Editorials
Five Horror Movie Spin-Offs We Desperately Want!
The horror genre has no shortage of franchises, but for whatever reason, there aren’t a heck of a lot of spin-offs. You can point to exceptions, of course, but they’re mostly in franchises that have learned to rely on branching out in order to keep their concepts fresh. The Conjuring and Godzilla have both followed popular characters and monsters into their own outings, but why stop there?
Lots of popular horror movies and franchises have introduced audiences to larger worlds of horrifying creatures, filled with interesting and exciting characters, but most of them never give those heroes, antiheroes and villains their own chance to shine. But we think if it works for Hobbs and Shaw, it can work for horror characters too.
So let’s take a look at just some of the many promising horror characters who could headline their own movie, free from the limitations of the series that introduced them!
BUDDI BEAR
The remake of Child’s Play introduced a whole new world of homicidal high-end products, so there’s no reason to limit the franchise to just Chucky the killer doll. The climax of the film also revealed a terrifying teddy bear, “Buddi Bear,” which finally makes Teddy Ruxpin’s influence on this franchise explicit.
Although on the surface he may seem similar to Chucky, Buddi (or whatever he’ll be called) could take on a new, animalistic persona, more akin to a talking animal than a talking doll. The new Child’s Play made Chucky turn evil as a result of, essentially, negligent parenting. What about an animatronic that goes evil because of negligent pet care? What happens when we treat an artificial intelligence as badly as some (terrible) people treat their dogs?
There’s only one thing I know for sure: it’ll be bloody, Buddi.
BUG HUNT
There’s a throwaway line in James Cameron’s Aliens that reveals a hell of a lot about the series, but which none of the films have ever followed up on. When the Colonial Marines are getting briefed on their mission, PFC. Hudson (Bill Paxton) asks his superior officer, “Is this going to be a stand-up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?”
“Another” is the key word. If it’s a derogatory term for aliens (probably inspired by Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, a similarly-themed sci-fi novel which had already been popular for decades), then that means before the events of Aliens these Colonial Marines had fought monstrous alien life forms before. And that means there’s more of them out there.
Many Aliens fans have been clamoring for another Colonial Marine-centric film in the franchise, but why limit the franchise to just xenomorphs? There are limitless possibilities for creepy crawly extraterrestrials. Either explore the early adventures of Apone’s unit or build on what we’ve already seen, and develop a new spin-off franchise around the adventures of a space-faring military unit who specialize in hunting monsters!
Either way, bring on the Bug Hunt!
CREIGHTON DUKE
How mad would you have to be to hunt monsters like Jason Voorhees for a living? We found out in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, which introduced the fan favorite character of Creighton Duke, played by the awesome Steven Williams (The 100 Lives of Black Jack Savage). Having lost his girlfriend in one of Jason’s homicidal rampages, Duke dedicated his life to bounty hunting until finally he was deadly enough to take on Jason himself.
But what if Jason isn’t the only monster Duke has taken down? What if he trained on other undead slashers or, after it seemed like Jason was finally sent to hell (and after he miraculously survives the film) he went after other horror creatures just like him?
The possibilities are endless: Duke vs. Dracula, Duke vs. The Mummy, Duke vs. Leprechaun, Duke vs. Wrong Turn, and they’d all be incredibly cool, because Duke is only slightly less disturbed than the monsters he fights. He’s only the hero by comparison. He could be the ultimate anti-hero of the horror genre if you play it right.
STAB
How do you make another Scream movie without Wes Craven or the original cast? You don’t. You make Stab instead.
Scream has always been a fabulously meta-franchise, self-aware yet grounded in the real world. And one of the conceits is that the actual horrific killings that take place in the Scream movies have, within that fictional world, been turned into a series of slasher movies called Stab. And like many long-running horror franchises, the Stab films only got weirder and weirder as time went on, so that there aren’t any rules anymore. Heck, according to Scream 4, one of them even has time travel!
You can’t remake Scream without breaking the rules of the franchise, which says that those events really happened. But you can reboot the Stab franchise and release that instead, following the events of the original films before making sharp, satirical turns that defy the rules of the Scream franchise but make new and pointed commentaries on the way Hollywood recycles old horror properties, for better and worse.
So go ahead and take a stab at Stab, Hollywood. It’ll be a scream!
TIFFANY VALENTINE
We started with Child’s Play so we might as well end there. The original killer doll franchise is still going strong, but although the series has taken Chucky just about everywhere, the franchise never went anywhere without him. And that’s a pity, because Tiffany Valentine could totally carry her own franchise.
Child’s Play has always been a series about dolls, but certain dolls are treated differently than others. A movie just about Tiffany, as voiced by Jennifer Tilly, could focus on her terrifying relationship with a young girl, and how she’s using her insidious influence to warp the child’s mind.
Imagine her as a demonic Barbie and you’ve got the right idea. Tiffany – being vain, yet also maternal – would probably love the attention she would get from that situation. Lots of attention, lots of gifts, and lots and lots of inventive murders to pin on her owner, driving her further into madness.
So we say, what about Bloodlust at Tiffany’s? We think that you might admire the film, and as we foretell, we think we’ll all kind of like it.
And we say, well, that’s the five spin-offs we’ve got!
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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