Editorials
Clive Barker Almost Had His Own Disney Park (Yes, Really)
If there is any one thing that has made Clive Barker truly stand apart as a creator, it has been his incredible ability to tell stories within a variety of mediums. He seamlessly transitioned from horror fiction to horror film incredibly early in his career, had made a living in macabre theatre before that, and has since tackled video games, comics and even action figures as well. With each of these things, he always managed to tell stories that were distinctly his own, with his own specific voice and style, while also always managing to cater to the specific strengths of these often incredibly diverse mediums. When looking at his career as a whole, it seems like there’s almost nothing he hasn’t done. That’s what I love about the subject of this article. When you say “Clive Barker almost had his own park at Disneyland,” there’s that one small part of the most seasoned Barker fan that might say, “Okay, I can see it,” while the rest are simultaneously saying, “I’m sorry, what?”
But let’s back up to how Barker even got to that point in the first place, because it is without a doubt jarring to hear that one of the highly regarded, so-called “Masters of Horror” would have a deal with Disney, let alone one so massive that it almost led to an actual park. Barker had already had a working relationship with Disney, however loosely, through Miramax. At this point in time, that studio was owned by Disney, and Miramax had owned the Hellraiser franchise since 1992, beginning with American distribution for Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth. Barker was involved as a producer on both that and to a lesser degree the subsequent sequel, Bloodline, but after the experience on that entry and the move toward direct-to-video for the series, his involvement stopped.
In fact, around the same time Barker began to become less involved with the Hellraiser franchise, he began to for the most part transition out of the horror genre in general. This gradual switch had begun in the late ‘80s with the publication of the dark fantasy novel Weaveworld. That really marked the kind of ambitious world-building that—as an author, at least—would define Barker’s career. Weaveworld was followed by other massive, incredible works of fantasy like The Great and Secret Show, Everville, Galilee and Imajica. He also tried his hand at writing young adult fiction with incredible success in The Thief of Always. By the time 2000 rolled around, Barker had become one of the world’s most prominent fantasy authors and had already penned a successful children’s book, which is incredibly important to note.
This was a time in his career, even if he is still so immediately well known as a horror maestro, where Disney coming to his doorstep not only made sense, but felt kind of natural.
With all of the aforementioned success, the early 2000s saw Barker embark on his most ambitious journey yet—truly saying something, for him—a four-part young adult fantasy series that he would not only write, but for which he would also paint hundreds of accompanying illustrations. In 2000, he had already begun to paint some of the larger characters and concepts behind the series, which he titled Abarat. The series, for those unfamiliar, revolves around a collection of twenty-five islands that make up the Abarat, each island pertaining to a different hour of the day, with the twenty-fifth as a sort of time out of time.
Hearing of Barker’s new project, some executives from Disney came to his house and Barker walked them through the world, essentially telling them the story of Abarat in what sounds like a cross between a pitch and honest-to-goodness story time as he also showed them each of the completed paintings up to that point. The world, the vibrance, the characters and the scope, it clearly made a mark on the folk from Disney.
After that one meeting they bought Abarat for eight million dollars.
The deal included the rights to the books, to the already planned feature film adaptations, toys and, most interestingly, an accompanying park to be built at both Disneyland and Disney World. This is absolutely wild for a lot of reasons. Eight million meant a little more then than it does now, first of all, especially to buy a book series that hadn’t been written yet. They clearly loved this idea if they just bought it at first glance, seemingly intending to build a minor empire around it. When one takes in the film climate of the early 2000s, though, things begin to make a little more sense.
Barker said it best in an interview with Fangoria #200 in March of 2001: “What they’ve done is something they’ve never done before: they’ve bought a world from the inside out. They came out and saw a house full of paintings, and heard me talk about the world and the characters and the philosophies, and they said, ‘We want to exploit this material in every medium we’re in, from theater through parks, through toys, whatever.’ And that was my dream for this material. It’s a wonderful marriage.”
Fall of 2001 saw the premier of both the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter franchises on the big screen. Both were based on successful book series, both had tie-in toys and video games, and both were hugely successful at the box office. Both of those were built-in franchises as well, promising to deliver an entry a year, or close to it, until the stories wrapped up. And even then, though likely unplanned at the time, both found ways to continue on, regardless. Most importantly of all: neither of those franchises belonged to Disney. While Barker’s genius and energetic ambition behind Abarat no doubt played a part in Disney’s excitement over it, we cannot overlook the fact that Disney also clearly wanted their own Harry Potter. Badly.
About as soon as the first book was published, development began on the screenplay. John Harrison became attached as writer and delivered a draft of the script in 2004. Yes, the very same John Harrison who had composed the scores for Creepshow and Day of the Dead and had directed Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, which adds even more horror legacy to this attempted Disney project. It made perfect sense, though, as Harrison had just written Disney’s Dinosaur at the time. Disney planned on producing Abarat as a trilogy, despite the four planned books, with the first two books forming the basis for the first movie. One can easily assume that Disney planned to release an entry of the trilogy each year, similar to The Lord of the Rings.
As for why Abarat never wound up happening with Disney, there are several factors. The first, most obvious answer probably being the fact that we are now in 2020 and the Abarat series (which over time transformed from a four-book series into a five-book series) is still not complete. The third was published in 2011, six years after the publication of the second and it has now been nine years since then. Barker’s creative output has never died down and he has released other books in the interim, but given the amount of illustrations that go into each one, the Abarat books take time to produce and Barker’s health scare in 2011, which he has been recovering from ever since, has not made it any easier to finish the series, I’m sure.
Even back when Disney was actively developing it, the books not coming out fast enough to keep up with the development of the movies, especially considering that the protagonist does not age between each, really meant that it did not make sense to rush the films so far ahead of the source material just to meet a release date. That, coupled with the standard changes of hand within the company and new executives replacing the old ones, seemed to spell the end of Abarat at Disney.
The park remains the most interesting part of all of this, of course. According to Barker in a 2004 interview with L.A. Festival of Books, it would have been based on Babilonium, the island in which it is always six o’clock in the evening and there is a massive carnival happening all the time. It is the perfect location to be turned into an area of a theme park. The notion of not just having a ride devoted to Abarat but an entire, well, island, also makes sense considering the entertainment/theme park climate at the time. In 1999, Universal Studios saw great success with the opening of its Islands of Adventure in Florida. At the time it opened, that massive second park saw islands devoted to the Marvel super heroes, Jurassic Park, Dr. Seuss, classic comic strip characters and Greek mythology. It has since added the likes of King Kong and Harry Potter as well. Disney apparently desired to build something to rival what Universal had done with Islands and, admittedly, Babilonium would have been the absolute perfect fit for that.
In some ways, Disney attempting to build a Clive Barker-created park to compete with Universal is incredibly ironic. As already mentioned, prior to Abarat Barker had seen success with his previous children’s book, The Thief of Always. Well, there have been no shortage of attempts to try and bring that book to life in both live-action and animation, beginning in the early ‘90s. A few of those attempts had been at Universal where they, according to Barker, also planned to develop a theme park attraction to tie into the film, before he ever made his Abarat deal with Disney.
In a 1997 AOL appearance, Barker said, “By the way, for those of you who know the book, most of the action takes place in a magical house in which all things are possible. It’s a kind of playground, where your fondest wishes come true. Universal has indicated that if the film is made, they’d like to recreate this house as an attraction at their theme park.”
Just think about that for a second. We’re not talking about Halloween Horror Nights houses here, and it would be amazing enough if we were. The two biggest movie-related theme parks on the planet both, separately and at entirely different points, considered building whole theme park attractions based on Clive Barker’s work. These aren’t things that would have stuck around two months out of the year, these attractions would have been park fixtures for years and—if something like E.T. is any indication—would very possibly still be standing today. A cynical person, as we admittedly all kind of are these days, would point out how sad it is that we can’t live in the world where that happened. And yeah, it’s a major bummer.
But for all the incomprehensible, overwhelming, mind-numbing bad out there, I cannot believe we live in a world where these things were even being discussed. I cannot believe either Disney or Universal considered building attractions based on Babilonium or Thief of Always’ Holiday House, let alone the fact that Disney basically paid up front for it, they were so enthusiastic. That will never not be amazing to me.
So even though it’s a huge bummer that these park attractions never came to pass, as incredible as it could have been to walk through an island of the Abarat or navigate Holiday House, let alone to have seen their respective movie adaptations, the books are still right there. And we’re not going anywhere for awhile, folks. Barker’s world building is second to none and I think a lot of us could use that escape. Sure, it’s no tangible theme park, but that also means no lines, no overpriced food, no tiptoeing around vomit, and instead just getting swept away by some masterclass storytelling. All in all, it’s not a bad vacation to take.
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Evil Dead Burn.
Fans of The Evil Dead franchise have become accustomed to an excess of gore. From the low-fi horror of Sam Raimi’s 1981 original and the slapstick comedy of Army of Darkness to Fede Álvarez’s 2013 remake, which literally ends in a rain of blood, grotesque dismemberment and comedic violence are as important to an Evil Dead film as the outline of Bruce Campbell’s iconic jaw.
Sébastien Vaniček‘s franchise installment, Evil Dead Burn, follows suit with wall-to-wall violence and set pieces built around extreme carnage. As the Deadites rise once again, Alice (Souheila Yacoub) must fight to the death against her possessed in-laws hell-bent on punishing her for their family’s sins.
Co-written by Vaniček and Florent Bernard, Evil Dead Burn follows the ill-fated Price family, descendants of Dr. Benjamin Price who discovered an ancient dagger capable of sending Kandarian demons back to hell. Newly uncovered from its protective spell, this dagger has called to the evil dead and led them to the family’s ramshackle home. Keeping plot to a bare minimum, Vaniček fills nearly every scene with powerful Deadites and their dastardly acts as they torture the Prices to find the weapon. Horrific moments like a woman drinking hot wax from a lit candle and a shocking post-credits child murder don’t even crack the top ten of disgusting, painful, and disturbing carnage that floods the film.
In any other franchise, we would be listing the film’s most gruesome kills. But fans of Evil Dead know that when we’re talking about the Necronomicon, mere death is only the beginning.
10 ) Deadites Burn
Though Burn checks off all the Evil Dead boxes, its story is a franchise anomaly. Rather than possessing anyone who crosses their path, Vaniček’s Deadites have set their sights specifically on an unwitting clan, intent on recovering the powerful dagger. Resurrected from a nearby lake, Deadite Jessica (Greta van den Brink) informs us of this plan while murdering the eldest Price son. Will (George Pullar) is speeding down a deserted road when he slams into the malevolent demon standing in the middle of the road. After his car rolls off the deserted road, he awakens to find himself upside down, a strange woman lodged in his cracked windshield.
As he desperately tries to reach his phone, Jessica slowly twists her head, tearing the skin of her distended neck. Completely detached from her shattered body, the demon’s head rolls out the window and begins chanting a Kandarian curse. Will’s car bursts into flames as Jessica vows to seek out the rest of his family. While burning alive, Will learns that he is merely the first on a deadly hitlist filled with the people he loves most.
9) Dinner from Hell
Despite a remarkably streamlined plot, Vaniček hints at the Price family’s extensive dysfunction. An uncomfortable dinner erupts in aggression as they gather for lunch after Will’s funeral. Mother Susan (Tandi Wright) berates her recently widowed daughter-in-law while father Edgar (Erroll Shand) — already under Kandarian influence — blames younger son Joseph (Hunter Doohan) for his eldest son’s death. No one is safe as long-held tensions break through to the surface and family secrets ricochet through the air.
With Edgar behaving erratically, Alice and Thya (Luciane Buchanan), Joseph’s girlfriend, try to move sharp objects out of his reach. But Edgar manages to get a hold of a fork and turns his rage on the family dog. As he stabs Max repeatedly in the face, Joseph tries to pull his father away. Both are injured in the struggle and rush to the hospital, leaving Susan and Alice to deal with the corpse. A horrific moment of animal cruelty, this scene sets up a no-holds-barred film in which anyone can be brutalized. But perhaps most disturbing is the viciousness already lurking in this troubled family, barely concealed resentments that existed long before the Kandarian threat.
8 ) Bathroom Brawl
As Deadites possess the Price family, Alice barricades herself in an upstairs bathroom. She reluctantly shields her mother-in-law, despite Susan’s atrocious behavior. Almost immediately, Alice regrets this decision when the woman reveals the depths of her hatred. She rejects clear evidence of Will’s domestic abuse, continuing to blame Alice for their troubled marriage. Leaning her cheek against a scalding hot radiator, Susan submits to Kandarian possession and becomes a Deadite before our eyes. Though disturbing on its face, she seems to choose possession over an honest reckoning of her family’s dark secrets.
Now a Deadite, Susan attacks Alice with broken shards of the toilet bowl and wraps the shower curtain around her head. Scampering across the ceiling, she hangs her daughter-in-law by the neck with the plastic sheet as Alice desperately gasps for air. With only her hand free, Alice gouges Susan’s face with a safety razor, finally managing to break herself free. As Deadite Susan taunts her from the corner, Alice revs up a brush trimmer and plunges the circular blade into her shoulder and chest. We cheer for Alice as she finally pushes back against Susan’s passive-aggressive disdain.
7) The Pen is Mightier
In a sea of blood-splattered dismemberment, one scene is so tense that it makes us squirm despite its lack of visual gore. With the family’s ailing matriarch possessed, Deadite Polly (Maude Davey) attacks Alice in the upstairs hallway, pressing her face against the bush trimmer’s still blade. Insisting that Alice has caused Will’s death, Polly invites the grieving woman to avenge her child by turning on the power tool. An instant before her mother-in-law can send the blade tearing into her cheek, Alice manages to escape by jamming a shard of glass into Polly’s eye. But not before the elderly demon can deliver a cringe-worthy injury.
Though Alice struggles with all her might, Polly slowly drives a fountain pen into the younger woman’s ear canal. Ringing blots out all other sounds as Alice’s face twists in pain. We imagine a tiny object bursting through our own eardrums, puncturing the soft tissue lying beneath. Though Alice tries to extract the pen, she only succeeds in breaking it off, leaving half of the quill buried in her ear. She will eventually use tweezers to remove the tip, sparking another moment of deafening agony.
6) Chekhov’s Dishwasher
As Susan prepares for the aforementioned family meal, Vaniček drops a delicious bit of foreshadowing. While the grieving mother thaws frozen food, she absently fills an old dishwasher whose door has long since busted its latch. Reminiscent of a scene from Final Destination, the faulty appliance falls open, leaving a shelf full of gleaming forks and knives suspended a foot above the floor, just waiting for their moment to strike. After returning from a fatal incident we’ll discuss in a moment, Deadite Thya returns to the Price home, hell-bent on retrieving the powerful knife.
As she advances on Joseph, the frightened son retreats to the kitchen and brandishes a carving knife, subtly nodding to an ultra-violent kitchen scene in Álvarez’s Evil Dead. But Thya will not be deterred. Advancing on her boyfriend, the Deadite startles him into tripping on the outstretched door and impaling himself on the upturned utensils. She presses Joseph further onto the blades while he plunges a corkscrew into her throat. But even this will not stop the maniacal demon, who rips her throat open with the wine tool, dripping her blood over Joseph’s upturned face. Adding insult to injury, she marvels at his willingness to kill the woman he professed to love, casting a pall over their entire relationship. Not only gruesome and excruciatingly tense, but this moment plays into Joseph’s insecurities as the failed son of this disturbed family.
5 ) On the Lake
Evil Dead Burn begins on a seemingly peaceful lake overrun with lurking Kandarian demons. Jared (Keanu Karim) is trying to enjoy a quiet day of fishing but can’t stop his friend Leo (Victory Ndukwe) from answering the phone. Along the dock, Jared notices a bite on Leo’s reel and eventually pulls up a severed head savvy viewers may recognize from Lee Cronin’s 2023 sequel Evil Dead Rise. Moments later, Jared finds himself ensnared by reels, hooks digging into the corner of his mouth and eyelid. As the fishing line wraps around his neck, he’s dragged, screaming, into the lake.
Leo returns in the pouring rain and sees Jared desperately calling for help. He quickly boats out to save his friend, but a mysterious force pulls him down into the depths. Leo finally drags Jared back into the boat, only to see that his body has been cut in half, intestines spilling out of his bisected waist. As he struggles to make sense of this carnage, Deadite Jessica emerges from the lake and capsizes the boat, her clenched demon hands causing the water to boil. Though Leo manages to swim to shore, his skin is a blistered and bubbly mess. Deadite Jessica absently steps on his hand, easily peeling away flesh like overcooked meat. This jaw-dropping opener not only sets the stage for a brutal film, but situates the story in franchise lore while simply explaining the Deadites’ return.
4) Car Trouble
The shocking trailer to Evil Dead Burns shows the aftermath of a vicious attack. As Deadite Thya crosses the family threshold, the camera reveals a car’s headrest still impaling her face. But this devastating sight merely hints at the cruel circumstances of her actual death. Incapacitated in the disastrous family dinner, Edgar slumps in the backseat while Joseph tends to his wounds. Though seemingly incapacitated, the possessed father snaps to attention and wraps his seatbelt around Thya’s neck, pushing against the back of her seat. Joseph holds a gun to his father’s head, but can’t bring himself to pull the trigger.
As Thya tries to escape the car, Edgar viciously slams the door, severing four of her fingers. She manages to trigger a fire extinguisher, filling the car with cloudy white chemicals and giving Joseph a chance to escape. But Thya is not so lucky. Trapped in the car, she screams as Edgar pummels her with a detached headrest, stabbing the poles through her neck and face. Joseph watches from a safe distance as his father beats his girlfriend to death, knowing he was unable to save her life.
3) Head Shots
When Deadite Thya comes stumbling back home, Joseph believes he’s seen the worst. Unfortunately, his misery is only beginning. After fighting off his newly-sadistic undead girlfriend, he tries to flee with his surviving family, only to find Deadite Edgar blocking his path. Flanked by Deadite Max, Edgar taunts his son by insisting that he should be dead in Will’s place and confirming the young man’s greatest fears. Edgar then does what Joseph could not and shoots himself in the head.
The family screams in horror at this devastating sight, then freezes in stunned silence as Edgar does not fall. Grinning, the maniacal father shoots himself twice more, blowing gaping holes in the sides of his head. For the rest of the film, Deadite Edgar will terrorize his family with these unthinkable wounds, even tempting his wife with a bloody kiss. Vaniček mixes emotional devastation with gore as Joseph must watch his father’s suicide while confronting the truth of his own ineptitude.
2) Down Through the Chimney
Along with references to the beloved Ash (Campbell), it’s become tradition for an Evil Dead film to reference the franchise’s signature weapon. But Vaniček subverts our expectations when Edgar’s chainsaw is out of gas. Instead, Alice employs a rusty bush trimmer to fight off her Deadite mother-in-law. Unfortunately, the extended weapon only shreds her flesh, leaving the monstrous woman still able to fight. Trapped in the attic, Alice must clamber out of an upper window with Deadite Susan hot on her heels.
Having dropped the ceremonial knife off the third-story roof, Alice has no choice but to improvise. Toting the bush trimmer, she inches her way down the chimney, pausing to turn halfway down. As Susan follows her daughter-in-law down the chute, Alice turns on the bush trimmer and waits for impact. Vaniček brings us into the living room as buckets of blood and dismembered body parts begin to rain down over the hearth. It’s the kind of moment Evil Dead fans love, gleefully gory carnage via an unexpected power tool.
1 ) Goodbye Stranger
Despite this plethora of grisly gore, Vaniček’s final act tops the list while delivering a poignant beat of empowerment. With the house on fire and the Deadites subdued, we believe that Alice is finally safe. But as she watches the Price home burn to the ground, the corpse of her husband walks out of the flames. He taunts her memories of their abusive marriage, insisting that she stayed because she likes the pain. Demanding the sacred weapon, Deadite Will chases Alice to a construction site and into an open hydraulic press. In the fall, Alice impales her ankle on a massive spike, leaving her trapped as the pit fills with boiling hot tar.
But Alice finds the strength to save herself and pulls her ankle off the bloody spike. She distracts Will with a decoy knife, then pummels his chest with a jackhammer. Exacerbating her emotional pain, Deadite Will reminds her of his love. But it seems that Alice has had enough. She stabs him with the ceremonial blade, then crushes his head as it turns to ash. It’s a well-earned moment of empowerment as our final girl vanquishes her most powerful demon.
Vaniček’s crowd-pleaser continues the Evil Dead trend of gleefully crude massacres. Two extra scenes hint at a continuation of this gruesome massacre, promising more brutality in films to come.
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