Prepping to Make a Horror Film: Insidious 2

Over the weekend, I mustered up the courage to watch Insidious: Chapter 2. I am not an avid horror fan. I'm not a fan of horror at all, actually. Usually I see a trailer and then make a snap decision which is, "Ha! I'm never watching that!"

I have not seen the first of the Insidious movies, but my roommate told me that I didn't have to. Insidious: Chapter 2 is very similar to the first movie and picks up right where the first one leaves off, so she gave me a brief summary.  The first two Insidious films are about the Lambert family, who are connected to the spirit world through one of the sons, Dalton, and his father, Josh. In the first film, Dalton  falls into a coma and is tormented by evil spirits in another realm called The Further. The family seeks the help of Elise Rainier to bring Dalton back to reality. At some point in the movie, Josh goes into The Further to bring Dalton back, but an evil spirit follows him out and continues to haunt the family throughout the second film.

There was a lot that was visually scary, but if I had watched the movie on mute, I'm sure I wouldn't have been as scared. The sound was so powerful. The score sounded like it had a lot of strings; I expected that. But I think what was most scary was the pairing of a quick, jarring sound with a striking or strange image.

This short scene is great for sound design analysis. Specs and Tucker, two ghost hunters, are in the house of Parker Crane, a man who died many years before that is connected to the Lambert family.

This scene is very short, but it's clear the sound sets up the audience to be spooked. The first line of dialogue, "Let's get out of here," is accompanied by silence. Then you hear the floor squeak for a second, until the sound grows and you realize it's coming from the rocking horses behind the guys. The rocking horses rock faster and faster until a little boy runs across the frame yelling "This is my room!" This is paired with a jarring, non-diegetic sound. These non-diegetic sounds inserted at key moments let the audience know what they should be scared of.

Another example of this is when Dalton recalls a dream he had the previous night. At 0:42, a strategic jump cut to a wider angle, coupled with the jarring sound and scary image of the woman in the white gown makes the audience jump. I hope to implement this strategic and classic horror ingredient in our film, Dollhouse.

You Don't Need Money to Scare the S*** Out of People

As a college student looking pursue a career in the movie industry, I have heard the same advice on countless occasions: 

"Movies? Yikes...You should probably study something more stable; like psychology, or art history." 

However, upon realizing that I'm pretty set in my decision to make films, people in the industry give me another piece of advice: 

"Start by producing horror. They're relatively cheap to make, and they have a built in audience." 

I decided to do my own research on the topic. How small of a budget can horror films have and still make a profit? Does a bigger budget necessarily guarantee a better movie? I started by comparing two horror films with very different budgets.

This is the trailer for the 2010 thriller, The Wolfman directed by Joe Johnston. It cost $150,000,000 to produce.

This is the trailer for the 1978 horror film, Halloween, directed by John Carpenter. The independent film had the minuscule budget of $325,000.

When looking exclusively at box office sales, The Wolfman outperformed Halloween; grossing a whopping $139,789,765 as opposed to Halloween's $70,000,000. Despite this, in the end, The Wolfman lost $10,210,235 while Carpenter's Halloween made $69,675,000. This comparison isn't the only example of low budget horror films ultimately earning more money than bigger budget productions.

Director Tobe Hooper's 1974 film, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is my all-time favorite example of the little budget guys coming out on top. The thriller cost under $140,000 to produce and ended up grossing $26,000,000. Not bad Tobe. Not bad. 

For those who haven't seen it:

Horror movies will *almost always sell tickets.

 ( *I use the word "almost" due to the failure of the horror film Playback which earned exactly $265 at the box office in 2012.)

Horror films will always sell tickets, but they'll never be blockbusters. Some people just don't like scary movies. They never will. Luckily, there will always be those high school couples and adrenaline junkies that will go out and see anything classified as a horror film. Keeping this in mind, it doesn't economically make sense to spend millions upon millions of dollars to produce a genre of movie that targets a relatively small (although stable) population.

So in the end, the second piece of advice is correct. Scary movies are a great place to start when you want to break into the industry but don't have any money. Still, if horror isn't your thing, there's always porn.