WonderCon 2015: Blumhouse

Blumhose started their super size panel of upcoming horror movies with a teaser for The Gallows. I hope there’s more to the film than what we saw, which is a pretty standard found-footage scenario of a girl crying into a camera followed by a jump scare. The panel that followed was mostly about the pitfalls of found-footage which, if you look just beneath the surface of the discussion, serves as a pretty good list of reasons not to make one. Talking about how difficult it is to believe that a person would keep holding a camera is not a good way to make me wanna see your movie.

For Unfriended, Blumhouse just showed the trailer, which is already playing in theaters. Sometimes there’s a con glow that makes things seem better than they really look. That didn’t happen here. If you don’t know, this one is the found footage Skype style movie. The one interesting bit that came from the panel was the revelation that there was one single 80-minute master take with pick-ups and inserts done separately. It could be a fascinating exercise to watch at least.

Next up was Insidious Chapter 3. I don’t know this series but the couple of clips shown were a refreshing change by not being found footage. And a humanoid creature with no hands, feet or face gave good creeps. In our current indie horror golden age, it’s nice to see at least someone keeping polished studio horror alive and interesting. Unlike a couple other movies I could name.

The panel ended with a teaser for Sinister 2 that was too brief to comment on.