MVPs of Horror: Producer Jason Blum on why 'Get Out' works as a great horror movie
With apologies to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which notoriously claimed the film was a comedy at the Golden Globes, 2017’s Get Out is much better classified as a satire, a psychological thriller, and, above all, a horror film.
If there’s anyone who knows horror, it’s producer Jason Blum, whose company Blumhouse brought us not only Get Out but also the Paranormal Activity, Insidious, and The Purge franchises, as well as this weekend’s box-office behemoth Halloween. A confessed weirdo who drives around Los Angeles in a souped-up van and admits to having collected fingernails at one point in his life, Blum sat down with Yahoo Entertainment to explain how director Jordan Peele‘s affinity for fright is the biggest reason Get Out is a great horror flick.
“Jordan loves horror,” said Blum. “So what makes it a great horror movie is simply that, that he really understands what scares people. A great horror film should work without the scares. If you take out the scares of a great horror film, it should work as a drama. And Get Out really, really works as a drama, so the scares are ultra effective because you’re on the edge of your seat watching what the characters are saying to each other. Jordan really understood that.”
While he enjoyed Peele’s script for Get Out, Blum admits it took time for him to grasp the finer details of the movie and that the learning process didn’t stop when he decided to make it.
“When I read Get Out, I liked it, but I didn’t understand it,” Blum said. “I really didn’t understand Get Out completely until after it was done. Even the script, there was a lot of nuance I didn’t understand, and I really didn’t appreciate it until I met Jordan, and then it started to take shape for me.”
Watch Drew Goddard discuss how he tried to make Cabin in the Woods the bloodiest movie ever:
Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:
