For Lee Cronin, ‘Planning, second guessing your ideas’ make a good horror film

By Durga Chakravarty

New Delhi, April 21 (SocialNews.XYZ) Ever wondered what it takes to make a good horror movie with all the elements for a scary experience? According to director Lee Cronin, who has helmed the fifth installment of the iconic 'Evil Dead' franchise, it is "lots of planning, sleepless nights, and second guessing your own ideas and characters."

In an exclusive conversation with IANS, Cronin spoke about what it takes to make a good horror movie having all the ingredients of a perfect recipe for the genre.

He said: "Planning, lots of planning sleepless nights and second guessing your own ideas and always looking for something a little bit better because you can sit and write or think about something scary, but then you want to think about the context you have to put it in."

Cronin, who has directed 'Evil Dead Rise', added: "Characters are important. If you don't believe or like the characters then it is just scary ideas. But if you connect with the characters then those scary characters can hit you somewhere. Hit you in a really impactful way."

Is there a dearth of horror films? Cronin begs to differ.

"A lot of horror movies get made but maybe not all of them breakout in a way or maybe not all of them scare people enough from the experience they want from a horror movie. You can say the same about comedies. There are a lot of comedies but not all of them make you laugh the same way."

He added: "What we are seeing at the moment are some interesting new horror movies that are a lot of fun, which is exciting. I love horror movies too, there always could be more but I'd want them to be scary."

Does he agree that horror movies does not get as much spotlight as other genres?

Pat came the reply: "Yeah, I think it depends on the movie. I also think what more than anything sometimes gets overlooked with horror movies is how you have to use every single tool. If you have horror movies with good performances and it's frightening you have to play every single chord possible on the filmmaking."

"You have to go about great performances, crazy visuals, stunts and effects and all of those things. Sometimes I feel it gets overlooked..."

'Evil Dead' is an American horror film franchise created by Sam Raimi consisting of five feature films and a television series. The first part came out in 1981, the second installment released in 1987.

'Army of Darkness' was the third chapter released in 1993, and it was in 2013 when the fourth installment hit the screens.

Asked if he had any pressure in making the fifth installment for the new generation, Cronin said: "I think there's always pressure when you make a movie even when it's not part of continuing franchise but with this film it takes a new direction it has all of the DNA and the horror things you expect from an 'Evil Dead' movie."

There is something new though.

"But it is kind of in a new wrapper, new place and new characters we have'nt seen in the franchise before and although I was never anxious about that but once I kind of had that blessing from the original creators... they were excited with what I was doing, and that led me to the excitement and the confidence to grow so."

He concluded: "Probably, knowing that I needed to take a risk because I knew it would have been the fifth movie and I wanted it to be something different it, was time to do something different. So these guys backed my vision then I just got confident."

Source: IANS