The big screen’s biggest screams
Our guide to Halloween season’s best horror movies.
Horror veteran Christopher Landon has sought shrieks with
Paranormal Activity, writing four of the franchise films and directing 2014’s The Marked Ones.
But during prerelease screenings of Landon’s new film, a very different sound is dominating: laughter. The movie is called Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apoc
alypse, after all (opening Oct. 30). “It’s awesome to hear people scream and then to hear laughter,” Landon says.
Comedy has always been part of even the scariest of horror movies, but this Halloween season the laughs are amped to Monster 11. Besides the R-rated Scouts
Guide in the full-on horror-comedy genre, there’s also Cooties (Sept. 18), featuring Elijah Wood, Rainn Wilson and Alison Pill as teachers in an elementary school, fighting off flesh-eating kids.
The Final Girls (Oct. 9) has Max Cartwright ( American Hor
ror Story star Taissa Farmiga) magically entering the screen world of her deceased scream queen mother (Malin Åkerman), which happens to be the setting of Mom’s epic 1980s-slasher film.
Psych star James Roday’s directorial debut, Gravy (Oct. 2), has siblings preparing for a night of human-consumption gluttony.
On the family end of the spectrum, Jack Black, as horror writer R.L. Stine, unleashes laughs and most every type of monster ever written onto Greendale, Md., in
Goosebumps (Oct. 16). Animated horror starts with the R-rated Hell and Back (Oct. 2), with the voices of T.J. Miller and Mila Kunis as they save a friend from Hell. In familyfriendly fare, there’s Adam Sandler’s Dracula returning in Hotel
Transylvania 2 (Sept. 25) with Mel Brooks as a vampire grandad.
“Usually the funny movies in this genre are the anomaly,” says Brian Collins, horror writer for BirthMoviesDeath.com. “But that’s turned around this year.”
There is still pure horror for the season. But even fright films have humor — from cannibals getting high in Eli Roth’s The Green Infer
no (Sept. 25) to M. Night Shyamalan’s possessed seniors in The
Visit (Friday). Even William Shatner plays a grumpy disc jockey in a campy take on legends for
A Christmas Horror Story (Oct. 2). Erik Davis, managing editor of fandango.com, says the levity has to do with filmmakers raised on the 2004 zombie romp Shaun of
the Dead and Wes Craven’s
Scream franchise. It’s also the turning wheel of taste.
“We’re moving away from exorcisms and ghost movies. ... We’re seeing people thinking outside of those boxes,” Davis says.
Leigh Whannell, who wrote and stars in Cooties, says: “Horror and comedy have always been great bedfellows. You’re looking for an involuntary audible reaction from the audience.
“Laughter is only one degree from screaming.”