With Halloween rapidly approaching, some scary thrillers and gory horror flicks are making their way into theaters. Unfortunately, the entity known as Hollywood has this thing that it does all the time that kills me: it tries to reap all the money it can out of anything remotely successful.
Case in point: “Paranormal Activity.”
Oren Peli conceived “Paranormal Activity” approximately five years ago after a life-long fear of ghosts and the paranormal that he decided to embrace. He spent a year tweaking his own house to shoot the movie there. Filming and editing the movie continuously over seven days, the movie was produced on a $15,000 budget, mere Hollywood pocket change.
The movie received attention during a 2007 Screamfest Horror Film Festival screening from a talent agent who helped get the movie to executives at Miramax and DreamWorks.
The executive at Miramax, Jason Blum, worked with Peli on a re-edit of the film to submit it to the Sundance Film Festival. It was rejected. DreamWorks liked what they saw but wanted Peli to re-shoot it with a bigger budget, only allowing his original “low-fi” version to appear as a DVD extra. Thankfully, Peli cut a deal with the film company to test-screen the original to gauge audience reaction. If it didn”t test well, he”d go along with remaking it. Things appeared to go terribly at the test-screen: People were walking out. Peli freaked out before discovering it was the audience who was truly freaked: People were so terrified they couldn”t watch the entire 86-minute film.
Peli had won. However, DreamWorks got Peli to shoot two alternative endings. The ending chosen for the theatrical release saw the only use of computer-generated effects in the movie.
Utilizing a slick viral marketing campaign in which the movie opened in a small amount of theaters incrementally in October 2009 along with a website set up where people could “demand” the movie come to their town, the movie quickly became a cult hit. It would gross more than $190 million. Because of its teeny budget, a sequel was almost instantly green lit.
On Friday, “Paranormal Activity 3” will open up across the country. It is a prequel to the sequel. Because it is the third movie in the “franchise,” it will be expected to top the terrifyingly slow-building first movie and higher-budgeted ($2 million) second movie.
Last weekend, a prequel to the 1981 John Carpenter horror-thriller “The Thing” arrived in theaters, conveniently titled “The Thing.” The week before, a sequel to the torture flick “Human Centipede” hit theaters as well. Last Halloween, the seventh, and final, “Saw” movie came out.
Obviously, this depressing trend of milking successful movies for all they”ve got isn”t confined to the horror-thriller genres. Sequels and prequels are a way of capitalizing on the success of a movie. It isn”t surprising when a movie that does well produces a sequel. The problem is that sequels tend to be poorly done (“The Matrix” sequels and “Star Wars” prequels come to mind). Not only that, Hollywood is producing more sequels/prequels each year, leaving little room for originality. A whopping 27 sequels will hit theaters this year, topping a previous record of 24 in 2003.
Hollywood isn”t running out of ideas, but it certainly is more concerned with its bottom line than with its content.
Kevin N. Hume can be reached at kevin.n.hume@gmail.com or call directly 263-5636 ext. 14.
