I’ll admit it. I’m not proud of it, but I like it when horror sequels go outer space.
I know it’s usually silly. It’s almost always a major break with the rest of the franchise, unless the monsters were from outer space to begin with. (It’s not like anybody complained about Critters doing a sequel in space – that’s where those creatures were from!) And yet, at some point it’s okay to acknowledge that some of our favorite horror franchises are, at least occasionally, extremely absurd.
Leprechaun goes to space? We already accepted a damn leprechaun, so go nuts. Jason goes to space? By the tenth film in the Friday the 13th franchise he’d become an unstoppable zombie juggernaut who fought psychics teenagers and swapped bodies. Plausibility waved “bye-bye” to a lot of our horror franchises a long time ago.
If you’re willing to accept the ridiculousness of a horror movie – not everyone is, but just in case you are – it’s okay to enjoy it when your favorite horror movie villains go to outer space to ply their scary wares. And there are quite a few more horror movie franchises that have never been to space but would be fun as hell if they did.
Here’s what I got. Did I miss anything?
Amityville
The original film was based on a “true” story, and so was the first sequel/prequel, but after that this franchise went nuts. Evil lamps, time travel, you name it. So while it might not be very frightening to set an Amityville sequel in space, I think all bets are officially off.
How does it work? As we learned in the Amityville sequels, it’s not just the house that’s haunted, it’s the objects within it. And they’re still haunted even if they’re removed from the property.
So it’s really very simple: it’s the future, mankind has been gradually leaving the planet for other, more inhabitable worlds, and someone brings with along some antiques and artifacts. One of those antiques happens to be from the Amityville house, and it brings the haunting into the spaceship which – for months or even years – is going to be the home of dozens of families.
In other words, it’s a haunted house in space. If nothing else it answers the time-honored question about all haunted house stories: why don’t they leave? Well, this time it’s the only place in space you can go is into a deadly vacuum, that’s why!
Child’s Play
The killer doll Chucky has gone to military school, he’s gone to Hollywood, and he’s gone to a mental institution. But he’s never been to space!
This idea may seem like a reversal for the Child’s Play franchise. The series went from being a little cheesy but still horrifying for two or three films, only to veer hardcore into splatstick comedy with Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky. The last two movies in the official franchise, Curse of Chucky and Cult of Chucky, got more serious in tone, with cliffhangers that are leading in directions which – probably – won’t take killer doll into space.
But imagine, if you will, that Bride of Chucky director Ronny Yu returned to this series, ready to take it to the stars. Chucky’s a doll, right? It’s not like he’s going to die of old age. And in the distant future he’ll still be around, wreaking havoc and steadily upgrading himself into more sophisticated animatronics. Chucky in Space might play a lot like Star Wars if one of the droids was a homicidal maniac, and if that doesn’t sound fun to you, then we are very different people.
Evil Dead
Did you ever see the original, pessimistic ending of Army of Darkness? Ash had gone back in time to fight the Deadites with King Arthur, only to go too far back into the future and emerge into a desolate wasteland. The only way out now is up, so in Evil Dead in Space Ash finds himself a spaceship – with an interface so simple even a 20th century S-Mart clerk could figure out – and off he goes, into the wild doomed yonder.
Unbeknownst to Ash he’s got Deadite stowaways on board, and so begins a film that revisits the sanity-testing isolation of the first half of Evil Dead 2, with Ash trapped in space with nothing but demons to keep him company. They try to drive him insane, they take over vital parts of the ship, they even try to pull him into a black hole… and if you thought the giant monster from the end of the second Evil Dead was big, wait until you see what the Deadites call forth from the Lovecraftian nether regions of a black hole!
Paranormal Activity
The found footage genre isn’t dead, it’s just sleeping, waiting for Paranormal Activity in Space! Don’t forget, the demons in this blockbuster franchise are tied to people, not their houses, so if those people go to outer space – in a sparsely populated space station, for example, filled with security cameras – the demons would go with them.
It’s a big switch from the ultra-realism that used to define the Paranormal Activity series, but it’s not such a big switch when you remember that the last two installments had supernatural super soldiers, time travel and 3D ghost cameras. The franchise went into ridiculous and gimmicky territory a while ago. Let’s just take it one million steps further, into space!
And again, space is vast and empty. It’s enough to make anybody feel trapped and alone. It sure would be creepy to find out that the crew of a space station went missing, and to review the security footage to find out what happened to them…
The Purge
For one night a year all crime in America is legal. But does that law still apply… in space?
There are two ways The Purge in Space could work. First, a grounded version (well, I say “grounded”). We have space stations right now, floating in orbit, and if an American astronaut decided to celebrate their favorite holiday in zero gravity one would have to wonder if international law would be on their side, and whether it’s only fair if the other astronauts would get to fight back… or kill at their own leisure.
But also, if the corrupt government from the Purge movies doesn’t get overthrown, it only stands to reason that an annual tradition would persist like Christmas, Halloween and all our other economy-driving holidays. Imagine a future where one species – ours – has free reign to commit any crime they want on any planet they want. How would other intelligent species respond to humanity? Would they run, would they hide, would they fight back, or would they adopt our barbaric ways and start acting on their ugliest impulses too?
Imagine, if you will, a deadly mob slaughtering each other in a wretched hive of scum and villainy like Mos Eisley space port. Now, instead of imagining… let’s make it!
