\n\tHorror is red-hot at the box office, but what is up next for the genre?<\/p>\n
\n\tIdeas flowed freely at the San Diego Comic-Con<\/a> panel for Bold Voice of Contemporary Horror: Tenth Anniversary Edition, which took place on July 24. Panelists included both actors and behind-the-camera talent, including Dan Stevens, star of AMC series \u201cThe Terror\u201d; Deborah Ann Woll, star of Shudder\u2019s upcoming thriller \u201cThe Cycle\u201d; director Zachary Wigon, who helmed Bleecker Street\u2019s \u201cVictorian Psycho,\u201d which debuted during this year\u2019s Cannes Film Festival; and Dave Boyle, who directed SXSW audience award winner \u201cNever After Dark.\u201d The discussion was moderated by Michael Lerman, the co-founder and director of film programming at the genre-based Overlook Film Festival<\/a>, and was curated by convention mainstay Rachel Walker, who founded the panel in 2015.<\/p>\n \n\tWhat were their thoughts and theories? Read more below.<\/p>\n \t\tKeeping audiences on their toes by not being boxed into one type of genre.\t<\/p>\n \n\tTouching on different tones is a great way to keep viewers discombobulated and primed for a scare.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI mentioned \u2018The Descent\u2019 as being one of my favorite movies. Part of the reason for that is that it shifts,\u201d Woll said. \u201cYou\u2019re not always quite sure what kind of horror movie you\u2019re in. Is it a psychological thriller? Is it a survivalist thriller? Is it a creature feature? To me, films that can play with genre in that sense are often the most engaging. When I read this script [for \u2018The Cycle\u2019], that immediately made me say, \u2018I have to do this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tBring in ideas from other types of storytelling, even if they\u2019re not fully reflected in the final work.\t<\/p>\n \n\tCreatives should take from everything they\u2019ve ever worked on \u2014\u00a0even if it doesn\u2019t immediately seem transferable.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI think that the thing that really prepared me to jump into the genre was working on action, just because of how precise and communicative you have to be,\u201d Boyle said. \u201cThere are so many moving pieces, so many things to think about and keep track of. Working in Japan for the first time, it\u2019s interesting; Japanese scripts leave half the page blank. Then the director actually draws in the cuts where each cut is gonna happen, so that you have a real sense of how the movie\u2019s going to come together, and there\u2019s a real precision to it if you use that system and lean into it. That\u2019s what prepared me to jump into my favorite genre, which is horror.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tHorror mixed with humor continues to be on the rise.\t<\/p>\n \n\tThis goes even beyond the influx of funny directors like Zach Cregger and Curry Barker making their mark on the industry.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cSomething I\u2019m pleased to see spreading at the moment is horror with more humor attached,\u201d Stevens said. \u201cI find that humor is so powerful in horror and can often be overlooked. It\u2019s sometimes a scary word when you mention that to producers: \u2018I\u2019d like to bring some humor into this.\u2019 \u2018It\u2019s not a comedy.\u2019 \u2018I know it\u2019s not a comedy, but by bringing some humor in, by bringing elements of humor, you bring in humanity, which I think exists in even the most batshit of situations.\u2019 That can really ground a story sometimes. I\u2019ve really enjoyed seeing a proliferation of those kinds of movies recently.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tRevel in withholding some information from the audience to make for even bigger payoffs.\t<\/p>\n \n\tConjure up interest by dropping some clues that don\u2019t get solved right away.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI feel like horror is a subgenre of mystery,\u201d\u00a0Wigon said. \u201cWhen I think about horror storytelling, it\u2019s almost like you have a patchwork quilt, and you can\u2019t see what\u2019s in any of the patches at the beginning of the movie. Then as it goes along, you start to reveal that this is one little patch, that\u2019s one little patch, and you\u2019re creating mystery because the audience doesn\u2019t understand how these patches connect to one another, and that\u2019s the game that everybody\u2019s playing. Then as it goes along, you start to realize that you\u2019ve been looking at one image the whole film, and the pleasure is in seeing how these seemingly disparate pieces of information come to connect.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWatch the new trailer for \u201cThe Cycle,\u201d which debuted during the panel, below.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Horror is red-hot at the box office, but what is up next for the genre? 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