Series frightfully diverse
Back in the grindhouse era of the 1970s, filmmaker and producer Roger Corman churned out low-budget genre pictures. He would hire talented wannabe directors itching to make their first films — and willing to work cheap.
Thus directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, John Sayles and James Cameron got important credits that helped launch their careers.
If Jason Blum has his way, “Welcome to the Blumhouse,” his new low-budget horror feature film series with Amazon Prime, will have similar impact but with greater diversity.
In the first batch of movies this month, three of the five credited directors are making their feature-film debut, two of the four films are directed by women, and three are directed by people of color.
“I think the thing I feel most proud of is that these movies do feel unique, and I think that’s because they come from underrepresented voices,” Blum said in a video chat.
Emmanuel Osei-kuffour, a Black man from Houston who spent four years at Stanford University, was chosen to direct “Black Box,” a creepy psychological thriller about a man who has lost his memory in a car accident, based in part on his New York University film school thesis “Born With It.” (That first installment debuted Oct. 6, along with “The Lie.”)
He called Blumhouse an “artist-first company.”
“They really supported my vision from the beginning,” OseiKuffour said. “It wouldn’t be possible for the film to look the way it looked without their collaboration and input, but they also knew my unique sensibility.”
Blum handed the filmmakers
a $5 million budget, a pittance in today’s Hollywood.
“When you give them a lot of money and say ‘make a scary movie,’ they build the monster, they go right into special effects,” Blum said. “But when you can’t afford the monster, by design, you revert to what is most sacred to us, which is family.
“I think that’s much more interesting than a monster, when you threaten the relationships of those you hold most dear.”
Osei-kuffour filmed in New Orleans right after “Evil Eye,” an Indian American-themed horror film directed by twin brothers Elan and Rajeev Dassani, wrapped. The two films used much of the same production crew, a favorite Blumhouse trick.
“They’re so prolific that they know how to get things done efficiently,” Rajeev Dassani said by phone. “We felt supported the entire time, and we got what we needed — like shooting in India, shooting underwater, they were very supportive of that.”
As long as you keep to schedule and don’t go over budget.
“With Blum, I felt like a filmmaker in the ’70s,” said Canadian filmmaker Veena Sud, whose
“The Lie” stars Peter Sarsgaard and Mireille Enos as parents of a sociopathic teenager. “It’s like Roger Corman. ‘Here’s some money, now go make your film. … It was so freeing and wonderful, and the only parameter is I can’t go over budget.”
Told of the Corman comparison, Blum laughed and said, “That’s true. … The filmmakers did great with very little resources. They were very inventive. I think when you don’t give people a lot of money, it forces them to be more creative.”
When you’re realizing your vision, those restrictions can be liberating, said Zu Quirke, a British filmmaker whose “Nocturne,” about twin sister musicians sparring in a hypercompetitive music school, is her feature directorial debut and the realization of a longtime dream.
“It was an absolute blast,” Quirke said. “We had a very short, very condensed schedule. … That’s the Blumhouse model. But it was a dream to make this movie, and I don’t think it would have been made without them.
“It was based on my experiences as a teenager,” she said. “I played violin growing up, although I didn’t go into classical music in the end. It’s a cutthroat field. I went into something much easier to get into, which is film — ha ha.”