Jason Blum's Blumhouse Productions has become a dominant force in the horror sphere, cranking out thriftily-budgeted frighteners that have struck a chord with audiences and, in the case of films such as Get Out, made a major impact on pop culture itself.
With the company's latest, The Craft: Legacy now in UK cinemas, we took the chance to quiz the studio's founder and namesake about which of his movies' moments scare the hardest. Hardened horror maker that he is, Blum himself is hard to terrify these days ("Every so often they get me, but it's rare"), but that wasn't always the case. Back when he was knee-high to Jason Vorhees, a younger Blum had his most memorable encounter with the genre via Camp Crystal Lake. "The first Friday The 13th scared me to death, and I didn’t watch a scary movie for three years after that!" He recalls. "I was too young. I was staying with my cousins and they had a brand new cable service. Somehow I got to watching the movie by myself. It scared me for a really long time!"
Thankfully, Blum recovered. and now, as cinemas' leading purveyor of things that go bump in the night, he has selected for us here his 10 favourite scares from across all of Blumhouse's filmography.
Paranormal Activity (2007) – Katie Is Dragged Out Of The Bed
Though Blum had been a producer since the 1990s, Oren Peli's low-budget, effective chiller established an early Blum-print for terror, and one moment in particular sticks in the mind of the man who helped bring it to a wider audience. After incremental escalations of potentially-demonic activity, poor Katie is yanked out of bed in the middle of the night, dragged by her ankle, her screams echoing along the corridor.
"When you saw that movie with an audience, before we even had distribution, you saw that it was scary every time, and people really lost their fucking minds at that moment," says Blum. "More than almost any other movie I’ve seen. When people came to Paramount Studios to see it, they didn’t know what it was, it looked like a home movie and they were scared. Then that scene would happen and the audience would go crazy. I’ll never forget that. As a stand-alone scene, it was so scary."
Get Out (2017) – The Deer Hits The Car
Jordan Peele's directorial debut is steeped in satirical social horror – but among its dissections of white liberal racism it still delivers jolts. Take the scene early on in which Chris and Rose are driving out to her parents' house, and a leaping stag collides with their car – an early omen of impending doom. It's a jump scare that has remained with the producer.
"It’s a great scare, but that's nothing to do with the deer itself," he explains. "Something hitting a car is the most boring scare in a movie, but the dialogue, the conversation right before is so edgy and makes you so uncomfortable. It’s weird, tinged with racist-but-not-racist tones, and makes you wonder if someone is going to do something bad, or say something you shouldn’t say. And then, 'WHAM!' A deer hits. That’s an incredibly effective scare. And by the way, most scares are effective because of what happens right before the scare itself."
Sinister (2012) – The Hanging Family
Scott Derrickson's slow-burn chill-fest – about a stash of haunted film reels uncovered by Ethan Hawke's true-crime writer Ellison Oswalt – features some of the freakiest home videos in horror history, even before boogeyman Bagul pops up. Its most unsettling clip? An entire family hanging themselves from a backyard tree – a scene that, it seems, was as harrowing off-camera as on.
"The reason that may be so scary for me is that I was on set that day, and that stunt did not go well the first three times we did it," admits Blum. "No one got hurt, but someone could’ve, so I was really terrified! That's one of the most haunting images in any of our movies."
The Purge (2013) – The Bloody Stranger Rolls Under The Security Door
The first Purge movie introduced the killer concept of an annual lawless night, where American citizens are allowed to spill out their pent-up rage in legally-protected violent crimes (otherwise known as everyday life in 2020). While not strictly a horror scene, Blum picks the moment that cranks the film up into a higher gear – as well-meaning son Charlie allows a man being hunted by a gang of rich masked thugs into his family's fortified home. It's a compassionate decision, with major consequences for the rest of the Purge night.
"It’s not so much a scary scene, but more a shocking scene when the guy rolls under the door in the first Purge movie. I thought that was great, and unexpected and you didn’t know what was going to happen."
Split (2016) – The Beast Pulls The Bars Apart
M. Night Shyamalan's secret Unbreakable spin-off saw James McAvoy channel all kinds of different personalities in a horror-heightened exploration of dissociative identity disorder – including the eventual arrival of supernaturally-strong predator The Beast. Even after being shot by Anya Taylor-Joy's Casey, The Beast is able to prise apart the bars of a prison cell with animalistic glee.
"For me, it’s the performance," says Blum. "His face is so frightening. I don’t know how James did that, he should’ve been nominated for that performance. He turned into something else and there were no special effects, just a little blood in his mouth and makeup and that was it. And I was riveted by that. The performance overall was so creepy, all the characters he embodied, but that particular moment, I thought, was really profound and just so effective."
The Invisible Man (2020) – The Restaurant Scene
Here's your SPOILER WARNING for one of the most effective cinematic shocks of 2020. After being continually gaslit by her invisible ex, whose fakes his own suicide, Cecilia (Elisabeth Moss) goes to dinner with sister Emily (Harriet Dyer). And as her relative finally begins to believe her improbable story of a see-through stalker, that glimmer of hope is brutally snuffed-out when a knife suddenly appears in mid air, slashing Emily's throat, and being forced into Cecilia's hand, framing her for murder.
"I have no idea how Leigh [Whannell, writer/director] did it, but it worked!" Blum says, "That’s one of the most effective scares for me. Leigh is so great at that, almost as good as James [Wan] at setting up that kind of scare."
Insidious: The Last Key (2018) – The Suitcase
The Insidious movies have long been a reliable horror favourite from the Blumhouse stable, with ghostride jolts and explorations of spiritual and demonic dimensions. Blum picks this moment from the four-quel, when Lin Shae's Dr. Elise Rainier is deep into investigating a very personal mystery and is confronted with the terrifying image of KeyFace (Javier Botet).
"It’s so effective," he says. "It’s a dark, long tunnel and the scare is really great. It’s impossible to divorce my experience making the movie from the experience of watching the movie, but sometimes the moments are just that good."
Hush (2016) – The Man Outside The House
Mike Flanagan's high-concept home-invasion slasher stars Kate Siegel – who co-wrote the film with him – as Maddie, a deaf horror writer stalked by a masked man at her isolated woodland house, her hearing loss meaning she's oblivious to his advances as he stalks the perimeter of her home.
"I still love the moment you first are aware that there’s someone outside the house," says Blum. "Mike Flanagan is a really great scary movie director, and that scene in Hush is one of his best."
Upgrade (2018) – Serk's Face Cut In Half
Before The Invisible Man, Leigh Whannell was already doing damage to people's faces. In this case, Richard Cawthorne's Serk Brantner, who, after a fight with Logan Marshall Green's Grey Trace, is brutally dispatched with a little help from Grey's computer chip, STEM. If it's really an action sequence, the brutal brawl culminates in some real head-splitting horror.
"It might not be a strict horror movie, but I can’t resist the sci-fi thriller. Leigh did such a good job with that one too," admits Blum.
The Visit (2015) – The Oven Scene
Shyamalan again, this time building tension across the generations when Nana (Deanna Dunagan) asks visiting youngster Becca (Olivia DeJonge) to scrub the oven. So far, not so sinister – until she instructs the girl to crawl inside it for a deep clean. With a clear, eerie Hansel and Gretel influence, it's a moment that conjures all kinds of horrifying potential outcomes.
"I can’t get enough of the moment when it looks like the nana is going to roast the girl in the oven," he says. "I wasn’t on set for it, because I find I enjoy the scares more when I haven’t seen them made. But fortunately, there’s usually so much time between seeing the movie shot and watching the finished product, and I have a bad memory! Also, I’m such a fan of scares that don’t need special effects."
The Craft: Legacy is in UK Cinemas now.