with Halloween that they’re as good at scaring us as they are making us laugh. As you may recall, many fans of the franchise originally balked when they heard that McBride was behind the return of Michael Myers, similar to the way eyebrows were initially raised in the horror community when both Jordan Peele and John Krasinski announced upcoming horror movies. But with this week’s announcement of Chris Rock being the brains behind a new installment in the Saw franchise, I’m not so sure anyone can even balk anymore. After all, in the wake of Get Out, A Quiet Place and Halloween, shouldn’t we know better?
(Over on Twitter, even Seth Rogen recently teased an “action/comedy/suspense/thriller” he’s working on to direct, and we cannot wait to learn more about that one.)
Of course, names like Peele, Krasinski and McBride are far from the first to enter our lives through comedy and eventually make their mark in the horror world. Before making classic horror films such as Misery and An American Werewolf in London, Rob Reiner and John Landis cut their teeth with comedies, making us laugh before giving us nightmares. And let’s not forget about Kevin Smith making a highly unlikely transition to horror with Red State and Tusk, and Bobcat Goldthwait similarly surprising with the found footage film Willow Creek.
So what link, if any, is there between comedy and horror? It’s a question all of the aforementioned filmmakers have been asked over the years, and the various answers they’ve provided make it clear that there is indeed a direct link, however unlikely, between the genres.
“Whether it’s to make [the audience] laugh or make them scream and shit their pants, it’s all in the engineering of the pace,” Danny McBride noted in a chat with Business Insider back in 2017, making a connection between the similar approaches to setting up/paying off jokes and scares. Jordan Peele similarly told No Film School back in 2017, “One of the beauties of the horror genre is it has a lot of connections to comedy.” During that same interview, Peele elaborated, touching upon another commonality that’s integral to his own work:
“This is true for both horror and comedy: if they work, its because there’s some kind of social truth.”
What’s interesting about Krasinski, unlike Peele and McBride, is that he’s not a huge horror fan himself; but that may actually be why he makes for such a great horror filmmaker. Think of William Friedkin directing The Exorcist or Stanley Kubrick directing The Shining. Sometimes the best horror comes from artists who *aren’t* deeply immersed in horror.
Speaking about his unlikely career path, Krasinski told Independent last year, “I hadn’t thought of this until someone at South by Southwest, a friend of mine, said: ‘I never pegged you to direct a horror movie.’ And I said, me neither, because I couldn’t even watch horror movies. And he said: ‘Oh, that’s why this is so good. Because, if you were shooting to make one of the best horror movies, you would have missed completely. And, I think the fact you went into it writing a family drama, that you knew people would bond with this family, the scares are ten times scarier, because I don’t want anything to happen to this family. So, now it makes more sense to me why I liked this movie and why it feels fresh, because you weren’t gunning for something that you knew very well.’ And I think that that’s really interesting to me. I’m happy that some of the freshness of the movie might just be my ignorance of the genre.”
So what makes comedians so good at making horror movies? There’s no one answer that applies across the board, of course, but it’s becoming clear as the years go on that there is indeed something about a flair for comedy that translates to a talent for terror; it’s no coincidence that some of the most beloved horror movies are horror-comedies. And at this point, given the recent track record of comic talent making the leap into horror, who in their right mind is even questioning such a transition anymore? Only time will tell whether or not Chris Rock is a fitting pilot for the Saw franchise but for now, we have no reason to be worried.
“I’ve been a fan of SAW since the first film in 2004,” Rock said this week. “I am excited by the opportunity to take this to a really intense and twisted new place.”
I literally have *zero idea* what a Chris Rock-conceived Saw movie could even possibly look like. And that’s nothing if not a very, very exciting prospect right about now.
Every artist deserves the chance to break out of whatever box they’ve found themselves in, and if history is any indication, that often means good things for you and I: horror fans.
