Editorials
Open Letter to Paramount: Make a Damn ‘Friday the 13th’ Already!
Dear Paramount,
As of this past Monday, February the 13th, it has officially been eight long years since a new Friday the 13th graced the screens of hometown multiplexes. It’s also been four years since you, Paramount, regained the rights to the Friday franchise with intent to “fast track” a sequel’s production. Well, here we are. News and rumors have swirled around Jason’s potential return to the big screen. We’ve had amazingly talented screenwriters attached, a couple of promising directors, and numerous concepts have been bandied about: found footage, origin story, no Jason, and Camp Crystal Lake…IN THE SNOW!
None of these, except maybe the winter setting, have been met with any real excitement by the fans. You know, those people who would actually show up on opening weekend? Yeah, those guys. Despite the meager enthusiasm, a lot of us would still be there, hoping that this would be the one. All wishing this Friday the 13th would return us to our childhoods, leave us feeling that amazing mixture of giddy and terrified, yelling at the screen. However, with each morsel you let slip, Paramount, you were quick to snap it right back up. Delay. Delay. Delay. That’s the word of the day…er, past four years.
Why is that? A lot of the news we heard regarded the script. “The script’s not finished.” A series of films built around a hulking undead killer with a big machete hacking up horny teens is NOT what one might call “hard to crack”. What I mean is, just film a damn Friday the 13th already! What’s worse, we were so close. We, the fans and you, Paramount, were so close to sealing the deal. Whether it sucked or not, it was coming. We would finally be able to judge for ourselves.
‘Rings’ Should Have No Bearing on ‘Friday the 13th’
So what happened? Rings? Seriously? Now, I happen to love The Ring and upon its release it was a massive success, actually pulling in MORE money in its second weekend thanks to strong word of mouth. That’s fantastic performance for what was an original property in the eyes of most Americans. Then The Ring Two was released. While it still made money, it wasn’t as successful as the first, and that’s okay. Sequels rarely out perform their originals. The problem with The Ring Two is most people didn’t care for it. Flash forward to a couple weeks ago and Rings was unleashed upon the world to mediocre numbers.
This film, the one rumored to have affected the 13th Friday’s greenlight, is one you appeared to have no faith in to begin with. You shoved Rings aside, moved it around, perhaps you tweaked and reworked it until it was unrecognizable from its original conception. Who knows? What we do know is that you somehow spent $25 – $33 million dollars (that did not end up on the screen) for a sequel that most people weren’t asking for. I’m sure in addition to that bloated budget there was a hefty marketing spend, what with all those fun prank videos and ads running during every commercial break. As of this writing, the film stands at a $20 million domestic gross and $50 mil worldwide.
You said, “Oh, fuck! Rings didn’t perform. This whole Jason thing is a bad idea.” The problem here is that your audience for Rings IS NOT the same audience you would pull in for a Friday film. I’m going to let you in on a secret. I know this is something some in Hollywood are unaware of, but there is not one lump pile of “horror fans”. We have varying interests. That said, there are certain properties that carry a substantial cache within the horror community. Jason has a legacy, especially here in the states, Samara doesn’t hold a flickering flame to. Yet, at the end of the day, money talks loudest.
So, Let’s Talk Money
The American Ring franchise has pulled in a total of $221 million dollars ($280 adjusted for inflation) domestically. That’s nothing to sneeze at, and of course, they tend to play well overseas. The Friday series has raked in over $380 million. Now, considering most of those titles were released in the 80’s, the adjusted for inflation (further presented as “adj.”) amount is a massive $720 million. The two most recent Fridays (’09 and Freddy vs Jason) both had opening weekends in the 40 million range. So, judging the likely success of a new Friday off the presumed failure of Rings and its $13 million opening, a completely different type of horror film (remember? different types and different fans?) and a much less popular IP, is…for lack of a better word, dumb.
So, let’s assume, though, that your fear of financial lukewarm-iness is correct. The adj. average opening weekend of all 12 films in the F13 franchise is around $21 mil. That’s not mega bucks, but it takes into consideration films released when opening weekend numbers were not the end all-be all for a film’s box office. We can make a safe assumption that Friday could warrant at least $20 million minimum opening weekend (though I feel it would be closer to $40). Let’s assume that that 20 million is going to represent 30% total domestic box office gross for the film, which leaves us with a total of $66.6 million at the end of its box office run (again, this is worse case scenario). How do you make your money back? It’s simple.
The budget does not need to be in the $20+ million dollar range. That’s absurd. It’s as absurd as the amount of money “spent” on Rings. The original F13 films were punk rock. They were the red-headed stepchild of Hollywood. You weren’t necessarily happy about them, but they made you money. Therefore, you cranked out a new entry yearly like clockwork. Filmmakers were set free to turn in a slasher for fans and a product for you. After a 2017 that has included a well publicized loss from Monster Trucks, you need Friday the 13th back on your slate! To reignite that punk rock spirit, set a young and hungry filmmaker loose. Throw $2 million at the film and see what happens. $2 million? Yep, that’s all it would take. You need to adopt an indie mindset. Take a cast of unknowns, a non union director, a four week shoot in a state that offers decent tax incentives, and you’re sitting on a potential gold mine.
Let’s use Alabama as an example. It’s a perfect setting (after all, this is where Part VII was shot). The current tax incentive is 25% on total production costs, only putting you in the hole for 1.5 million. Furthermore, any portion of the budget spent towards filling positions with AL residents will land you another 35% towards their salaries. Let’s assume cast/crew make up 60% of our budget (1.2 mil) and we fill those roles with a minimum of half local AL residents. You can chop another $210 thousand off your risk. There’s also additional savings to be had with tax exempt status towards lodging and food. That 2 million dollar investment just keeps getting whittled down, doesn’t it?
How to ‘Crack’ It
You probably also thought of Rings’ failure, “The horror audience isn’t interested in revisiting the origins of their big screen boogeymen. We need to pull the plug!” You happen to be right there, actually. We really don’t want a friggin’ origin, but in the name of Voorhees we would’ve swallowed it anyway. Here’s your chance to get it right! A down and dirty Friday that focuses on inventive, memorable kills and does things slightly different by presenting likable characters and a strong final girl to rival the greats is all that’s needed to breath life into the series. Forget the damn gimmicks! No “in space”, no Goes to Hell. Those films are fine on their own right, but besides fans not being too pleased by them – the general public is turned off by gimmicky entries in the genre as well. Yes, Jason is a big enough name that the general public will turn out to see what he’s up to. They see, woods, hockey mask, machete, and think, “cool.”
Why? Because unlike Samara Morgan, Jason Voorhees is a bonafide screen legend. Small children don’t know what The Ring is, let alone, “what is a VCR?” I bet, though, if you showed them a photo of a brute in a hockey mask they would turn and run the other way. But, after all that time trying to hammer down a script, what’re you going to do now? You can’t go back to square one. Well, remember, F13 aren’t hard to crack.
I present you a simple concept. The memory of Jason has faded. He’s merely an urban legend whispered about around camp fires. A group of friends, escaping for a weekend of camping and fun, mistakenly stumble upon the decrepit remains of Camp Crystal Lake and decide to crash in one of the cabins when a massive storm breaks out. The story unravels in almost realtime during one night, trapped in the surroundings of Camp Blood. There’d be a couple more kinks in the plot to keep things feeling “fresh”, but that’s it. That’s all you need! A simple set up, likable characters, and again…inventive kills and gnarly practical effects. Best part, all of this is feasible on our shoestring budget! Hell, I’ll even write the damn script over a long weekend for 10k and a bottle of wine (preferably a nice red, but I’ll settle for some Mondavi Select).
To ensure maximum profit, you would keep your marketing spend to a minimum. The great thing is that a F13 film done right will sell itself. That’s right! There’s no need to have Jason show up on “The Today Show”! Though, that would be pretty cool. Follow the lead set by A24 and their advertising for The Witch. Don’t throw dollars around willy-nilly. Focus your advertising online, where it counts, with the people who are actually going to see your film. Ma and Pa Average-Joe aren’t going to be interested when the TV spot pops up during “Live! With Kelly”…so, why waste the money?
All We Need is ‘Voorhees’
Ultimately, the Friday the 13th films have taken on an almost mythic, ritualistic quality. They exist beyond the movies themselves. Much like the fantastic Cabin in the Woods showed us, these films exist to fit a need deep within. In a chaotic world that grows more and more fractured by the day, we need our boogeymen now more than ever. Fear is all around us in the real world. For at least an hour and a half, we need to be able to enter the comforting confines of a darkened theater only to have the shit “safely” scared out of us. For in a movie, within Jason, we can exorcise our fears and frustrations. We can become the final girl, victorious. We can slay the monster.
The choice is yours, Paramount. I’m not naive enough to think you’ll take any of this into consideration. But, if you’re ready to not only make some cash but shake up the industry – take a miniscule financial risk. There’s still time for a quickie turnaround in order to make that October 13th date. Put some small indie style into that big studio mentality of yours.
Sincerely,
Zachary Paul
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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