If you as the right questions, sometimes you’ll get a phenomenal piece of information out of a filmmaker.
Take the following, for example, where I had the chance to chat with Greg McLean about his supernatural horror The Darkness, in theaters this Friday the 13th.
When discussing the difference between creating scares in a supernatural film vs his Wolf Creek, McLean revealed his horror movie mantra, which comes courtesy of the great Stephen King.
They both work on implication; in the sense that all real horror is implied or created in the mind of the viewer. This is the great mystery and challenge of horror cinema I find – it’s a visual medium however not showing “the thing” rather than implying it is always 100% times more powerful. And also both rely on intense realism to be truly effective because as the master Stephen King once sagely said, “Without First Belief There Can Be No Fear.”
I have this above my writing table and it’s kind of a mantra of mine.
I absolutely love hearing filmmakers explain what inspires them and where they learned their craft. And McLean’s inspiration here rings very true. I have a huge issue with films that have weak characters or live in a completely unrealistic universe. When I don’t like the character, I don’t care if they die. If I don’t believe in their performance, it takes me out of the film. The same goes for everything happening around the characters. Look at Hellraiser, for example – Clive Barker’s interpretation of hell works because we believe in the characters and the universe he’s created on screen. McLean learned from King and now all of you can learn from McLean. Pass that horror baton!
Speaking of creating fear, I found the set up to The Darkness to echo The Exorcist in that a family brings home a relic that’s the conduit for the possession/haunting. While not exactly the same, there’s a tonal connect, which McLean agrees with.
I didn’t have [‘The Exorcist’] in mind but if that’s how you read it – awesome. I love ‘The Exorcist’ – it might be in my top two horror movies of all time – and I do find the notion of bringing something that has a power we can’t comprehend back into a regular home pretty scary.
I think it’s something we can all relate to – the notion of a haunted or cursed relic as it begs the questions; can a spirit or supernatural power reside within it? Does the past continue in some form we can’t see? It’s an ancient idea and all cultures throughout history seemed to believe this concept. It’s hard to argue against it.
You can read more about how this relic unleashes black handprints in our previous piece with McLean.
The Darkness, which stars Silent Hill and Rogue‘s Radha Mitchell, as well as Kevin Bacon (“The Following,” Stir of Echoes), follows a family that, after a vacation at the Grand Canyon, brings home a supernatural force that preys off their own fears and vulnerabilities, threatens to destroy them from within, while also consuming their lives with terrifying consequences.