[suspenseful music plays]
♪
[narrator] In the 2000's, the pace of technological advances
seemed to accelerate.
The way we lived and experienced our lives
was rapidly moving from old to new,
from familiar to strange, and from tape to digital.
The switch from landlines to cell phones
was a revolutionary upgrade.
And a culture shock that,
in addition to many other social upheavals,
would make filmmakers of us all.
We recorded the cataclysmic events around us...
- [siren wailing] - [horn blaring]
...the terror of 9/11,
national disasters,
and seemingly endless civil unrest.
[chanting] I can't breathe!
[woman] We are fighting for our lives, people.
And if events in the U.S. were not bad enough,
a virus swept across the globe, killing millions worldwide.
As COVID-19 spread, pandemic exhaustion
and political opportunism divided America
like no other time since the Civil War.
[crowd shouting indistinctly]
These traumatizing events
have kept perpetually threatened Americans
stuck in a perpetual fight-or-flight mode.
[crowd shouting indistinctly]
And into that collective, frightened American psyche,
horror films continue to deliver their cathartic release.
♪
[roars]
[crowd shouting indistinctly]
[film reel clicking]
♪
[zoom lens whirs]
[camera clicks, beeps]
[video camera whirring]
A lot of changes in art are driven by changes in technology.
Looking back on the first decade of the 2000's horror films,
they have to start using those cameras that are everywhere.
They have to start using the way you have no privacy,
the cameras in the phones, the cameras in the public places,
the cameras on the houses.
[man] You're gonna take the camera and just, you know,
go around the party and film people wishing Rob good luck.
[man] Aah! Oh! Oh, God! Oh!
Oh, my God. What the hell was that?
Instead of just realistically, what happens with those cameras,
but going into the paranormal world with those cameras.
[woman screams]
'Cause that would break through the technology,
give you something you haven't seen before.
What's your take on the Blair Witch at this point?
- Do you think she exists? - I don't know.
There is sort of this voyeuristic esthetic
that was developing in those days.
The Internet-- that was all free. You could do that.
As long as you could type it in and hit upload,
you were good to go, and it was accessible to the whole world--
whoever had an Internet connection.
Video cameras have made filmmaking so accessible,
and there's something wonderful
and something excruciating about it.
People can post things
and get discovered no matter where they were.
Anybody with a video camera can make a horror film.
♪
[panting]
[screaming]
[laughter]
As technology changed and became more accessible
and invasive,
filmmakers took advantage of the intimacy
and flexibility they could achieve
with more nimble cameras.
Horror films like Blair Witch Project
and Paranormal Activity
took a new approach to the craft,
incorporating the process of filmmaking itself
as part of the narrative
and introducing a new subgenre-- the found-footage horror film.
I've always embraced technology.
The Internet was coming into its own at the time.
You know, reality TV,
24-7 news was sort of sensitizing audiences
to that sort of shaky cam,
you know, narrative kind of storytelling.
Technology has always been a driver of horror movies.
It's a bit like porn in that respect.
By the late 1990's, there was a shift into digital
and the democratization of filmmaking,
so it became ever more possible for people to grab a camera
and go out into the woods with their friends and make a movie.
Hence The Blair Witch Project.
- This is my home. - [man] Okay. Wow.
Which I am leaving the comforts of for the weekend
to explore the Blair Witch.
America has held a long fascination with witches,
none more famous than the purge that started in 1692
in Salem, Massachusetts,
when 19 people were hanged for witchcraft.
These stories of the occult made an impression
on two young horror fans.
My directing partner, Ed Sanchez, and I
were sort of, you know, hanging out
at his apartment at the time in Orlando,
and we had done some collaborations
on some student films.
Daniel Myrick and Ed Sanchez created
an entire Blair Witch universe
built around the premise that they had discovered
this real footage left by young documentary filmmakers
who had gone missing.
We were inspired a lot
by In Search of Ancient Astronauts
and sort of these pseudo documentaries, you know,
when we were growing up, and we thought how cool it would be
to do sort of a documentary style scene in the woods
where you're sort of going through at night
through a kind of first-person camera,
and you come upon this house,
this really creepy kind of condemned house
and just how fundamentally scary that felt.
[Heather] Josh?
We wanted Blair Witch to come from a place
of that primal kind of motivation that it really,
truly would get under your skin and really scare you.
Oh, my God!
What the fuck is that?!
The Blair Witch Project is nothing short of brilliant,
'cause you want to talk about fucking less is more.
These kids had nothing-- nothing--
and they made this spit-and-glue movie
that's truly fucking terrifying.
I watched that movie on a videocassette with my wife
while at Sundance.
I fell asleep, not 'cause it was boring,
just 'cause I was tired and shit.
[Mike] Tell me where you are, Josh!
Mike, please don't fall asleep.
All of a sudden, I'm shaken awake.
She was like, "Get up! Get up!"
I'm like, "What the fuck's going on? What's happening?"
She's like, "Why won't anyone help them?"
And I'm like, "What are you talking about?"
She's like, "Nobody will help them! They're right there!
Why won't anyone help them? They got to find these kids!"
And I was like, "What are you talking about?"
And she's like, "These kids-- look!"
And she rewinds it, and I'm like, "It's a fucking movie."
She's like, "No, it's documentary."
I was like, "It's not a documentary.
None of this is real."
She bought it a thousand fucking percent.
Audiences were hooked.
They researched the website,
watched the news reports, and read Heather's journals.
It was a fully immersive experience.
Fans, many of whom believed the story to be real,
were completely invested.
It was a viral campaign before the term even existed.
[sobbing] I'm gonna die out here.
♪
The guerrilla marketing strategy even included fliers
claiming that the filmmakers of the found-footage documentary
were still missing.
We don't have any money to put ads in papers,
we didn't have any money to put billboards up
or anything like that, but we could do a web page.
We just decided to treat the website as if, you know,
the information was real,
and we took the mythology and Heather's journal
and all the time line, everything has been going on
near Burkittsville for 200 years,
and laid it out, you know, and-- and used a lot of stuff
that we had already shot to put in there.
And, you know, it became pretty popular.
[Heather] Did you agree to do this project?
[Mike] I did. I agreed to a scouted-out project.
It is scouted out, and I told you that you
that getting to the locations wasn't gonna be easy.
[Josh] Guys! Guys, it's cool.
I got $1,500 worth of equipment on me.
And it goes viral, so one person gets a hold of your idea
and then they spread it.
I looked it up on the Internet and found out more about it,
so it's more real to me, and it was--
that's where the scariness came from.
Jesus Christ. That's fucking creepy.
The Blair Witch Project really was successful
beyond just being scary.
The reason that movie has had the lasting power
that it's had, really, is because, if you look at it,
that film is really about gender dynamics.
You know, like, at the end of the day,
it's like you can take all the creepiness
and the horror of the film,
but the movie's really not about that at all.
It's really about this woman
who's kind of dealing with misogynistic guys
and-- and how that implodes in this experience
that they're having, getting lost in the woods.
Put the camera down. This is not funny.
[Heather] I'm coming. Do I look like I'm laughing at all?
No, but you're going around
doing your documentary thing, man.
You're still doing your fucking thing.
- Don't fucking-- - Turn the goddamn thing off!
But it has a very unnerving fucking ending
with the one kid just facing the wall.
And that ending-- it was probably two or three days
before we needed to start our first day of shooting,
and Ed and I still hadn't come up with the ending yet.
We didn't want any big,
you know, horror tropes in the way,
but then we didn't want it to just sort of end either.
But there had to be some kind of payoff.
Come on.
And then we just went back to that primal place.
Like, what would really be creepy?
And we just saw, like, Heather coming down into that basement,
and Mike is standing in the corner, and you don't know why.
[Heather screaming]
[thud]
Ended up being really scary.
Thanks to the ingenious marketing strategy,
harnessing the power of the Internet for the Gen-X crowd,
characters that felt incredibly authentic,
and its shoestring budget,
the original Blair Witch Project
broke box-office records.
[indistinct shouting]
[Blum] After The Blair Witch Project,
which was such a massive phenomenon,
found-footage movies-- good ones--
were really special.
♪
Paranormal Activity really helped me identify
the types of films I wanted to work on as a producer.
According to director Oren Peli,
the premise of Paranormal Activity
came from a feeling of isolation he was experiencing
while living alone in his first house.
In the dead of night, the homemade spooky noises,
and Peli thought that a story about a couple
using digital cameras to record themselves
chasing down the origin of the unexplained sounds
might make a good movie.
He was on to something.
[Micah] Doors and windows all over the house are closed.
I just checked them.
The flowers are not moving, but something else is.
[Katie gasps]
I was about to go to music school,
and I had given up on the whole acting thing.
Hey.
And the last casting-call notice I ever got
was this weird project that was like,
"You can't tell anybody where you are.
You can't tell anybody what you're doing.
We're gonna torture you and film it,
and, you know, it's just--
that's the-- that's the project."
And I was like, "Fuck this. This is crazy.
No way I'm doing this project."
I went to the audition-- not to get the part.
I just wanted to see who these weirdos were
doing this wacky movie,
and I get there, and the director says,
"Tell me why your house is haunted."
So I was like, "Oh, dude, let me tell you, it's fucked up."
I've been hearing noises, and my wife--
uh, my girlfriend-- she's gonna be my wife, hopefully--
she, you know, would go to the bathroom,
and then I'd open the door, and she'd just be unconscious,
like, collapsed, and she doesn't know what happened.
And I mean, I hear-- I hear screeching.
Like, when I'm turning on the faucet,
I hear this whining wail, you know?
And the shutters shatter, but there's no wind.
I open the door-- the window, you know?
And the shutters are flapping, but there's no wind.
That's creepy.
Fuck!
[Wilson] Paranormal Activity was great,
in that the idea of this couple sleeping
and not knowing that all this demon activity
was happening in their home,
they put that surveillance camera
in the corner of their bedroom
and see all the really weird, messed-up stuff
that was happening overnight.
Oh, shit.
Sometimes we're better off not knowing what's going on.
Paranormal Activity deals with this, like, intimacy of horror.
Well, you're dealing with a couple, right?
You're dealing in their home, but you're also dealing with
where they're taping themselves, right?
And they're taping themselves in their daily lives,
but also at night.
You are your most vulnerable
when you're sleeping in your bed.
One of the most horrific or scariest things about horror
is that it infiltrates your safe spaces
and makes you either fight for your life or kills you.
Micah! Micah! Micah! Micah!
Katie!
[Sloat] In Paranormal Activity, I am part of a nice couple,
and they love each other
and the things they're doing are not in alignment.
It's very much like I don't take it seriously
until it's happening to me.
I think this thing left a message on the Ouija board.
[door opens]
I don't give a fuck what that thing says on the Ouija board.
What do you do if you actually have proof
of a demon in your house?
Like, what would you do?
What the hell are you doing, Micah?
A huge part of what horror is about
is exploring the shadow-- the collective shadow
and the personal shadow for the people
who are creating the film.
By making horror movies, not only can we allow ourselves
to explore the shadow in a safe and controlled way,
but we can actually resonate with it
so that we feel like we're not alone.
- [screaming] - Katie!
[screaming continues]
The movie still scares me
because the way that the timing and the scares work,
even though I know that I've seen it, I'm in it,
it still works.
[thud]
Paranormal Activity utilized digital technology
to create a uniquely intimate horror
and has been terrifying viewers since it opened.
It has made a staggering amount of money,
$200 million worldwide.
With a starting budget of $15,000,
it was one of the best investments in movie history
and the envy of Hollywood.
[screeches]
♪
[screeching]
[indistinct shouting]
[Wilson] One of the reasons I love horror
is being able to kind of express trauma and pain
and model worst-case scenarios.
[woman] Jason, watch out!
[crowd screaming]
So whether by accident or design,
horror films form a conduit between extreme ideas in society
and the mainstream into the minds of the people
who enjoy just sitting at their multiplex on a Saturday night,
munching popcorn and being scared.
[crowd screams]
But on the morning of September 11, 2001,
America woke up to a completely new world.
September 11th was the deadliest terrorist attack
in U.S. history.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed,
and tens of thousands were left injured.
This devastating event unfolded in real time
on cable news.
The visuals,
many of them recorded by witnesses to the event,
were shocking...
and unforgettable.
America was living a real-life horror film.
[man] Would you make everyone aware
that we're gonna be seeing some tape?
[man #2] Holy shit.
[man #3] Jesus!
♪
[indistinct shouting]
But what came down, though? What came down?
It crashed. The other Trade Center's down. It's down.
- It's down? - It's down.
Some guys armed with box knives had managed to strike
at the heart of the most technologically superior nation
on earth.
They brought down a symbol of America's pride, its dominance.
And the world has never been the same,
because there was an illusion shattered.
- Go! Move! Get going! - Let's go!
Aah!
[Bress] 9/11 changed everything.
We're seeing more, you know, horrible things on the news.
Like, we're watching the towers falling,
watching the people on the street reacting.
- [siren wailing] - [horn blaring]
We're not gonna turn the camera away from this stuff.
So after 9/11, man,
you just-- you're just getting uglier and darker.
And, you know, Jason coming at you with an ax,
you know, it just-- it just won't do it anymore.
9-11 really did change that generation of horror movies.
[indistinct shouting]
They were all impacted by 9/11.
[shouting continues]
After 9/11, we made changes to our draft
of Final Destination 2 because the world had changed
and now we weren't living in the world
where only teenagers go off to get killed in horror movies.
We were like, "No, this has got to be adults.
There's got to be people you know-- mothers, fathers,
you know, police, guys with jobs, teachers,
relatable people, the people who were in the tower.
That's who is gonna die in this movie.
I don't want to die!
[grunting]
Aah! Aah! Aah!
That angst that we all felt that was too real--
we wanted our story to reflect it.
We wanted to capture the horrible shit that was going on.
[elevator dings]
You know, just after 9/11 was a crazy place to be.
And some of those fears
translated themselves into horror movies.
We have the unfortunate era of torture porn,
where hatred and violence were really kind of,
like, worked through on the screen.
I think, you know, that what was going on
in Guantanamo and the U.S. government's affirmation
that torture was an acceptable response--
that kind of opened the floodgates
for people's personal fantasies.
As America reeled from the terrorist attacks
on September 11th, people lined up in droves
to watch ultraviolent films like Hostel and Saw.
The Saw movies are about getting vengeance on the people
that you have decided don't fit your vision of society.
And I don't think that would have flown before 9/11,
but when you're in this context
where you're being asked to kind of, like, you know,
watch your neighbor, judge--
are they being a good American?--
that is a kind of precursor to encouraging vigilante justice.
People ask me sometimes how I feel
about the violence in Saw.
I'm much more concerned about the real violence
in the world than I am about fictional violence.
♪
When I think about it, the thing that scares me the most
is our inability to learn from our mistakes.
You will not replace us!
[indistinct shouting]
A mob is a mob.
- [dogs barking] - [indistinct shouting]
And a mob can turn against you as easily as someone else.
[screaming]
[woman vocalizing]
♪
Oh! Aah! Aah!
[choir vocalizing]
Aah!
[gasping]
Join us! Women, join us!
[screaming]
[laughs evilly]
[screaming continues]
Since the dawn of cinema,
horror movies have always reflected
and sometimes exploited societal trends.
Good shot.
Perhaps none more so than the victimization of women.
Brother and sister.
The presence of female filmmakers
crafting their own stories
is a trend that's been long overdue.
♪
[Wilson] By the mid-to-late 2010's,
a lot of people who had been denied their voices for so long
really reached boiling point.
[woman chanting] The White House resident...
[all] ...is not my president!
[all] We need a leader, not a creepy Tweeter!
[Wilson] So you have the MeToo movement
where women's anger just erupted.
You know, years and years and years of being put down,
mansplained to, groped, denied a place, silenced--
we'd had enough.
[crowd chanting indistinctly]
The Women's March in January 2017...
[crowd chanting indistinctly]
...you know, in one way, it was a celebration of women.
But it was also a kind of planting the flag
and saying, "We are now concerned
that the rights that we've worked so hard
to obtain over many, many years could be pushed back."
[woman] We are fighting for our lives, people.
Since we've had the MeToo movement
within the past couple of years, we've seen a lot of female films
coming out, directed by females, about females,
telling the female experience.
We've had The Babadook,
touching on a 40-year-old mother,
which was a demographic that previously did not get
a lot of play in horror films.
We've had films like The Relic.
We've had Revenge come out.
All of these films are confronting female problems
that were previously never discussed in horror films.
♪
[Brooks] Women make up 55% of the horror audience.
Horror, particularly slasher films,
plays upon the fears of the woman alone
and how we're always taught that we have to be ready
to defend ourselves at any moment.
It plays upon the fears of why we carry our keys
between our fingers as we're walking to our car.
So I think it's this safe removal that is very important
to the women who are horror audience aficionados.
They get the opportunity to live through the protagonists
of the film and all the anger and all the pissed-off-ness
that is built up as all her friends have been killed,
probably her boyfriend's been killed,
and I think that women just have a lot of pent-up anger.
And to get to let go like that,
to get the opportunity to beat up the slasher,
to beat up the monster and even to kill them...
is very appealing.
As a female in horror, especially a female horror fan,
when I was a kid, there were very few females in horror films
that I would identify with.
Some of those earlier horror films are like,
"Really? Like, now you're gonna take a shower?"
♪
But now what we're seeing is real females on screen.
We're seeing movies about being a female,
and she's not being put up on a pedestal as "the" female.
She just happens to be a female.
And we see this really come to a forefront with Halloween.
Happy Halloween, Michael.
[grunting]
♪
Laurie Strode is the ultimate final girl
because she's lost her fear.
She's faced her fear, and she's still facing it,
and now she is like mama bear.
She's very much trying to protect her family.
All right, pick your poison.
Halloween became such a successful franchise
because of Jamie Lee Curtis.
I mean, she was a normal girl,
and that's what terrified people.
The biggest rule to have any type of a sustainable franchise
in any decade is your franchise has to be able to evolve.
You have to be able to take the original concept
and reapply it to different generations of people.
You have to be willing to morph it into where society is heading
if you want it to have any type of longevity.
[Greer] In the original Halloween,
Laurie Strode is being chased.
She's being stalked and hunted, and in the 2018 Halloween,
she's very much, like, preparing herself to fight.
[gunshots]
She is raw, but she is focused.
[gun cocking]
She's misunderstood, but she is focused.
You know, there's nothing worse than being misunderstood.
People think your motives are something when they're not.
It's-- that's-- that will drive you insane.
That's a recipe for making you feel crazy.
And she's not crazy.
Say goodbye to Michael and get over it.
If the way I raised your mother
means that she hates me...
but that she's prepared for the horrors of this world,
then...
I can live with that.
So this is now a woman who's been a pinball her whole life,
banging around a pinball machine,
banging into people, literally banging into men
and institutions with no care, no love, no attention,
no mental health support, nothing.
And it yields a warrior.
It yields the woman we meet in the 2018 movie,
which is why it's so good.
She has spent her whole adult life preparing for this
so that she is ready when he comes back.
And she's the only one who thinks he will come back.
She's the only one who really, truly knows Michael.
[Laurie breathing raggedly]
[gasping]
[grunting]
[screaming]
The thing about Jamie Lee Curtis that's so inspiring
is just how she throws her entire self into something.
[coughing]
She's been kind of telling this story her whole life.
[groaning]
[both grunting]
When we saw the premiere, people fucking lost their minds,
and I was like...
It was so cool.
[Curtis] Halloween 2018 was released on October 21st,
and if I'm not mistaken,
those first women who went on the record for Ronan Farrow
happened at the beginning of October.
So the collision between women all around the world,
as soon as that first woman said "yes"--
boom, it was now a tidal wave.
And it sort of catapulted our little slasher film
about female trauma into a much bigger conversation.
New York magazine did a cover story,
and Entertainment Weekly did a cover story on Halloween.
The development of Laurie's character over the years
reflects the development of feminism over the years.
Laurie was always an action hero,
but she was a little bit more of a victim back in those days.
Now she's playing the character years later.
There's a depth to her character now that I'm impressed with.
[breathing heavily]
[grunting]
Aah! Aah! Aah!
[grunts]
Laurie Strode has definitely changed throughout the years.
She's found herself, she's found her voice,
she's found her power, and she takes no fucking bullshit,
hundred percent.
She's kicking ass now and taking names.
Come on, Michael.
♪
American culture and Hollywood have too slowly come
to recognize and value the power and importance
of diverse voices.
[doll cries]
But as more and more inexcusable acts
of racially motivated violence have been captured on video,
the cries to recognize the real-life horrors of racism
have only grown,
and the film industry has been challenged
to be a part of that reckoning.
♪
[all] I can't breathe! I can't breathe!
[reporter] George Floyd's death
at the hands of Minneapolis police officers
has sparked angry protests all across the country.
[man] We will get justice.
[reporter] Protesters and police are clashing
in Louisville, Kentucky.
The National Guard is on alert,
and the city is under a mandatory curfew
after a grand jury decided not to indict three police officers
in the shooting death of Breonna Taylor.
[indistinct shouting]
[sirens wailing]
[man] Run! Run! Run! Run!
[indistinct shouting]
2020 was a really, really difficult year
for a lot of reasons.
You know, we had the pandemic,
We had this very problematic presidency,
and we also had the summer of George Floyd.
And not just George Floyd.
I mean, there were other police killings.
George Floyd took the center stage.
And this-- this...
It's hard to explain what it's like
when one of these police killings happens.
It could have been us, right? It could be your son.
It could be your father, your brother,
your uncle, your mother.
If you read the reports, there's no rhyme or reason sometimes
to who gets brutalized or murdered by police.
[gunshot]
So when you're doing a horror set out of a Black experience,
there's a very special relationship with violence
that I think Black creators and Black audiences
have to be aware of.
Holy shit.
One of the things I always wanted to do
with The First Purge,
I wanted to give it authenticity
and give it a real, real groundedness,
but also feel scary.
The Charlottesville thing that happened in Virginia,
those guys came out with the tiki torches
and Confederate flags.
[all] You will not replace us!
People that have any type of hatred or evilness
would come out during that time,
so I kind of put that into the film.
This is real, and it was super important
to display what was happening.
♪
Purge night-- to get out all of your violence,
to completely solve the world of crime.
One night a year, you can do whatever you want.
All crime becomes legal, but you don't have to partake in it.
If you want to go hole yourself up in your house
and just let it ride out, that's fine.
But that does not mean that it's not gonna come to you.
That does not mean somebody's not going to bust down your door
and try to kill you.
♪
I love The Purge series, and The First Purge,
which is really sort of the Black horror take on The Purge,
it's about anger toward marginalized communities
and trying to keep people out...
and trying to keep America pure.
Some of the scenes are hard to watch.
You know, it's-- it's-- it's-- those--
when those neo-Nazis are marching in the neighborhood,
that's a scary sight, especially because it felt like
it could break out at any minute.
It does look like prophecy.
You know, 2020 could be easily predicted
by the years leading up to 2020, right?
So, yes, there was this sense of unease
when you have open marches, neo-Nazi marches
that are not immediately denounced by the White House.
The First Purge definitely felt like they were broadcasting
what was to come in 2020.
Do not purge!
[man] This is the Minnesota State Patrol.
You are in violation...
The Purge-- the story that stuck with me most,
I would say, is Dmitri being the hero for his community.
You know, it was a Black man standing up for his neighborhood
despite what you thought of him.
So telling that story really was, like, important to me.
[all grunting]
And I wanted to bring a whole new perspective
to the first franchise because I felt like it was needed,
and, like, I think Brown and Black people
have always been a fan of the franchise,
and they've had two characters in the movies,
but in terms of Black characters leading the way
in fighting against the Purge, we had never seen that.
This is our home.
So let's show these white-haired motherfuckers
never to fuck with our island again.
Horror has such a fan base among Black
and, really, a lot of marginalized viewers.
That image on the screen touches something very deeply in us
that represents rage, fear, trauma.
The monsters on the screen
represent the real-life boogeyman in your life,
but from a safe distance
and gives us an opportunity to at least fight back
and sometimes gives us a chance to win.
[both grunting]
I think if you want to find a cinema
that really reflects what America is all about,
you got to look at its horror films.
'Cause that's what really digs deep.
[sighs]
[both grunting]
Get Out was-- it was a breath of fresh air.
It is the perfect Black horror film.
Actor, comedian, and filmmaker Jordan Peele
was inspired to write a horror film with comic undertones,
with similar pacing and unexpected scares
reminiscent of the 1975 classic The Stepford Wives.
For Peele, the sunken place
represents the suppression of minorities
and the silencing of their voices.
You know, as an African American,
the opening of that, you know, there have been times
when I got off at the wrong bus stop
and I'm walking through a white neighborhood
and every car that drives by, you know,
I'm a little worried by.
It's happened to me many times in my life.
[inhales sharply, exhales]
You know, working with Jordan was, like, hands down,
one of the best experiences of my life.
I've never worked with somebody so confident
in what it is that they had to present.
I kind of felt stuck in the idea that, like, I'm playing Roman,
but I'm Walter.
I'm Roman playing Walter.
So, you know, he-- he really gave me, like, great advice
about keeping the secret.
I know who you are.
She is lovely, isn't she?
Rose?
Yes, she is.
One of a kind.
Top of the line.
A real doggone keeper.
[chuckles]
Right.
One of the best moments that I had on set
was where Chris wakes up,
and he goes downstairs, and he passes by the kitchen.
Betty wasn't part of that scene, but she passed by,
and Jordan jumped up like, "Oh, my God. Go get Betty."
He saw the-- the-- the vision to be able to see the granny
go right behind him,
and-- and, like-- oh, man, like, I felt, like,
oh, man, I got bumps thinking about it right now.
[gasping]
My favorite scene in Get Out
is where he's asking for the keys.
Said, "Give me the keys, Rose. Where are the keys?"
Rose, the keys.
[Rose] Looking.
I'm like, "Rose ain't giving you them damn keys."
Where are those keys, Rose?
You know I can't give you the keys, right, babe?
I mean, the Black man literally says, "Get out."
- Get out. - You okay?
Sorry, man.
- Okay. - Get out!
- Yo! - Go!
- Yo, chill, man. Chill! - Get out!
- Chill! Chill, man! Chill! - Get out of here!
- Get the fuck out of here! - Chill!
[screaming]
You're all right now.
[screaming continues]
You're all right. You're all right.
When all the Black people are weird as fuck,
you got to get out of Dodge.
♪
[Due] It's the picture of what it feels like to be,
as Jordan Peele calls it, the only one in the room.
Chris was just telling me how he felt much more comfortable
with my being here.
And also, it speaks to the-- the natural sort of distrust
and unease that sometimes Black people feel
when they enter all-white spaces.
It's not that everybody's carrying a tiki torch
or wearing a Klan hood or anything like that,
but you just don't know how people feel about your presence
on your street, in your neighborhood.
Sir, can I see your license, please?
Wait. Why?
Yeah, I have state I.D.
No, no, no. He wasn't driving.
I didn't ask who was driving. I asked to see his I.D.
So Get Out really highlights that fear
of isolation within whiteness, and then, if it turns out
they really are plotting against you...
like, maybe, deep down, you were always worried they were...
[laughs] ...that makes for a scary movie.
Sink into the floor.
- Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. - Sink.
[Dickerson] The main character and his sense of finding out
how betrayed he is-- it's about the ultimate appropriation
of not just your culture, but of you.
It was just brilliantly done.
Racism is the monster, so you not only have
a Black protagonist, but you have an anti-racist theme.
That is the most
easily recognizable kind of Black horror,
because in some ways it's more about blackness.
I really thought he was gonna buy it at the end...
[siren wails]
[tires screech]
♪
...because you could see that happening.
You can see the police coming and shooting him.
Oh, shit!
The fact that his friend showed up,
that was like, "Okay."
That-- That made it all right.
[breathing raggedly]
Chris!
[Dickerson] It was very effective.
The most exciting thing about Jordan Peele in horror
is that he loves it.
You can tell he's a fan. You can tell he's studied it.
The landscape for Black filmmakers has been changed
because of Get Out.
[Due] Get Out is the perfect example
of an idea meeting the perfect time.
Consider this situation fucking handled.
[Blum] Movies like Get Out and The Purge
struck a chord with audiences
because it spoke to something in our culture.
That's the fascinating part about working in films.
It's all a reflection of what we are experiencing at the moment,
and those can be really scary places.
- Aah! - Aah.
♪
[Blum] Horror movies can help us deal
with the real-life horror around us.
Good times, bad times-- people need entertainment,
and in the bad times they'll go see horror movies
'cause they go, "Well, I lost Uncle Joe to a pandemic,
but at least I'm not getting chased around with a chainsaw
by that crazy guy with a leather face."
That's the cathartic nature sometimes.
Give them horror where you go, "Is it this bad?
They go, "No. No, my life isn't that bad.
I guess everything's okay. Where's the car parked?"
[Heather] I know exactly where we're going.
It's interesting to think about, like, how horror will
reshape itself post-pandemic.
[Smith] You know, you get the horror that your time produces.
The country's in a weird place
and probably will be there for some time,
which will make for some really interesting horror movies.
[man] Oh, my God!
There are no rules anymore.
I think one of the things that we've learned
in these last ten years is that, if you break the rules,
you're probably gonna end up with something special.
I really feel like horror can have an important role
in shaping the future of Hollywood
by diversifying our stories.
Giving more voices opportunity is something
that's, like, gonna make movies better.
Fear is a very specific thing to a person's experience.
So if you can make me really feel that character,
doesn't matter if that character is Black, white, Asian,
you're gonna feel the horror.
[screaming]
For nearly a century, horror films have helped us
process the unthinkable, giving us imaginary monsters
to deal with the real threats that grip us.
[man] Oh, God! Oh, God!
The next generation of filmmakers will no doubt
continue to elevate the genre
and give us all more nightmares.
[woman] Aah! Aah! Aah!
♪