WonderCon 2015: Blumhouse Wrap-Up – The Gallows, Unfriended, Insidious: Chapter 3, and Sinister 2
If there was one event horror fans were excited for at this year’s WonderCon, it was the Blumhouse panel, in which footage and information regarding The Gallows, Unfriended, Insidious: Chapter 3 and Sinister 2 were shared. Read on for all the details we collected for you!
The Gallows:
The first film to be discussed, The Gallows, was by far the least well known. Previously that weekend I had asked various other press about it, and the general sentiment was, “What the fuck is The Gallows?” After an explosive mood piece trailer, the surprised murmurs and cheers in the crowd promised a much more talked about future. Though short and unlikely to be indicative of the final product, the lighting, tone, and speed of the trailer reflected a horror making talent far beyond the typical capabilities of such an inexperienced director. Aside from a few shorts, this is the directorial debut for the duo comprised of co-directors Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing, and if all goes as expected, The Gallows could catapult them Oren Peli style into the spotlight.
On screen, a girl in a white dress lies crying in a crumpled heap. As the sounds of her sobs build, a figure carrying a noose slowly emerges from the shadows. Cut to black, and the next shot is a close-up of the girl’s neck as she slowly examines new deep and bloody rope marks. A noose tightens into the frame, and with a jolt she is dragged away. While simple and certainly done before, the execution is what really sells it. This sentiment of execution being most important is repeated throughout the panel and will be again later in the roundtable.
Similar to Paranormal Activity (another film from Blumhouse Productions), The Gallows is a found footage film from inexperienced directors. According to Cluff and Lofing, the film involves four friends who break into a school at night. We didn’t get much more out of them regarding the plot but gained significant insight into the production.
The similarities with Peli’s Paranormal Activity continue, as director/editor Lofing moved into co-director Cluff’s condo and edited the whole film in his room. Fresh out of film school, Lofing paired up with Cluff, previously a stuntman and “Wipeout” contestant, mostly out of friendship and creative admiration. Cast in Anaheim using a free service and out of a pool of 200, they found their 4 actors and set to work filming at a high school in Fresno.
It sounds like the perfect recipe for a movie that would come to me on a DVD-R with the title written in Sharpie, sitting in a paper sleeve on my floor until it grows enough mold that the ants take it. By Jason Blum’s own admission at the start of the panel, found footage is a stale format, and it takes a really great one to make any kind of waves. It is the type of movie that people make because they believe it to be easy and by the directors’ own admissions was the reason they set out to make one in the first place.
When talking about what they did to make this film unique, they couldn’t come up with much more than that they used the actors’ real names for authenticity and that they filmed using out of town talent so that the legends they told them about hauntings would scare them more. Not exactly groundbreaking, but it is always difficult to explain what part of the production made a movie really work, so not exactly strikes against it either.
So aside from an excellent mood piece trailer that I admit doesn’t have any bearing on the final product, why am I so excited about this film? Blum himself offered a well thought out explanation for my growing enthusiasm…
“This is a rare instance when that a movie is made like this and a studio releases it. It almost never happens. One of the most fun parts of my job is seeing this happen; it’s why I do my job… the fact that it has come this far is very unusual and really really cool.”
When a new found footage title from the studio that brought you Paranormal Activity arrives, you take notice. Originally seeing the concept trailer on YouTube, Jason Blum contacted the directors and picked the movie up. The budget was shoestring, so at any point the cost of dropping it would have been next to nothing. Still, it made it all the way through production and is seeing release through New Line. Mike Flanagan’s Oculus was similarly a short concept piece before being picked up as a feature film, though his final product came from a more experienced director and a significantly higher budget. Blumhouse isn’t without a couple bad films under its belt but has so far proven a reliable source for quality horror. I also should admit at this point that I didn’t think Ouija was THAT fucking bad, so maybe I’m just a sucker. Look for The Gallows on July 10th.
Unfriended:
The Unfriended panel started out with this trailer:
Hey, not a bad trailer. I admit that the concept is silly and the name edging on sabotage, but “setting up a camera to watch two sleeping people while a ghost moves things” also sounds like a terrible idea, and that made almost $200 million. Still, I prefer the super silly original title, Cybernatural.
This segment of the panel was an odd one. Consisting of the writer and major cast members, they kept oscillating between telling us how great the movie was and sharing all of their doubts along the way. I shit you not; there was a moment where they were asked if they ever thought the movie would actually come out, and each of the actors one at a time said some variation of, “No, not ever.” This is strange since the express purpose of these events is to get people amped for your film. Telling everyone in the audience that you never really thought this movie would come out does not instill mountains of confidence.
Likewise, the writer, Nelson Greaves, said a few times that he doubted the film being shot through Skype was a good idea. Much of the film’s completion is credited to producer and spiritual leader of the group, Timur Bekmambetov, who is reported to have come up with the original concept. Greaves stated that at several times throughout the production he doubted such a silly gimmick could actually work, and that only through Timur insisting that he should trust him did he push through. If the quality of your movie during production does not make you think that the movie is working, telling the audience that your producer insisted you finish the film anyway does not exactly instill confidence in prospective fans.
At the same time, the number of times he told this story both in the panel and subsequent roundtable leads me to believe it was a pre-scripted talking point. If I were to guess, they know just how silly this movie sounds and are doing their best to acknowledge that and insist that it is really good despite your doubts. They are going to have to sell this movie on its quality, and in that regard they are off to a good start. Even before the trailer, Jason Blum assured us that the audience at South by Southwest had loved the film. After the trailer, he was quick to emphasize the unique strength of the film’s multiple Skype windows. He made the claim that it was, “Like you’re the director of a live TV event,” giving the film legs for repeat viewings that other films don’t have.
A few times we heard that they focused on really long takes, the longest of which being the whole movie in one shot. The anecdote goes that the lead female, Shelly Henning, was tired of trying to ramp back into dramatic scenes take after take, so suggested that they do the whole thing in one shot. According to Nelson Greaves, the final scene of this take is the one that made it into the final film, so I am interested to see how this unique shooting style plays out in the final product.
In Unfriended the actors would themselves hold the laptops with the camera on top. They are your camera operators. The folks behind the film wanted to go for an authentic vibe, so the actors would move the laptops as they walked around the rooms. Actors were directed to look around and be distracted, text friends, shop online, and do things that people actually do while on Skype. Such a focus on realism can backfire greatly with a boring and poorly shot movie, but I’d be willing to bet at least one of my nuts that there was plenty of technical camera work and direction that went into this that they just aren’t talking about.
The question “Who is Laura Barnes” was answered with “Laura Barnes is everything that is scary about the internet. She is all your secrets…” All right, color me interested, and you will definitely see me in the theater on April 17th.
Insidious: Chapter 3
Clearly the focus of the panel, the amount of time we got with the director and cast of Insidious: Chapter 3 was twice as long as either of the previous two groups. It started off with two clips, the first of which you can watch now:
The second clip, which was an exclusive for the event, shows a significantly more beat-up Quinn attempting to escape the apartment via elevator. Wheelchair-bound from a broken leg and in a neck brace, her situation seems dire as she anxiously presses the call button. In typical horror movie fashion, a cut from a forward angle to back angle shows a sickly and wheezing entity behind her, who pushes her back to the room and violently throws her on the ground. Incapacitated, a grotesque handless and footless female figure without eyes or a mouth crawls towards her. As the figure nears, the clip cuts.
The movie is directed by Leigh Whannell, who wrote the original Insidious and played the character Specs, filling the shoes of James Wan, who was busy directing Furious 7. Whannell assured fans in attendance that even without Wan at the helm, he remained absolutely true to the franchise and hopefully true to what fans want out of it. Leading man Dermot Mulroney talked about how this movie is not only terrifying, but the scariest one yet! Yes, we were being given the “Hard Sell” but that’s what events like this are typically for.
From there each actor had a few moments to talk about their respective characters, but honestly speaking, no one really said anything that we hadn’t already surmised. Until Angus Sampson spoke up, that is…
“I think you were just giving the audience what they wanted. Anyone that’s watched one of the Insidious chapters with an audience — and there were lots of audiences — whenever Elise would come on screen, especially in the second chapter, there’s such a special warmth for the character that Lin and Leigh and Jason created. This is almost an origin story about how Elise comes to meet not only Specs and Tucker, but some of the other characters from the previous two chapters.”
Thank you, Angus, for saying what we all secretly knew and just wished they would say. They clearly took the most popular characters from the previous film and put them even more front and center than they were in the second. It is fan service, and fan service can be good.
The last piece of insight we got before fan questions was some info about the film’s villain, the aptronym-named “Man Who Can’t Breathe.” Leigh explained his vision for the character… “[I wanted to create] the physical embodiment of cancer… if cancer were a person, what would he look like?” Whannell continued, “He symbolizes all the pain and misfortune that can visit people in their life.” It was cool to see the panel all light up and chime in about how the The Man Who Can’t Breathe was a very present and violent force in the movie.
The panel loosens up after this, and each cast member interjects with fun little anecdotes about the filming. The set was kept very cold and dark, Stephanie Scott did her own stunts, and Leigh even locked her in a closet for 6 hours blasting death metal. There were a few standard press release statements here and there, but some really wonderful genuine moments were shared and that’s always a breath of fresh air.
My personal impression of Insidious: Chapter 3 comes mostly from the trailer. It is clear that the brutality and unique physicality of the previous films are still here, but whether or not it will keep with the bizarre twists and unpredictable plot is unclear at this point. The first movie really hits a home-run with the mid-film introduction of astral projection and a spirit realm, turning a simple haunting story into something totally new and unique. The second movie sadly went for a more standard serial killer narrative but was still creative enough to stand on its own. There was no talk of twists and turns in the panel, but I managed to ask some of those questions in the roundtable, so check out that article for more intel.
Look for Insidious: Chapter 3 in theaters June 5th.
Sinister 2
Things wrapped up with a short but effective clip from Sinister 2 which you can check out below. Afterwards the audience was promised much more would be unveiled for the film at July’s Comic-Con and everyone should stay tuned. Look for Sinister 2 in theatres on August 21st.
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