Horror’s New Wave: 15 Years of Blumhouse

Journalist Schilling celebrates Hollywood producer Jason Blum and his production company in this fun cinematic history. Responsible for underground hits such as Sinister as well as massive franchises including Paranormal Activity, Insidious, and Halloween, Blumhouse built its reputation on low-budget horror films comprising “simple premises executed with vision, flair, and ingenuity.” Schilling offers no shortage of production anecdotes, behind-the-scenes images, and amusing statistics about kill counts from Blumhouse’s releases. An interview with The Purge director James Demonaco describes the initial resistance his script faced for being too “nihilistic and anti-American,” while Ethan Hawke, who starred in the film, reveals that Pink Floyd was “played incessantly on set.” A section on 2023’s Five Nights at Freddy’s details how the film “had been through the development ringer” before Blumhouse tapped the man who made the video game it was based on to write the script. The book’s detective-file design is a nice touch, and the “Horror History Lessons” peppered throughout reveal that Insidious director James Wan’s favorite film growing up was Poltergeist, and that the killer robots in M3GAN were inspired by the 1975 film The Stepford Wives. Horror fans will want this on their shelves. (Sept.)