Original subtitles

[eerie music]

[howling]

Come in!

JOE HILL: A dozen teenagers had been butchered

in this old and spooky house.

Let's split up and look around.

I suggest that we ponder this a bit

longer before running off.

Are you coming?

No.

JOE HILL: That's the classic.

Ooh, somebody fired the maid.

Yeah, somebody did.

The whole family maid was killed along with the rest of them.

JOE HILL: We've never been able to escape

it, the tropes and the clichés that we've

seen a thousand times.

No one knows what happened to her.

They never found his body.

They found him naked on the beach,

holding the chopped-off head of another camper.

JOE HILL: They get better with time, not worse.

The caller is in the house.

The calls are coming from the house.

JOE HILL: So I think we kinda want some of those clichés.

We want that familiarity.

Every February 14th, Harry comes back to town

just for someone to kill.

- [screams] - [screams]

Kill!

JOE HILL: It enhances rather than reduces the fun when we

see the characters doing the things

that people do in horror films.

Is anybody out there?

BREA GRANT: Horror fans are more educated on tropes

than the average film viewer.

[distorted audio]

BREA GRANT: I think that we come in with a knowledge base.

We know what a harbinger is.

You're all doomed.

BREA GRANT: We know what a final girl is.

[screams]

BREA GRANT: Our favorite thing is when someone takes

those rules and surprises us.

What are the most common horror tropes and clichés?

You know, they all relate to things that we may have felt

when we were two, three, four--

[screams]

about what the things that we were

scared of or that unsettled us.

[thunder]

ALEX WINTER: So that's what always

becomes a trope because it has such a pull on us.

[screams]

Hello?

Darry, don't even think about it.

Darry!

I told you I heard someone.

DAVE SCHILLING: One of the most important tropes of any horror

movie is the protagonist doing something completely illogical.

You know the part in scary movies

where somebody does something really stupid

and everybody hates them for it?

This is it.

You can't have a horror movie if your character

does the right thing.

[screams]

They have to make the either brave or stupid

decision to stick around.

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: 1980s, we always

had the trope of the girl running up

the stairs when she should have been

running out the front door.

[screams]

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: The killer is chasing me.

And so oh, my God, I'm running up the stairs.

And now I'm trapped upstairs and can't go anywhere from there.

[glass shatters]

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: And so that became a trope in itself.

For a long time, you know, most of a decade of slasher films.

We were fine with that.

We were just like, mm, yeah, she should have run out the door.

And there was something fun about knowing that.

Paul?

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: But that reached a point where it became

more irritating than anything.

[sinister music]

[screams]

[door shut]

MORGANA IGNIS: Some of the more nonsensical tropes that

will absolutely lead to better scenes and a better story

are things like, let's split up,

Everybody out in pairs.

Look everywhere you can think of, even the empty cabins.

MORGANA IGNIS: A terrible idea in a real scenario.

In a film, leads you to a bunch of other scenes

in which you get to enjoy these characters on their own.

You have the opportunity to see how each character will act

when they make the really stupid decision to separate and decide

to go their separate ways that the killer can focus on picking

them off individually.

The absolute worst choice that they could possibly make

is the one that leads to the best story.

Here Cheryl, why don't you go down and check, make sure?

Scotty, I'm not going down there.

OK.

OK, you cowards.

I'll go.

JOE HILL: Horror fans will watch a movie

and say, if I was in this film, I would never have done that.

And that's why I'd live.

Fans are always critiquing the choices of the characters

in the movie--

I know someone's out there.

JOE HILL:--as if things would be different if it was them.

[grunting]

[screams]

This is delusion.

It always makes me think of the Mike Tyson quote

that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the nose.

[crash]

[screams]

JOE HILL: Everyone has a plan until Ghostface

sticks a butcher knife through their chest.

[screams]

[groaning]

JOE HILL: You may think that you're

smarter than the characters in a horror film.

But if you were in that situation,

you would inevitably find yourself

making the same dumb choices because they're

basic human choices.

I'm gonna go--

I'm gonna go check this place out.

TYSON: Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Just one damn minute.

There's a psycho killer on the loose,

and you want to go traipsing around this gigantic mansion?

Have you ever actually seen the Stab movies?

So at some point in every subgenre cycle,

the tropes will become cliché.

We will get sick of seeing that same slasher done over and over

and over again.

And at that point, it will usually become a horror comedy.

[phone ringing]

Hello?

Uh-uh.

See, if that was me, I would be outta there.

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: We will have somebody poke fun of it

or call attention to it like a scream.

GHOSTFACE (ON PHONE): Hello, Sidney.

[screams]

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: And that falls at the end

of the prior slasher cycle.

And suddenly, we're now all aware of it.

HEIDI HONEYCUTT: The Scream franchise parodies horror

movies-- - Watch out.

[door creaking] - Behind you, kid!

Randy!

SIDNEY: [screams]

HEIDI HONEYCUTT: But it also gives you what you

want in those horror movies.

And it also tells you what you're watching

while you're watching it.

Now I'mma tell you what it is, OK?

It's a dumbass white movie about some dumbass white girls

getting their white asses cut the fuck up.

HEIDI HONEYCUTT: And as the Scream series goes on,

each subsequent sequel does that more

and more and more and more--

[screams] What the hell are you doing?

Being Gale Weathers.

What the hell are you doing?

GALE: I am Gale Weathers

HEIDI HONEYCUTT:--until you get to like 2022, 2023.

MAN (ON PHONE): What's your favorite scary movie?

Um, not that one.

[screams]

HEIDI HONEYCUTT: And you have the Scream movies that

are basically about the Scream movies

and about people that watch the Scream movies and horror fans.

I told you, I don't know these movies.

[stutters] Ask me about something I do know.

Ask me about It Follows.

Ask me about Hereditary.

Ask me about The Witch.

But it's also a Scream movie, but it's also a slasher film.

[screams]

I don't know where they can take it from there.

You got stabbed a billion times,

got dumped by your famous wife, and crawled into a bottle.

I think it's safe to say you're on the suspect list.

Well, maybe you're the killer because that cut deep.

CHAD VILLELLA: With the two new Screams that we have done,

I think we've had that same type of ability to look back

since the original Scream came out

and be like, the Scream came out 25 years ago.

What has changed in the state of horror since then?

Where are we as a world audience?

We've had nine Ghostface killers so far.

Nine? But I thought in the movies--

Forget about the movies.

The movies don't matter.

We are able to play with a little bit

of the tropes and the clichés and the state of horror

as it is right now.

One of the most proud sequences that I have been a part of

is the sequence where we killed Dylan

Minnette's character which is named after Wes Craven.

And that is playing on the tropes of,

you know, if you open a door, you better be careful when you

close it because then, you know, Ghostface

will be standing right behind that ready to kill you.

I think we had no less than seven doors that he opens

and closes before we actually get to the moment

where he sees an open door.

Mom?

CHAD VILLELLA: And then choosing to just simply close the door

and then have Ghostface be in the room with you--

[locks door]

[screams]

CHAD VILLELLA:--and getting into that death

against the door which now we end up playing on another trope

which is instead of a jump scare,

we're now into this slow push of the knife through the neck.

And we just stay on that shot for a while.

We played on so many tropes on this,

and this is all stuff that came before us that we could just

subvert expectations, do something new with, think how

audiences think this is going to go,

and then go in a different direction with it.

We have to finish the movie.

Who gives a fuck about movies?

[screams]

WOMAN (ON PHONE): Sometimes when a person

acts wild and crazy, well, wild and crazy things

happen to them.

They do.

Horny teenagers must die.

Nobody who is having premarital sex should be suffered to live.

This is like the abstinence education

of conspiracy theories.

punished.

[screams]

KATE SIEGEL: Like, we want all of our teenagers

to be afraid to have sex in the back of cars.

It's just an outrageous puritanical American concept

that makes me furious.

[screams]

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: So it's thought

that the horny teenagers must die

thing came out of the 1980s.

Hey.

Robin Hood to the rescue!

Woo-hoo.

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: But we were definitely

seeing that back in the 1970s.

Even in the '60s--

Prove you love me.

REBEKAH MCKENDRY:--teens have always been horny.

It's just part of human nature.

[screams]

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: And so in the '70s,

we started kind of pegging them off and really

kind of using them as cannon fodder

in a lot of horror films.

DANA GOULD: It's a very Christian cultural belief--

And you don't have to be Christian to know it or feel

it that if you're having too good of a time,

you're gonna get--

RODNEY BARNES: Movies like The Omen and The Fury

and, uh, Changeling and The Exorcist

were adults for the most part.

And because adults were at the center of the narrative,

it felt more important.

But by the time you throw kids into it,

they're not supposed to know what to do,

which in the beginning is cool.

But then after a while, it's like, OK, I get it.

[grunting]

[moaning]

RODNEY BARNES: They're easy to kill.

TOM HOLLAND: Whatever is successful that's out there

also puts a pressure on you.

And that happened with Psycho II.

Richard Franklin and I were afraid we

weren't violent enough.

And that's why we put in the two kids

making love in the basement.

What's that?

What?

That sound in the next room.

[sighs] You're just stoned.

TOM HOLLAND: That's that have sex and die thing

that have become a cliché or was on its way to being a cliché

then.

[nails scraping]

Quit.

Quit now.

Quit?

Why would I wanna quit?

Camp Crystal Lake is jinxed.

BEN SHER: Friday the 13th was the first independent slasher

film that got a major wide release by a big studio.

Made a gargantuan amount of money

and took the genre in some of the directions

that we now think of as clichés.

(SINGING) Hallelujah.

BEN SHER: In particular, the idea that if you have sex,

you're going to get killed.

We weren't doing anything.

We were just messing around.

[screams]

In Friday the 13th, Pamela Voorhees

overtly says the counselors were making

love when my son drowned.

They weren't paying attention to him.

And now I have to kill them.

Well, people liked it because teenagers like watching

teenagers have sex.

They like watching teenagers get murdered.

It's fun. It's exciting.

So it just kind of-- it was a successful trope.

They repeated it in part two, part 3, part 4, part 5.

Nobody ever got sick of it.

EMILY MARSH: But it kind of became like an endearing thing,

like an endearing trope.

It's just like, oh, those horny teens.

Like, they're gonna be the next to go.

But it wasn't like you were actually sitting there being

like, yes, they deserve to die.

That's right.

Boo on you.

PATRICK WILLEMS: You can deliver these same tropes

and same clichés where we don't even

really react because it just seems lazy,

like they're not even trying.

They're, like, running through a checklist

like, here's all the stuff that we have to do.

[screams]

PATRICK WILLEMS: And then there are ways you can have

fun with it like, yeah, sure.

You're going to have a guy with a mask

kill a bunch of horny teenagers.

[screams]

PATRICK WILLEMS: But you can have a lot of fun with like,

who are those horny teenagers?

You look at the fourth Friday the 13th,

and it's like one of them is Crispin Glover--

God, I'm horny.

PATRICK WILLEMS:--who is delivering such a deeply

strange performance.

Hey, Ted.

Where's-- where's that, uh--

that corkscrew, that fancy corkscrew for the wine bottle?

Ted?

PATRICK WILLEMS: And in one scene, dances.

And does a dance that no human being has ever done before.

And that brings so much life to the movie

because just casting this guy is such an unexpected choice.

I think you are incredible.

[chuckles]

There is something odd going on in my building.

KATE SIEGEL: Oh, sinister conspiracies.

Wouldn't it be amazing if the people in charge of us

were smart enough to be able to ever keep a secret?

Wouldn't that be great?

Wouldn't it be amazing if there were these old families that

were really running everything behind closed doors as opposed

to inbreeding themselves into a stupor?

It's one of my favorites because it's probably not

true in real life, but it adds such

a beautiful flavor to a movie.

WOMAN: He isn't my husband.

It's someone who looks like him.

He's an impostor.

ALEX WINTER: Those are some of my favorite movies

because they really connect horror

to social concerns in a very grounded and impactful way.

(ON ELIZABETH'S MIND) Today everything seemed the same,

but it wasn't.

It was a nightmare.

People are changing.

They're becoming less human.

It's happening all around us.

[shrieking]

ALEX WINTER: Phil Kaufman's remake of Body Snatchers

and The Thing are two of my very favorite horror movies

ever for that reason is they really get into paranoia.

Trust is a tough thing to come by these days.

Who's that?

ALEX WINTER: And the other and not knowing whether even you

are not what you think you are, much

less your best friend or the person next to you

and this notion of paranoia.

[gunshot]

KATE SIEGEL: And people get that social anxiety

in a new community, and they feel like they're

on the outside of things.

And it can feel to the individual

like everybody is in a cult or everyone's a satanist

because there's a vocabulary that you're not used to

and things like that.

[non-english chanting]

KATE SIEGEL: And so horror like Midsommar and take that idea

and blow it up into this full balloon

with the tension at the end till you're just waiting

for everything to explode.

There is always something going on.

You have to look closer, all right?

What about this guy?

DAVE SCHILLING: Paranoia is a crucial element of horror,

not knowing where the threat is.

If you know where the threat is coming from, it's not scary.

It's a lack of knowing.

So something like Hot Fuzz that's really about who

is in on this conspiracy, who is part of the, the killing spree.

And you find out it's most of the town.

PATRICK WILLEMS: Hot Fuzz is dripping

so much on like The Wicker Man.

Are you the landlord here?

Hi.

I'm Alder MacGreagor.

And you must be the policeman from the mainland?

Police officer. Yes.

I'm Nicholas Angel.

PATRICK WILLEMS: And, you know, creepy movies

about small English villages--

POLICE OFFICER: I think you all ought to know that I

am here on official business.

PATRICK WILLEMS: - and the ultimate

reveal that it leans into this folk horror direction

where there's this conspiracy of all

the normal people in the town.

They're all working together with this sinister plan.

Rosemary's Baby is like the other perfect example--

[sighs] I was just talking about you.

Favorably, I hope.

PATRICK WILLEMS: - where you have

this group of seemingly normal people like your neighbors.

And I, I think it's really good when it's like older people who

seem really innocent like they could be your grandparents

or whatever.

We're your friends, Rosemary.

There's nothing to be afraid of, Rosemary, honest.

And truly there isn't.

PATRICK WILLEMS: And then they are actually involved

in something really evil.

Ro--

Help me!

DAVE SCHILLING: When anyone can be bad and morality is unclear,

then you are truly terrified.

This is no dream.

This is really happening.

DAVE SCHILLING: You're truly terrified because anything

could happen to you.

No one can be trusted.

[sobs] Oh, God.

FRANK: We got a $36,000 motor home here.

We don't need any restaurants.

We don't need any showers.

We got our own.

We don't need anything from anybody.

We are self-contained, babe.

My favorite the-townsfolk-are-in-on-it

movie is Race with the Devil, where we see Peter Fonda

and Warren Oates are being--

I think they're on their way to a ski trip.

On the way, they happen to see a satanic sacrifice.

(WHISPERS) They've seen us.

They witnessed something that they shouldn't witness.

No joke.

No bullshit.

Murder.

And from then on, they're marked,

and they're just on the run and being

chased by like a collective of crazy satanists.

[screams]

BEN SHER: Peter Fonda at that time

kind of represented Americana in some way.

In Easy Rider, he was the manifestation

of the counterculture.

And he gets killed by the squares.

In Race with the Devil, it's the mid-70s,

and he's kind of become the culture.

FRANK: I'll tell you, you're about the straightest guy

I ever met in my life.

Hell, you're drunk, Frank.

BEN SHER: You know, he's married.

He owns a business.

He and his friends like drinking martinis in their $30,000

trailer. [barking]

Whack, whack.

BEN SHER: And now the crazy hippies are out to get him.

WOMAN: Oh, this looks nice.

BEN SHER: In the scariest scene in the movie,

they stop at a trailer park that they think is safe.

Do you feel like a swim?

- [sighs] Yeah. - Good idea.

Let's do--

BEN SHER: She puts on her bathing suit.

She goes to the pool. She's like, I need to relax.

I need to get some, some cool water on this hot day.

And everybody at the pool just stares at her.

[chuckling]

BEN SHER: [chuckles] She's like, OK,

this is even bigger than we thought.

And it's everywhere.

ALEX WINTER: It's like if Deliverance

was satanist, right?

[chuckles]

ALEX WINTER: And so the movie is funny and absurd.

But it's also genuinely scary because it's

just the world of the other.

[screams]

[gunshot]

[tires screeching]

[crash sounds]

So I think this notion of not knowing who to trust

or feeling like you're the only person who

is sane in a world that is insane,

it's just great fodder for horror.

JOE HILL: One staple of horror films

is the book that should never be opened because to read

it would be to drive yourself mad

and unleash evil in the world.

[grunting]

JOE HILL: Presumably, the book in question

is something by Dean Koontz.

This ties into a lot of mythology and folklore.

This book is designed to raise the devil.

MORGANA IGNIS: The idea that you're

coming across an old page or poem or something

from a forgotten time, a forgotten faith,

a forgotten cult, or religion of some sort

that holds all this power that people of this time

are not ready for.

Can you lift it?

KURT SAYENGA: HP Lovecraft used to write

about the Necronomicon--

Could I see that before you put it away?

KURT SAYENGA:--the book that's going to give you

all the unholy demon knowledge you need

to make people bend to your will, and reality bend

to your will.

Shut up.

[thunder]

Go!

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: And then, of course, we have the Evil Dead.

Oh, God.

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: - where you literally

have a copy of the Necronomicon sitting in the basement.

Look at this.

[non-english chanting]

HOWARD S. BERGER: You have like the magic book

being uncovered and then recited and raising all hell.

Everyone seems to believe that started

with Sam Raimi's the Evil Dead.

Certainly pulls it off with respect and maximum amperage.

But what I remember was a film called Equinox from 1970.

Wow.

This is some piece of literature.

Seems to be a very veritable Bible of evil.

[cackling]

TED GEOGHEGAN: The Necronomicon itself

pops up in countless movies.

It even is its own movie.

There's an amazing film from the '90s called Necronomicon, Book

of the Dead in which the titular Necronomicon

is featured in every story.

The secrets of the Necronomicon do not come cheap.

This is going to cost you your life.

TED GEOGHEGAN: Also, one of my absolute favorite films

of all time, Lamberto Bava's Demons,

also features a cursed book that is found inside the tomb

of Nostradamus--

Nostradamus?

Sounds like a rock group to me.

MAN: Yeah, Top of the Pops in 1500.

WOMAN: Well, what's it say?

It's in Latin.

I can't figure it out .

Yes, I can.

TED GEOGHEGAN:--that when read aloud

causes demons to rise up from the ground

and also from out of a theater screen to attack everyone.

Son of a bitch.

Shit.

[groaning]

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: We see it all the time

in kids movies as well.

Even when I was a kid, I remember

watching The Care Bears Movie.

It's about a cursed book.

Who are you?

How do you know my name?

I am a spirit, Nicholas.

Your friend--

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: It's a scary ass cursed book in it too.

Make them stop laughing.

Make them stop.

Only you can do that.

Here.

Teach them a lesson.

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: But it's this idea of knowledge is power,

but it can also be your downfall, that there's

this potential to read something that

is so detrimental to your psyche that it can somehow

curse you or take you down.

There's no turning back.

Ha ha.

[laughs]

SAM ZIMMERMAN: And even beyond cursed books, to me,

it's cursed media as well.

Like, I'll watch a cursed VHS--

the first recording--

WOMAN: [screams]

SAM ZIMMERMAN:--a vinyl that will kill you.

But I think in a larger scope, what is the power of art,

and can things cross a threshold into reality

from when you read them and/or when you listen to them?

How goes it?

What the hell do you think you're doing?

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: I'm from Appalachia,

and, uh, I remember seeing murderous rednecks

when I was a kid and thinking like,

is that supposed to be us?

Lewis, don't play games with these people.

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: And then you realize, yeah,

that is supposed to be us.

Um, it came out of 1970s.

We had this huge redneck explosion in the 1970s.

[squealing]

MAN: Squeal louder.

Louder.

[chuckles]

[flute sounds]

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: And after Deliverance, It's the idea

of their kind of the villains.

Then they get chain saws.

WOMAN: [screams]

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: Then they become cannibals.

I'll eat the brains of your kids' kids.

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: Then it's all hillfolk,

and they're isolated and clearly inbred.

And oh, boy.

Somehow I both loved watching and also felt the pain

of these movies simultaneously.

So yeah, that, that is still a trope that we see.

I remember being in college and watching Wrong Turn

and realizing that that was supposed to take place

really close to my hometown.

And then suddenly being like, oh, gosh.

Is this what the rest of the world thinks about?

[screams]

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: Oh, I don't care.

It's fun.

Look at them.

It's fun.

Wrong Turn's fun.

[screaming]

[laughing]

JOE HILL: I say this as a proud member of the coastal elite

myself, the, the terror of chain saw-wielding rednecks

is really the terror of coastal elites

who are in a panic at the thought of being

somewhere without Wi-Fi.

It is fascinating that there are so

many movies about cannibalistic human skin-wearing hillbillies

when actually, you know, I think probably

serial killers wildly prefer the city 'cause

there's a deeper victim pool.

WOMAN: Deep in the heart of Texas, it's 12:00 midnight.

Ain't nothing going on.

[chainsaw whirring]

[screaming]

Run!

Run for your lives!

[screams]

JEFFREY REDDICK: The movie-- when anybody asked me

if there was a movie that they haven't seen

that they should see, I'm like, you should

see Tucker & Dale versus Evil.

It takes a city people being menaced by hillbilly trope

and turns it on its head.

And so I'm from Eastern Kentucky.

I'm a hillbilly, so that movie really

spoke to me on so many levels.

CHAD: We are in hillbilly country now, boys.

Squeal like a pig.

[shouts]

BREA GRANT: College kids in the car.

They're going to this lake house.

They're having a great time.

They're all like a little dumb, you know?

[jeering]

I'm in a car full of morons.

BREA GRANT: The first thing they see is Tucker and Dale who are

these sort of hillbilly hicks who you think-- you're like,

oh, could they possibly be dangerous?

Did you see the way those guys looked at us?

BREA GRANT: And you slowly realize that not only are

Tucker and Dale not dangerous.

Dale, do we need anything else.

Pickled eggs.

Six-pounder.

BREA GRANT: They're very sweet, and they

really support each other.

Friends forever.

Best friends forever.

BREA GRANT: And they're just really good guys.

And one has a crush on one of the college girls.

But, of course, she'll never talk to him.

Are you out of your mind, Tucker?

These are college girls, OK?

They grew up with vacation homes and guys

like me fixing their toilets.

You gotta have some faith in yourself, man.

Oh, good. Look, your friends are here.

Hey!

BREA GRANT: And the college kids end

up being the evil of the movie.

They're the people who are attacking them

and also accidentally killing themselves

many times along the way.

[screams]

BREA GRANT: They were very accident-prone,

those college kids.

[chuckles]

DEWAYNE PERKINS: Something that Tucker and Dale versus Evil

did well was that they showed that the point

of views of people greatly vary based on fear.

It's about personal bias.

No.

No, no, no.

No, please.

Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't cry.

DEWAYNE PERKINS: A lot of the perspective of horror

are specific, and it does create tropes.

So when you just subvert those--

Oh.

it's the pancakes.

You hate pancake-- I'm-- I'll go make you something else.

DEWAYNE PERKINS: You're subverting what the person

thinks is going to happen.

And I think that shift is what creates the comedy.

Officer, do we look like a couple, uh,

psycho killers to you?

Well, it's hard to say.

Looks can be deceiving.

Oh, don't, don't.

[screams]

I'm telling you, Pete.

This is bullshit.

This really sucks.

Just do it.

Fix it, man.

Those cunts aren't gonna wait all night.

Oh, fuck.

This is a mess.

CHAD VILLELLA: The one that drives me the most crazy

is the car not starting.

Come on. Come on.

Come on. Come on.

Come on.

Come on.

Damn you.

Come on.

Like, what, what else can we do there?

This car ain't going nowhere.

KATE SIEGEL: The number of times I've gotten into my car

and it just doesn't start is like three,

but I feel like in every single Friday the 13th movie--

[vocalizing]

KATE SIEGEL:--and every single low-hanging fruit horror,

something terrible is gonna happen to your car.

Oh, great.

A flat tire.

KATE SIEGEL: And I think maybe that's because it's another one

of those things that's so familiar to our day-to-day

consciousness-- - Fuck.

KATE SIEGEL:--because we live in a car-based society.

JOE HILL: Some of the stuff around our automobiles

and the way they're used are still

employed in really exciting fresh ways in horror films.

The old cliché about, you know, the car won't start,

that's faded away, but, but now all the cars

have backup cameras in them.

So you can see what's behind you.

[crash]

And that is put to ingenious use in the Joe Lynch film Suitable

Flesh, where the demon-possessed villain is behind the car

and Heather Graham is, you know, backing

over him and going forward and backing over him again.

And we can see it all playing out on the backup camera.

[grunting]

CHAD VILLELLA: We played with the car trope,

to be honest, in Ready or Not when we did the OnStar beat.

JUSTIN (ON PHONE): Good evening.

This is Justin.

Your call may be monitored for--

People are trying to kill me.

Can you please help me?

CHAD VILLELLA: When Grace is, like, in a car, driving away,

calling for help--

JUSTIN (ON PHONE): For--

Can you call the police, please?

JUSTIN (ON PHONE): Yes, I'd be happy to help you with that.

CHAD VILLELLA: And she's like, I need

to get away from this family.

And then the voice from the OnStar comes on and says--

JUSTIN (ON PHONE): Ma'am, it says here

that the car was reported stolen.

I'm sorry, but I have to shut it down.

No, what?

No, what the fuck!

Are you fucking kidding me?

CHAD VILLELLA: And using that technology against the means

of escape, I think that's kind of like a fun way of just

playing with those tropes.

JUSTIN (ON PHONE): Is there anything

else I can help you with?

Yeah, you can go fuck yourself, Justin.

NATHANIEL THOMPSON: The old dark house

is something that we've really had

as long as film has existed.

I mean, Georges Mélies was doing it.

It's always been there.

So in a way, it's like-- it was a trope even

from the minute the first camera was rolling practically in,

in France.

What's fun is seeing how it's kind of evolved over the years

and how we've sort of adapted the old dark house

into meaning something different every single time.

MRS. GERT HAMMOND: Welcome to Prairie

Blossom, the name my husband and I chose for the estate.

KATE SIEGEL: The creepy house is something that everybody can

identify with that shows up over and over

and over again, I think, for a variety of reasons.

Talking about the psyche, the house represents the person.

If you're dreaming about your house,

you're dreaming about yourself.

And the idea that somebody breaking into your identity

and causing havoc, I think, really touches something

in the root of human fear.

[claps]

REBEKAH MCKENDRY: So James Whale's Old Dark House, 1932,

this is a Pre-Code film.

And it is making fun of "old dark house" movies

before these are even really a thing.

WOMAN: Knock again. Louder.

I should've thought that was loud enough to wake the dead.

BEN SHER: On a hideously dark and stormy night, a group

of travelers who represent a mix of

the British social hierarchy--

I thought you were never gonna open that door.

Why-- hah!

BEN SHER:--and encounter, [chuckles] uh,

a seamy side of life--

I am wanted by the police.

MAN: [sinister laughs]

[screams]

BEN SHER:--that most of them never

would have imagined existed.

Can you conceive of anybody living in a house like this

if they didn't have to?

Brazen, lolling creatures in silks and satins.

They fill the house with laughter

and sin, laughter and sin.

DAVID DASTMALCHIAN: These characters that are

stuck in this horror together--

SIR RODERICK FEMM: Madness came.

We are all touched with it a little, you see?

[glass shatters]

DAVID DASTMALCHIAN:--are so weird and curious

and from another time.

And yet I can see myself in there

when I watch that movie 'cause I,

I watched it during the pandemic, right?

Right in the heart of one of my darkest moments.

And I remember watching this film and just going,

oh, my God, Will was such a genius.

Those lights, they gave me quite a start.

I suppose it's the storm.

On the contrary, we make our own electric lights here,

and we are not very good at it.

Pray, don't be alarmed if they go out altogether.

JOE HILL: James Whale had mostly lost his ability to take horror

movies seriously very early on.

My sister was on the point of arranging these flowers.

JOE HILL: He had seen all the tricks--

[wind]

and understood how they worked.

And he couldn't help but want to turn them on their heads.

That's kind of fascinating right there

that, you know, as early as the 1930s,

we already understood that horror films often

have a very basic template.

Did you hear that?

I did hear something.

JOE HILL: And it's possible to point out, to point a finger

at now this thing is happening.

Now that thing is happening.

And you've seen this before, and you know how it's gonna end--

The light's gone out.

I suppose they'll stay out this time.

Now we shall be miserable all the evening.

JOE HILL:--which I think is kinda fun because it brings

the audience in on the scare.

[screams]

SAM ZIMMERMAN: I don't think the creepy house

will ever go out of fashion because houses

are inherently creepy.

And then also, there's everything

that you and your family sort of manifest in a house.

[glass shatters]

How many creepy house movies are just as much about kind

of family tragedy or family dysfunction or violent acts?

You're the one that wanted a house.

This is it, so just shut up.

You bastard.

[grunting]

[screams]

DAVE SCHILLING: In Halloween, the house is not creepy per se,

but the inherent terror comes from the fact

that a monster is coming into your house.

Michael Myers is coming into the house.

Halloween is about the desecration

of the American home.

[screams]

If we're thinking about the haunted house as kind of like

the classical American motif that encapsulates the horror

of the country's creation, Texas Chainsaw Massacre resituates

that from a house that's haunted by ghosts of the past

to a house that's starving and that is a cannibalistic

slaughterhouse in order to comment

on the by-products of American capitalism

and industrialization.

And then you can have very modern buildings evoke

something completely different.

Like in Creepshow, they're creeping up on you,

he's in this super high tech kind of reimagined high rise

kind of building.

And, and there's something inherently creepy

about that, too, about something that

feels so separate from human beings and from nature.

You'll never get in here.

Never.

MAN: So it's like, what is an "old dark house" movie?

It changes meaning over the years.

[screaming]

It's a cliché, but it keeps adapting.

It's kinda like a virus, you know, in the horror film.

It changes shape over and over again.

It keeps popping up, so that's why it's still with us today.

WOMAN: No matter what you do, it won't

stop and can't be stopped.

JOE HILL: The old cliché, you see someone in a panic,

sprinting away, and the killer is walking slowly behind them.

And yet nevertheless, he catches up to them three cuts later

and buries a hatchet in the back of your head.

This was a thing present in horror films going

all the way back to the mummy.

The joke about the mummy was, oh, no.

Here comes the mummy.

We all better walk a little faster.

There's still something about us running

and the killer walking that remains a terrifying image even

if when you think about it, you're like, yeah,

they're gonna get away.

[piano notes]

STEVE NILES: It would be really silly to see

Mike Myers running full speed.

[chuckles] It's better that he's just lumbering.

It's, it's scarier.

It's just scarier that somebody puts zero effort

into stalking you [chuckles] and they

actually wind up catching you.

[JOHN CARPENTER, "HALLOWEEN THEME"]

JENN WEXLER: Michael Myers is a metaphor for death.

And you can't outrun death.

[gunshots]

JENN WEXLER: I think that it also

speaks to this supernatural energy

that a lot of these killers have.

Stop.

- He's dead. - No, he's not.

Look at him.

He's still breathing.

Get away from him.

He stopped breathing.

DR. SAMUEL: No!

JENN WEXLER: Even if a character is not explicitly supernatural,

the fact that he's able to catch up with the victim

no matter what gives him a sense of being bigger than life,

having some supernatural powers that no matter what you do you

won't be able to fight against.

AXELLE CAROLYN: There's a really good joke

about it in Behind the Mask, The Rise of Leslie Vernon in a way

that's super smart because it's this guy training

to be a slasher killer.

LESLIE: You have no idea how much cardio I have to do.

It's ridiculous.

You won't be able to run like a freaking gazelle

without getting winded.

Plus, there's that whole thing of making

it look like you're walking.

Everybody else is running their asses off.

And I've got to stay with them.

AXELLE CAROLYN: And he has to master all those tricks.

Copperfield, Houdini, sleight of hand, escape tactics--

She thinks she saw me.

Maybe not.

She's not sure.

I just wanna get her little paranoid, you know?

Just-- I wanted to see that there

might be some trouble coming.

AXELLE CAROLYN: That's such a good movie

to look at if you want to deconstruct the slasher.

MAN: You got your red herring all worked out?

I think so.

I think so.

She spends a lot of time at the library,

so I was gonna do it there.

AXELLE CAROLYN: Because it takes every single one of those

tropes and then it makes fun of it.

Oh, my God.

WOMAN: [moaning]

LESLIE: Rule number one, nobody gets away.

WOMAN: [screams]

You messed that one up-- and not only

is it a complete breakdown.

It's really embarrassing.

SAM ZIMMERMAN: In the beginning of the '80s and the late

'70s was really the beginning of horror

movies centered on like youth doing things in groups.

LINDA: Hey, Scotty.

What's this place like anyway?

Well, the guy that's renting it says it's an old place.

A little run-down, but it's right up in the mountains.

SAM ZIMMERMAN: I don't think you really had that a bunch

previously, so it wouldn't be a bunch of people

like renting a house together--

Cheerful.

Yeah.

It has a nice homey feeling.

SAM ZIMMERMAN:--until kind of slasher cinema

and Evil Dead and movies about like teens

and twentysomethings going off and doing

things together on short trips.

Bobby Joe, where are you, girl?

DANA GOULD: These kind of movies are

Ten Little Indians, you know?

One by one they get killed.

[screaming]

And it's always a group of friends as opposed to a family

because if it's a family, it's intergenerational.

You have a husband and wife.

You have children.

Nobody wants to see the children get killed.

It just makes it harder to tell the story, so

a bunch of friends.

Great.

I can kill all of them.

[screams]

[chuckles] Nobody cares.

I've never said it so simply, but it was quite liberating.

BREA GRANT: Cabin in the Woods comes out,

and I think all of us got scared that we

would never be able to make a horror movie again.

[shouts]

[screams]

BREA GRANT: [chuckles]--because it was sort of the horror movie

to end all horror movies.

[thuds]

[sighs] What the hell was that?

BREA GRANT: It used all of the tropes.

You have these very quintessential teenagers.

You have the jock, the nerd, the hot babe, the virgin.

And they all are going out to this cabin woods.

And you keep cutting back and forth

to this sort of corporate headquarters underground.

And they're making bets, and they're, you know,

doing work jokes.

And you don't exactly know what's

going on until you realize that they're

orchestrating all of it.

MAN: She's airballed.

We need the Japanese crew to get it done.

BREA GRANT: And they're orchestrating these things

all over the world, in fact.

And they have to do it because it's keeping these massive gods

underground appeased.

But that is sort of irrelevant.

It is more about them making the horror movie,

them coming up with like who is gonna be the bad guy

and then sort of orchestrating this like,

oh, we're gonna put stuff in her hair bleach

to make her dumber because now she's a blonde.

The hair dye.

Dumb blonde.

Very artistic.

BREA GRANT: We're going to pump certain chemicals in

to make them horny.

MAN: Engaging pheromone mists.

BREA GRANT: We're gonna do all sorts of stuff

to make them live out this horror movie fantasy.

[screams]

BREA GRANT: What the horror fans really

responded to was the whiteboard full of options of things

that could kill them.

congratulations go to Maintenance!

[cheering]

BREA GRANT: Everything from like mermen

to, you know, murdering hicks--

That's not fair.

I had zombies too.

Yes, you did.

Yes, you had zombies.

But this is zombie redneck torture family, see?

They're entirely separate species.

I'm sure most horror fans did this like me.

There's always next year.

BREA GRANT: When I watched it at home,

I paused it so I could read everything on the whiteboard

because someone took a lot of time

to come up with all of those tropes

and put them neatly on a whiteboard.

And I appreciate that as a fan.

[shrieking]

[glass shatters]

KATE SIEGEL: The final girl--

I love the final girl.

One of the reasons I love horror is because very early on you

had strong female role models.

This was a genre where women could

survive and fight and fight back and fight ugly and win.

And I think that is empowering on every level.

Playing a final girl is one of the greatest joys of my life.

LEA ANDERSON: The final girl is terminology that was coined

by Carol Clover in her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws, which

was reviewing the horror films of the '70s, the slashers,

in particular, and sort of attempting to create taxonomies

and categories for the tropes, for the sort of beats

in the storytelling that appear again and again

and again and again in all kinds of slashers.

And the final girl was one of the major ones.

[whisper]

[gunshots]

JENN WEXLER: The final girl is classically

the smart girl of the group.

It's tragic.

You never go out.

Guys think I'm too smart.

I don't.

I think you're a wacko.

Now you're seeing men behind bushes.

And her wits allow her to survive, to escape the killer

and ultimately take him down, while her friends who are more

the party girls, the girls who are having sex,

they usually succumb to the killer.

Tommy, hurry up!

Tommy, please!

LEA ANDERSON: The final girls of the '70s were always White.

- Do as I say! - The boogeyman--

Hurry!

[screams]

LEA ANDERSON: They were always thin--

Wait, little girl.

LEA ANDERSON:--and they were always virgins.

What that really reflects is the same kind

of standards for true womanhood that were

inscribed in the 19th century.

Um, I guess I'll see you tomorrow in school, huh?

Sure, great.

OK, bye.

What type of femininity do you perform in order

to be taken seriously and be considered

of value and worth saving?

These are the qualities that allow you to survive.

PINHEAD: No.

Don't do that.

Go to hell!

JENN WEXLER: When I was a young teenager discovering

horror movies, I hated school.

Where's your pass?

Screw your pass.

JENN WEXLER: I didn't wanna go back,

and I would look to horror movies.

And I would see the final girl, and all her friends are dead.

And, uh, she has to take down the killer.

And she does all that.

And I was like, if she can do that, I can survive

another day of high school.

So thank you final girl for that.

LEA ANDERSON: Once it hit the mainstream,

it got appropriated and sort of turned into something else.

So now the final girl is kind of considered

this feminist figure.

But the original final girls weren't

all that feminist in nature.

A lot of them got saved by men.

That was like part of the trope.

LILA: [screams]

It took me a while to realize like the entire concept

of the final girl is a little messed up.

And really, what we should be striving for is the collective,

is for the female characters to work together

to bring down the killer.

And it doesn't have to be, you know, you against your friends.

It's either you or your friend who are gonna die,

so you better be the smart one.

You guys can both be smart.

You guys can work together to bring him down.

You are a Black character in a horror movie.

Prove that you can stay alive.

Name one Black character that survived a horror movie.

You must answer correctly, or you die.

TANANARIVE DUE: I like tropes to a degree,

but tropes, while they can be comfortable and familiar

and perfectly harmless and even fun, have an underbelly.

They really do, I think, reveal societal feelings

about entire populations.

If you kill off the only representative

of an entire population and you do it casually

and you do it for a jump scare--

[screams]

TANANARIVE DUE: Or you do it so you shall be avenged.

I'm so sorry you were murdered, Thomas.

I miss you.

I miss you too.

You know, why are you doing that?

Could you add maybe another Black character

to offset that balance?

Yo, Freddy!

Where are you hiding, you burnt-face pussy?

Hey, we should find the others first.

ROLAND: You think you're hot shit with a little mute kid,

don't you?

Well, let me see you come get a piece of me.

DEWAYNE PERKINS: Often, I feel like that solo Black

character is usually the masculine man who's like, oh,

I can do it.

[crash]

Take that, motherfucker!

And then they die.

[grunting]

DEWAYNE PERKINS: That creates more fear,

I think, for the rest of the characters

because that's the power.

That's the strength, Like, that is what's represented

through that person.

But then that doesn't allow for like authentic responses.

Trick or treat, motherfucker.

I know a lot of men who, um, get scared.

Uh, and I think not allowing those characters to like

feel human creates that trope 'cause you're like,

oh, this doesn't feel real.

I'm very cautious as a writer of that, just knowing the world

that we live in and kinda having an expectation

of how audiences are going to receive what they're seeing.

LEA ANDERSON: The Blackening is really cool

because it is looking at the horror genre as a whole,

but it's fully reframing it through a Black lens.

Yo, when did we become the kind of people that

walk into dark-ass basements?

Hey, stop it!

Boo!

[laughs]

LEA ANDERSON: A group of friends,

they're going to celebrate Juneteenth

at this cabin in the woods.

Is it just me, or is this giving Texas Chainsaw Massacre?

ALLISON: I don't know.

I never seen that film.

White people scare me.

And there they find this game.

What's this?

Oh, hell no.

LEA ANDERSON: And the game has all kinds

of like racist imagery.

LISA: I will spare your lives if you sacrifice the person

you deem the blackest to me.

The blackest?

You have two minutes to decide.

There's this idea of like what is Black and what is not Black.

And to take that conversation and flip it on its head--

Every single time one of y'all make a joke, it's always,

oh, Allison, you White this.

Allison, you White that.

to force people to claim and like

grab on to the parts of themselves that

they feel are the Whitest--

I'm gay. [all groaning]

- You always using that-- - No, no.

And just like my homophobic family member says,

gayness is just whiteness wrapped up in a bunch of dicks.

And today I agree.

Was just a very funny way to show

the diversity of Blackness.

I voted for Trump--

- [gasps] - What?

What?

twice.

DEWAYNE PERKINS: We all do a lot of things

that don't necessarily fit in a box of what is Black.

TRACEY SALISBURY: It really is Black people turning

these horror tropes upside down that for all

these years with White people, these make no sense.

I'mma say it.

Don't, don't say this dumb shit.

We-- (GAGS)

Allison.

We-- (GAGS)

Oh, my God.

We have to split up.

Oh!

DEWAYNE PERKINS: Something I find

funny is when people try very hard to not

be like stereotypes.

- King. - King?

Yeah, King!

'cause you the one with the gun and you gangsta.

I'm an ex-gansta, all right?

I changed my life.

But then there's parts of stereotypes that are just true

and having that balance and being like,

no, I don't wanna be a stereotype.

But also, I-- this part of me is pretty

stereotypical and showing that like, yeah,

this person has changed.

There's growth.

But at the end of the day, yeah, he got a gun.

Bruh, I knew you had a gun.

Wow, that's profiling.

How come you didn't use it before?

On what? The TV, nigga?

Move out the way.

Because life is scary.

He a Black man.

[gunshots]

TRACEY SALISBURY: One of the cool things of this

is Black films are playing with White horror film tropes,

and they're creating new Black horror film tropes.

Wait.

How do we know we can trust him?

No offense.

- I'm one of the good one. - Oh, that does not help.

They all say that.

So it's gonna be fun to see how those get turned around

in other ways when it comes together as one mix

as, you know, films become more diverse and more opportunities.

So what do we do now?

Call the cops?

[laughter]

LEA ANDERSON: Because society changes,

the tropes change with us.

The way that we employ them is always reflective

of our present concerns, what new monsters

might emerge when we revisit and renegotiate the classic tropes.

[grunting]

[shout]

[screams]

[woman's voice]

My car, go up into the mountains.

MAN: No man could take six of them.

I'm telling you, this isn't a man.

WOMAN: I've got some lights up ahead.

There's probably a farmhouse up there, so I'll go and check.

Come on. Come on.

Come on.

Come on.

[screams]

MAN: Shut up, you bitch hog.

WOMAN: [screams]

MAN: The book speaks of a spiritual presence, thing

of evil that roams the forests and the dark powers

of man's domain.

MAN: Honey, give this place a chance, OK?

WOMAN: Well, I hope these people aren't too weird.

[screaming]

These things were made by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

[coughing]

[music playing]

Well, what do we do?

Why don't we just wait here for a little while?

See what happens.