THE TUESDAY DROP: 5200+ New Shots

10.18.22 Halloween is fast approaching, so get your decks ready Horror fans! We’ve got a whopping 20 blood-chilling films this week. Some new releases, some international favorites, and some creepy classics! Check them out below, and remember you can always request films for future drops by clicking here!

The 1973 masterpiece THE EXORCIST was directed by William Friedkin and written by William Peter Blatty, based on his 1971 novel of the same name. The story is loosely based on actual events and follows Chris (Ellen Burstyn), the mother of a young girl named Regan (Linda Blair), who starts acting strangely – levitating, speaking in tongues. When Chris hits a dead end seeking medical help, her priest (Jason Miller) suggests Regan may be possessed by the devil and sends in an expert (Max von Sydow) to help. The Exorcist was a national phenomenon upon its release, with widespread reports of intense reactions in the theaters. The film grossed over $441 million from its $12 million budget and was nominated for ten Academy Awards including Best Picture, winning for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound. It was added to the US National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2010, and is today widely considered one of the greatest horror films ever made. Friedkin worked on the film with American cinematographer Owen Roizman, with whom he previously shot The French Connection. 

After their success with The French Connection, Roizman and Friedkin decided to take a similar approach with The Exorcist of creating a look for the film as though it was only shot with available light, though this time, they wanted a more composed, less docu-drama camera approach than they had used on The French Connection. Friedkin wanted absolute realism in the sets but wanted to push the lighting scheme to create an ominous mood, as though something was lurking. The combination of these desires made lighting a challenge for Roizman, given that sets such as the basement, with 7 foot high ceilings, gave no place to put lights in. The crew was able to find solutions by replacing the ceiling’s practical lights with photoflood lights. This was also the case in the kitchen, where the entire lighting scheme was created by practical lights that had photoflood bulbs in.

GRETEL & HANSEL (2020)

GRETEL & HANSEL is a 2020 dark fantasy horror film directed by Oz Perkins, based on the Grimm Brothers’ folk tale Hansel & Gretel. The film stars Sophia Lillis as Gretel and Sam Leakey as Hansel, who must fend for themselves after their mother descends into madness. Gretel and Hansel enter a dark wood searching for food, and eventually stumble across a bounty of food outside an isolated home. When they are invited in by the seemingly kind owner, they soon discover that she is a wicked witch. Alice Krige and Jessica De Gouw also star. Gretel & Hansel grossed over $22 million from its $5 million budget. Perkins worked on the film with British production designer Jeremy Reed. Reed is also known for his work on films such as Monster, Hard Candy and Last Looks. 

Perkins and Reed wanted to stay faithful to the Grimm Brothers’ story while making the story feel contemporary for today’s audience, and they wanted to reflect that aesthetic in the design of the film. Perkins wanted to acknowledge the heritage of the story as well, and he and Reed began their design collaboration from a place of classicism, referencing it in the shapes and compositions they created in the frame. The witch’s pointed hat was an initial touchstone for that, referencing the MGM movies of the past, in particular The Wizard of Oz. The triangle ended up being a crucial shape for Reed’s design, referenginc ideas of the occult, as well as the number of core characters and Perkins’ relationship to the source material. This shape defined the design of the witch’s house in the middle of the woods, which was designed to look larger on the inside than it did from the outside, and offer a kind of warped contrast to the natural wooded environment around it. 

X (2022)

X is a 2022 slasher horror film written, directed, produced and edited by Ti West. The film follows a group of actors who set out to make an adult film in rural Texas under the noses of their reclusive hosts. However, when the elderly couple catches them in the act, the cast and crew find themselves in a fight for their lives. The film stars Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Martin Henderson, Brittany Snow, Owen Campbell, Stephen Ure and Scott Mescudi. X premiered at the 2022 South by Southwest film festival, and grossed over $14.5 million from its $1 million budget. A prequel, Pearl, was released later in 2022, and a sequel, MaXXXine, is in development. West worked on the film with American hair and makeup designer Sarah Rubano. Rubano was known at the time for her work on projects such as Elysium, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and the upcoming Avatar: The Way of Water. 

One of Rubano’s major tasks working on X was to develop the prosthetics that would allow Mia Goth to not only play the protagonist of the film, Pearl, but also the elderly lady who owned the farm, Maxine. Rubano worked closely with the Weta Workshop (the film was shot in New Zealand), and began by working on a 2D design to establish the overall look and feel of the characters. Rubano and Weta also worked closely with West during the storyboarding phase to understand the way that the characters would be captured in the film. From there, the Weta team started building the characters through a sculpting process, allowing them to decide how various body parts should look. In the end, over 30 individual prosthetic appliances were needed for Pearl, and Goth was often in the make-up chair with Rubano for up to 10 hours. The scene in which RJ is decapitated was achieved by building a dummy head with a stunt performer laying on a false floor with his head and neck hidden and body on the floor. This allowed the stunt performer’s body to twitch after the head was decapitated in the shot.

FUNNY GAMES (1997)

Michael Haneke’s 1997 Austrian psychological thriller FUNNY GAMES follows two disturbed young men, Paul (Arno Frisch) and Peter (Frank Giering), who hold a family hostage and torture them with sadistic games in their vacation home. The film also stars Susanne Lothar and Ulrich Mühe as Anna and Georg, the husband and wife who Paul and Peter hold hostage and torture. Funny Games premiered at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, and Haneke made an American remake that was recreated shot-for-shot ten years later. Haneke worked on the film with German cinematographer Jürgen Jürges, who is also known for his work on films such as Paths in the Night and Shadows of Time. 

Funny Games was the third installment of Haneke’s “emotional glaciation” trilogy, which were interested in the intersection of media, alienation and violence, and started with the films The Seventh Continent and Benny’s Video. Jürges and Haneke went into their collaboration on Funny Games with an aim to toy with the audience as much as the family on screen (even though most of the violence is off-screen), with moments in the film where the two assailants directly address the audience and the camera by speaking to them, winking at them, and even using a TV remote to rewind the action when one of the family members starts to fight back. Jürges and Haneke created a visual language that was bound closely with the editorial language of the film, comprised of very long takes, neutral camera placement and composition, and very deliberate editing patterns that forced the audience to confront their own desire to watch this violence be enacted upon the family in the film. 

GET OUT (2019)

GET OUT is a 2017 American psychological horror film written, co-produced and directed by Jordan Peele in his feature directorial debut. The film follows Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya), a black man who uncovers a shocking secret when he meets the family of his white girlfriend, Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) for the first time on a weekend away. Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephen Root, Lil Rey Howery and Catherine Keener also star. Get Out premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and grossed over $255 million from its $4.5 million budget, and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Kaluuya) and Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards, winning for Original Screenplay. The film has gone on to become considered a landmark of the contemporary horror and social thriller genres, and one of the greatest films of the 21st century. Peele worked on the film with Australian cinematographer Toby Oliver, who has also shot films such as Happy Death Day and Insidious: The Last Key. 

Get Out’s production took place over 23 days in Fairhope, Alabama, which was standing in for Upstate New York. Peele and Oliver began their collaboration in pre-production by determining what each camera technique would be used for in the telling of the story during the shoot. Most importantly, the steadicam was used to represent terror, the feeling that something was lurking, and that both the audience and the protagonist would have the nagging feeling that something was wrong. This became especially significant for the film’s opening scene, which was all shot in a single take. To practically achieve the effect of the sunken place scene, Peele and Oliver had Kaluuya hanging from a wire in a black space with solids hung all around, and a single light source placed overhead. Oliver shot the scene at 200 frames per second to accomplish a not-quite-underwater feeling, with floating particles added in post to achieve the look of Chris falling down into the sunken place. 

AMER (2009)

AMER is a 2009 Belgian-French thriller-horror film written and directed by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani and starring Cassandra Forêt, Biancamaria D’Amato, Charlotte Eugène Guibeaud, and Marie Bos. The film follows Ana (Forêt), through three phases of her life and sexual development, from her oppressive teenage years through to her adult life. Amer premiered at the Lund International Fantastic Film Festival in Sweden, winning its inaugural The Blade award, and went on to play at South by Southwest in 2010. Cattet and Forzani worked on the film with Belgian cinematographer Manuel Dacosse, who was working on his first feature film with the directors. Dacosse has gone on to shoot films such as Evolution, Let the Corpses Tan and Adoration. 

Cattet and Forzani worked closely with Dacosse to create a visual language that would evolve over the course of the three episodes, while also maintaining a unity that would hold the film together as a story. Inspired by Italian giallo films of the 60s and 70s, Cattet, Forzani and Dacosse set out to make rich use of color as both an aesthetic and storytelling device for the film. Given the limited budget and shoot time that the filmmakers had (production lasted for 39 days), as well as the directors’ experience only with short films at the time, Cattet and Forzani worked closely with Dacosse to plan their approach in advance of the shoot, testing every shot with digital video cameras and blocking each scene with the two directors as stand-ins for the actors. 

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (2008)

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is a 2008 Swedish romantic horror film directed by Tomas Alfredson, based on John Ajvide Lindqvist’s 2004 novel of the same name (Lindqvist also wrote the screenplay). The film follows a 12 year old boy named Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant), who is being bullied in the early 1980s. Oskar develops a friendship with his neighbor Eli (Lina Leandersson) in Blackeberg, Stockholm, only to realize that there is something unusual, and possibly sinister about Eli. Let the Right One In premiered at the Gothenburg Film Festival, before going on to play at the Tribeca Film Festival and win the Best Film Not in the English Language at the British Academy Film Awards. It has since spawned an American remake titled Let Me In, directed by Matt Reeves in 2010. Alfredson worked on the film with Dutch cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema. The pair went on to collaborate on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in 2011. Van Hoytema’s other credits include Her, Interstellar, Spectre, Dunkirk and Nope. 

Alfredson and van Hoytema were eager to avoid drawing too strongly upon films and filmmakers that they admired, instead turning to painter Hans Holbein as a key reference point, especially for the unexpected eyelines and compositions. Unlike typical horror movies, van Hoytema and Alfredson noted that the danger of the film wasn’t hidden in the darkness, but instead in everyday situations, and the pair wanted to create a world where light was the threat. To do this, they created a method they called “spray light” where they tried to capture an effect of “dull electral light in a can and spray it like a hairspray across Eli’s apartment”. To do this, they took advantage of not having ceilings to boom in Kino Flo lights and direct them through frames of overhead diffusion. The lack of practical motivation for light sources added to this uncanny effect. Given the lack of handheld work and slow editorial pace, van Hoytema selected the Arri 535B camera in Super 35mm for a 2.40:1 aspect ratio, citing the camera’s heaviness as having a good effect on the set, with everyone working around the camera as a strong central point to help build the frames of the film. 

AUDITION (2000)

Takashi Miike’s 2000 Japanese horror film AUDITION is based on the 1997 novel of the same name by Ryu Murukami and stars Ryo Ishibashi and Eihi Shiina. The film follows a widower, Shigeharu Aoyama (Ishibashi), who stages a fake audition to meet a potential romantic partner, and meets Asami (Shiina), who’s dark past starts to have a nefarious effect on him. Audition premiered at the Vancouver International Film Festival and went on to play at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, where it was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize and the KNF Award. The film has gone on to be considered one of the most influential Japanese horror films of the past 30 years, and has become a major influence on the genre since. Miike worked on the film with Japanese production designer Tasuo Ozeki, who is known for his work on films such as The Grudge, Kikujiro and Traces of Sin. 

Miike had established a methodology of working with his crew that relied on relatively low budgets and short shooting schedules. Audition was filmed in approximately three weeks, with Miike’s average typically being closer to two. Because of the low budget of the film, Ozeki worked closely with the locations department to find a real apartment and a real restaurant to shoot in, rather than building sets. Ozeki also collaborated closely with the special effects department to accomplish the torture scene at the end of the film. The shot where Shiina’s character places acupuncture needles into Ishibashi’s eyes was executed by having the special effects make-up team make a mask layer which was laid upon Ishibashi’s eyes, before being pierced by the needles on camera. 

RINGU (1998)

RINGU is a 1998 Japanese supernatural horror film directed by Hideo Nakata, based on the 1991 novel by Koji Suzuki of the same name. The film stars Nanako Matsushima, Miki Nakatani and Hiroyuki Sanada, and follows a reporter Reiko Asakawa (Matsushima) who is racing to investigate the mystery behind a cursed video tape which causes the viewer to die seven days after watching it. Ringu was shown at the 1999 Fantasia Film Festival, and became a worldwide phenomenon in both the box office as well as on home media. The film has since spawned numerous follow-ups in the Ring franchise, including the 2002 American film The Ring. It is also credited for popularizing the J-horror genre internationally, and inspiring several American remakes of Japanese horror classics. Nakata worked on the film with Japanese cinematographer Junichiro Hayashi, who is also known for this work on films such as Dark Water and Kyôshû. 

Nakata and Hayashi wanted to create an uncanny visual language for Ringu that mixed a documentarian’s approach with the surreal, as a way of using the look of the film to heighten the terror it could impart to the audience. The video tape footage was shot by Hayashi on 35mm film, and then sent to a digital technician to add digital grain to the image. This use of adding digital grain to a filmic image created an uncanny quality to the videotape that create unease in the image and pushed its unnatural, unsettling qualities. Hayashi also created a lighting design that was deliberately unexplainable, giving the film a blue tint but always lighting from sources that weren’t easy to explain logically when looking at the frame. 

DEMONIC (2021)

Neill Blomkamp’s 2021 supernatural horror film DEMONIC follows a young woman who unleashes demons when supernatural forces at the heart of an old feud between her and her mother are revealed. The film stars Carly Pope, Chris William Martin, Michael J. Rogers, Nathalie Boltt, Terry Chen and Kandyse McClure. Demonic was shot entirely during the Covid-19 pandemic, and Blomkamp worked on the film with volume camera and CGI lead Tobias Chen of Volumetric Camera Systems to create the look of the film. Chen had to date also worked on projects such as Altered Carbon and Another Life.

Chen and Volumetric Camera System’s volcap work to date had largely been as a pre-visualization tool, scanning actors into environments that were then manipulated in pre-production as a way of planning shots and sequences. For Demonic, Blomkamp came to him with the goal of capturing the actors (often multiple, rather than one) live in an environment as the take itself, generated as a sort of hologram image in the film to symbolize the simulation which Carly enters into. To be able to capture actors at different distances from the camera and maintain fidelity to the environments (whose footage had been filmed in real locations ahead of time), Chen set up a volume of 239 cameras, all recording 4K footage simultaneously. Volumetric Camera System’s work was then sent to Universal Production Partners in the Czech Republic, who created the final visual effects by tweaking the lighting and adjusting certain design elements that eventually made it to the final film. 

ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE (2013)

Jim Jarmusch’s 2013 fantasy comedy-drama ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE follows a pair of vampire lovers (Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston) who ponder their place in modern society. The film also stars Mia Wasikowska, Anton Yelchin, Jeffrey Wright, Slimane Dazi and John Hurt. Only Lovers Left Alive premiered at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Palme d’Or. It has since grown to be considered one of the most celebrated of the century so far. Jarmusch worked on the film with French cinematographer Yorick Le Saux, who is also known for his work on films such as A Bigger Splash, High Life and Little Women. 

Jarmusch and Le Saux started their collaboration looking at films from the genre they admired, such as Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark, Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction and Tomas Alfredson’s Let The Right One In. At the same time, they wanted to both modernize and move away from the tropes of the vampire genre and vampire mythology. They decided to create a visual language that drew a clear contrast between the warmth of the scenes set in Tangiers versus the relatively lifeless quality of Detroit in the film. At the same time, Jarmusch wanted to place the film in a context that felt out of any particular time, and he and Le Saux collaborated closely with the costume and production design teams to build a look and feel that didn’t place these characters in any particular period in history.

PULSE (2005)

PULSE is a 2001 Japanese techno-horror film written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. The film follows a number of young adults in Tokyo who witness terrifying visions across the internet after a college student named Taguchi (Kenji Mizuhashi) commits suicide. As more people disappear across the city, malevolent spirits start breeding across the internet, and Michi (Kumiko Aso), Ryosuke (Haruhiko Katô) and Harue (Koyuki) attempt to solve the mystery about what is happening. Pulse premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, and has since spawned a novel and a trilogy of English-language remakes. Kurosawa worked on the film with Japanese production designer Tomoyuki Maruo, who had also worked on productions such as Cure, Piece of Cake and Cyborg. 

Kurosawa and Maruo wanted Pulse to capture the kind of technological angst that films like Hideo Nakata’s 1998 film Ring had addressed, and pushed the bounds of the terror into a more ubiquitious, visceral place, thanks to the proliferation and early fears surrounding the Internet. He and Maruo wanted the production design of the film to capture the sense of technophobia, psychological trauma and social isolation that ran through the film, in particular the phenomenon of “hikikomori”, or acute social withdrawal, which was spreading through Japan. Maruo worked with the locations to find and dress the cavernous tower blocks and warehouses in which large portions of the film take place, painting and dressing them in washed-out grays and blues which gives the film its almost monochromatic, inevitably dour tone that dooms the characters from its opening frames. 

THE LOVE WITCH (2016)

Anna Biller’s 2016 comedy horror film THE LOVE WITCH stars Samantha Robinson as Elaine Parks, a beautiful young witch who is determined to find a man to love her, and uses spells and potions to pick up and seduce them. However, her spells work too well, causing disastrous results. The film also stars Laura Waddell, Jeffrey Vincent Parise, Jared Sanford, Robert Seeley and Jennifer Ingrum. The Love Witch premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Biller served as the writer, director, editor, producer, production designer, costume designer and composer of the film. 

Biller wanted to make a highly stylized film with an aesthetic that called back to 1960s Hollywood Technicolor films, even though it was set in the present day. This helped both satirize the tropes of films from that period in their treatment of women, as well as create lush frames that could be filled with detailed sets. Biller’s production design work involved years of searching through salvage stores for appropriate vintage furniture, and even making some pieces from scratch herself, including Elaine’s pentagram rug, which took Biller 6 months to sow. Biller took a similar approach to the costume design for the film, using 60s and 70s Gunne Sax dresses as a reference point for clothes that she either bought or sewed herself for Samantha and the rest of the cast.

THE ORPHANAGE (2007)

THE ORPHANAGE is a 2007 Spanish gothic supernatural horror film directed by J. A. Bayona in his feature directorial debut. The film stars Bélen Rueda as Laura, a woman who has happy memories of her childhood in an orphanage. Laura convinces her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) to buy the orphanage with her and help her convert it into a home for sick children. But when after an argument, her adopted son Simón (Roger Príncep) goes missing, things take a turn for the worse. The Orphanage premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, going on to gross over $78 million from its $4 million budget and winning seven Goya awards later that year. Bayona worked on the film with Spanish production designer Josep Rosell, who is also known for his work on productions such as Butterfly’s Tongue and If They Tell You I Fell.

Bayona and Rosell had been longtime collaborators prior to work on The Orphanage, and Rosell read scripts for the film long before it went into production. The pair, alongside the film’s locations department, chose to begin production in Llanes, Asturias in northwest Spain. The pair were interested in the natural diversity of the location, and their ability to shoot at beaches, caves, cliffs, forests, a village, and an old colonial house from the 19th century where orphanage scenes took place. After four weeks of filming in Llanes, Bayona and Rosell planned to take the shoot to Barcelona for the remaining ten weeks. Sections of the film required camera techniques that Bayona, cinematographer Óscar Faura and Rosell decided they could not shoot on location, meaning that Rosell had to reconstruct sections of the house on sound stages, where the bulk of filming took place. 

EYES WITHOUT A FACE (2007)

EYES WITHOUT A FACE is a 1960 French horror film co-written and directed by Georges Franju starring Pierre Brasseur and Alida Valli, based on Jean Redon’s novel of the same name. The film follows a plastic surgeon named Dr. Génessier (Brasseur), who, stricken with guilt after an accident that he caused disfigures his daughter Christiane’s (Édith Scob) face, is determined to complete a face transplant, and continues to make attempts by kidnapping young women with his laboratory assistant Louise (Valli) and removing their faces in an attempt to graft them onto Christiane’s. Eyes Without A Face was controversial upon its release, but has grown to be considered one of the most influential horror films of its era. Franju worked on the film with German cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan, who was known at the time for his work on German Expressionist masterpieces such as Metropolis, as well as for the creation of the Schüfftan process. 

Franju wanted to take the pulpy material of Redon’s novel and bring it to a more elevated space by combining the narrative with a visual language that was beautifully crafted and pushed the film into a dream-like, poetic space. Schüfftan approached the film with an eye to the French chamber horror genre, seeking to elevate the look and feel of the film with strong lighting and composition decisions that created a slower-paced, more haunting film than the movie could have otherwise ended up as. Described by Franju as not a horror film, but rather one with a quieter mood that focussed on the internal anguish of its central character, Schüfftan’s work on Eyes Without A Face makes it one of the most most influential films in its genre to this day.

NEAR DARK (1987)

Kathryn Bigelow’s 1987 neo-Western horror film NEAR DARK is her solo feature directorial debut, and stars Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, Bill Paxton, Lance Henriksen and Jennette Goldstein. The film follows a young cowboy (Pasdar) in a small Oklahoma town who becomes involved with a family of nomadic vampires. Near Dark did not initially perform well when it was released, but has gained a cult following in the years since, noted for the way that it uses the genre to comment on sociopolitical issues of class and those on the fringes of society. Bigelow worked on the film with American production designer Stephen Altman, who was best known for working with his father, Robert Altman, on productions such as Gosford Park, The Player and Short Cuts. 

Bigelow and Altman collaborated closely with special effects makeup artist Derek Howard to find practical solutions that could push the relatively low budget of the film to its maximum for some of the gags required by the film. To create the illusion of smoldering skin, pasdar wore a portable smoke device under his clothes as he walked through the fields at dawn. Bigelow captured these shots in wides to hide the trick, and to give the effect of his skin burning in the daylight. For close-up shots, the smoke device was tubed under constructed facial prosthetics. In order to shoot the fatal showdown between Caleb and Severen, Altman and his team built an undercarriage for the truck, which a stunt man could hold onto while being dragged by the vehicle. Altman also built a platform and attached it to the front of the truck to support Paxton as he climbed up the hood of the truck.

THE INNOCENTS (1961)

THE INNOCENTS is a 1961 gothic psychological horror film directed and produced by Jack Clayton, based on Henry James’s 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw. The film follows a governess who watches over two children and comes to fear that the children are being possessed and that their estate is haunted. It stars Deborah Kerr, Michael Redgrave and Megs Jenkins. The Innocents played at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival, and though it received mixed reviews upon its release, is today widely considered to be one of the greatest horror films ever made. Clayton worked on the film with English cinematographer Freddie Francis, who was known at the time for his work on films such as Sons and Lovers. 

20th Century Fox, who were financing the film, wanted The Innocents to be shot in CinemaScope, even though Clayton wanted it to be shot in the academy ratio. Francis had shot Sons and Lovers in Cinemascope and therefore felt that it would be possible to shoot The Innocents this way. As they progressed with the production, Clayton and Francis started pushing the boldness of their photographic style, placing characters prominently at the edges of the frame and at other times framing faces in profile at the center of the frame, creating a consistent sense of unease in the frames and a lack of conventional balance. Francis also painted the sides of the lenses with black paint for some sequences, creating a more intense, “elegiac” focus, and would boost candle light sources by intertwining four to five wicks at a time. 

CANDYMAN (1992)

CANDYMAN is a 1992 American supernatural horror film, written and directed by Bernard Rose and starring Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd, Xander Berkeley, Kasi Lemmons, and Vanessa E. Williams. Based on Clive Barker’s short story The Forbidden, the film follows a Chicago graduate student (Madsen) who is completing a thesis on urban legends and in a housing project on Chicago’s Near North Side. This leads her to the legend of the “Candyman”, the ghost of an African-American artist and the son of a slave who was murdered in the late 19th century for his relationship with the daughter of a wealthy white man. Neighbors believe Candyman to be responsible for a recent murder, and a mysterious man begins to stalk Madsen around the same time. Candyman premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and grossed over $25 million from its $9 million budget. It has since spawned three sequels, and is now widely considered to be a classic of contemporary horror cinema. Rose worked on the film with English cinematographer Anthony B. Richmond, who was best known at the time for his collaborations with Nicolas Roeg on films such as Don’t Look Now, The Man Who Fell to Earth and Bad Timing as well as for his work on The Sandlot and Legally Blonde. He also worked with a special effects team led by Martin Bresin, who has also worked on films such as Training Day, Where the Wild Things Are and State of Play. 

Because of Candyman’s relatively low budget for its scale as a film, Rose had to collaborate closely with Richmond and Bresin to accomplish the film’s major set pieces without spending too much money or relying on post-production. Rose wanted Bresin to use traditional effects rather than optica effects to execute the bonfire scene, so Bresin, who had also worked on the film Backdraft, designed a set 70 feet wide and 30 feet high that went into flames using 1,500 gallons of propane. The most ambitious special effects that were achieved in camera were for the bees climax, where Candyman sends 500 bees into Helen’s face. The effect was achieved by placing real bees into Tony Todd’s mouth, with Todd wearing a protective mouthpiece to avoid as many stings as possible (Todd was stung 23 times, but negotiated a $1,000 bonus for each sting). The bees were also placed on Madsen’s face, and took up to 45 minutes to remove after each take using a special “bee vacuum”. 

SPIRAL: FROM THE BOOK OF SAW (2021)

SPIRAL: FROM THE BOOK OF SAW is a 2021 American horror film directed by Darren Lynn Bousman and written by Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger, and is the ninth installment and standalone sequel of the Saw film series. The film stars Chris Rock as Detective Ezekiel “Zeke” Banks, who along with his rookie partner Detective William Schenk (Max Minghella) take charge of an investigation into a series grisly murders by a Jigsaw copycat that eventually put them at the center of the killer’s morbid game. Marison Nichols, and Samuel L. Jacksonalso star. Spiral grossed over $40 million from its $20 million budget. Bousman worked on Spiral: From the Book of Saw with American cinematographer Jordan Oram. This was the pair’s first collaboration, and Bousman had reached out to Oram after seeing his work on the music video “God’s Plan” for Drake. 

Bousman and Oram started their work establishing that Spiral: From the Book of Saw would be largely shot on location, making it the first Saw film shot in that way. Bousman wanted the film to take place on the hottest day of the summer, and Oram drew inspiration from both Do The Right Thing and Seven, wanting to juxtapose the colorful, saturated palette of a hot summer day with the monochromatic, dark world that the characters were heading into. Oram used practical lights and warm tungsten light sources to give the entire film a kind of warmth that conveyed an atmosphere of heat at all times. The shoot took place over 36 days in Toronto, and Oram largely shot with two cameras as a way of keeping the shoot moving and capturing as much footage as possible given the high degree of location work and the film’s relatively tight schedule.

HOCUS POCUS (1993)

HOCUS POCUS is a 1993 American fantasy comedy directed by Kenny Ortega that follows a villainous trio of witches played by Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy, who are inadvertently resurrected by a teenage boy (Omri Katz) in Salem, Massachusetts on Halloween. Thora Birch and Vinessa Shaw also star. Hocus Pocus grossed over $45 million from its $28 million budget, and has become a cult classic of the Halloween season. Ortega worked on the film with American costume designer Mary Vogt, whose credits include Crazy Rich Asians, Men in Black 3 and Kong: Skull Island. 

Vogt’s work designing the costumes for each of the three witches was a close collaboration between herself, Ortega and each of the film’s three leads, with Vogt wanting to move away from the traditional black witch outfits in favor of a look that represented both the actors and the characters they were playing. Since Midler was to have red hair in the film, Vogt designed a green dress with purple highlights to contrast against her hair and give her a larger than life look and presence. Sarah Jessica Parker’s witch was the beauty queen of the film, and Vogt’s designs were therefore inspired directly from Sleeping Beauty. Finally, Kathy Najimy’s character was the alchemist of the three, always mixing potions, and Vogt created a look inspired by bakers and chefs to design her costume. Vogt also took a lot of cues from storyboard artist Arthur Rackham, as well as Goya’s drawing series of the Spanish Inquisitions, Los Caprichos, to inspire her design work.