On Halloween, people around the world will be dressing up, and handing out candy to kids who are brave enough to knock on our doors. As the evening progresses, though, you’ll probably start looking for something scary to watch, hoping to get underneath your own skin, and end October with a tangible fright. There are plenty of classic horror films you can watch. And if you have an Amazon Prime subscription, you can fire up a recent horror release that mashes together a few winning genres: Nahnatchka Khan’s Totally Killer.
Part John Hughes and part John Carpenter, Totally Killer sends a teenage girl (Kiernan Shipka) back to 1987, where she has to team up with her high school-aged mom (Olivia Holt) to stop a serial killer from terrorizing their town. The film is so good, it won over one of our staff writers who doesn’t care for scares. And part of that is because the team involved understands what works in the horror genre. During a recent interview with Totally Killer cinematographer Judd Overton (Young Rock), we talked about popular horror movies from the 1980s and ‘90s. And Overton says that those films, while dated, have more craft than people realize, so long as they adhere to the golden rule of terror. It shouldn’t matter if you are watching a terrific 1970s horror movie, or the best A24 horror film released to theaters. Overton told us:
There are definitely some… I don’t know if you want to say ‘tropes’ or some rules. You know, darkness is your friend because you’re hiding some of the things that you don’t want to show. Some of the creatures and some of the stuff that maybe the budget didn’t allow for at the time. But I think the thing that we kept finding was how suspense is the rule. How to create suspense, and how to really deliver on the impact of those scares.
To me, the better parts of a horror movie are the elongated moments when we don’t know what’s about to happen. The reveal of the killer, or the showing of the threat, lets the air out of the balloon. It’s more fun to see how long a film can string you along, coaching you to the edge of your seat until you are practically jumping out of your skin, begging the movie to let you off the hook. Or, in the case of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, stick you back up on that hook. (Sorry.)
Judd Overton explained that horror is essential, but he also made a link back to an unexpected genre. He said to us:
The interesting thing that Natch and I discovered was, there’s actually a lot of similarities in that language to what we do with comedy. We came from that comedy background, where it’s all about the buildup, and about setting the scene for the button to deliver that gag at the end of an episode or the end of an act. And so we kind of use that same kind of language, or those same tools to unpack and look at our ‘80s horror.
Totally Killer is one of the most entertaining movies I’ve seen this year, no matter the genre. We even loved having Nahnatchka Khan on our ReelBlend podcast as a guest, where she broke down her process, and the audience’s reception to it. Give the whole conversation a chat:
And just because October is ending, don’t think that the scares need to end. There are still plenty of upcoming horror movies on the radar to keep you cowering under your sheets, in the best way possible.