Horror series brings on scares, diversity
‘ Blumhouse’ debuts lowbudget flicks from new directors for Amazon Prime
Back in the grindhouse era of the 1970s, filmmaker and producer Roger Corman churned out lowbudget genre pictures, one after the other. To make them, he would hire talented, young wannabe directors just 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 lowbudget 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 movies are directed by women, and three of the four 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 with The Chronicle.
For example, Emmanuel OseiKuffour, a Black man from Houston who spent four years at Stanford University, was chosen to direct “Black Box,” a supercreepy 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 “artistfirst company.”
“They really supported my vision from the beginning,” OseiKuffour said in a separate phone interview. “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 mere 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.”
OseiKuffour filmed in New Orleans right after “Evil Eye,” an Indian Americanthemed 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, of course.
“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, and you better not f— up, and do a good job.’ 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 by phone. “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.”
Blum said he has been trying to bring diversity to Blumhouse’s slate, including prominent releases from Black directors ( Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” and Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman”) and women ( last year’s remake of “Black Christmas” by Sophia Takal).
This month, Blumhouse will release “The Craft: Legacy,” written and directed by Zoe ListerJones, in theaters. But the “Welcome to the Blumhouse” series will be a cornerstone to that effort.
“They’re coming from people who don’t look like me, so by design that’s going to make the movies different,” Blum said.
“Evil Eye” codirector Elan Dassani notes that he and his brother grew up in North Carolina (“We’re Southern boys,” Rajeev Dassani said), but that the cultural authenticity they brought to a story about the tension between a firstgeneration American woman ( Sunita Mani, “Glow”) and a traditional mother ( Sarita Choudhury, “Mississippi Masala”) was universal.
“We’re Indian Americans, our parents are
Indian, so we could feel that divide between firstgeneration Indian Americans who are born in the U. S. and parents who were born in India, and so we recognized a lot of the cultural aspects within it, and so that was part of our pitch,” Elan Dassani said. “We brought a personal take to that material.”
For OseiKuffour, he’ll owe a debt of gratitude to Blumhouse for any future success.
“I want to say that it’s really rare for a Black director to get his first shot directing a feature film with a studio,” he said. “I think it takes a lot for Blumhouse and Amazon to take that shot.”