Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman
Known
for such movies as The
Exorcism of Emily Rose,
Deliver
Us from Evil,
and Dr.
Strange,
Scott Derrickson is an unusual filmmaker. A Christian, he is also a
horror movie director and himself a fan of the genre. Exorcists and
demonologists are featured players in his movies, as are, indeed,
demons. In a National
Catholic Register
interview
with Steven D. Greydanus, Derrickson says, horror “is the perfect genre
for a person of faith to work in. You can think about good and evil
pretty openly. I always talk about it being the genre of non-denial.
I like the fact that it’s a genre about confronting evil,
confronting what’s frightening in the world.”
He
sees horror films as a way of reclaiming the mystery of life. Human
institutions and enterprises, he suggests, cut people off from the
mysterious, limiting them to specific, pre-established ends and
means: “Corporate America limits the world to consumerism. Science
can limit it to the material world. Even religion limits it to a lot
of theories that can explain everything.”
Horror
not only “breaks that apart” but also reminds humanity “that
we're not in control . . . and we don't understand as much as we
think we do.” However, he agrees that horror that merely goes for
the throat, without exploring significant themes in the process, is
vapid and jejune: Horror, he implies, should invite “depth, .
. . moral passion, [and] ideas that are to be taken seriously.”
For Derrickson, horror movies are “not about putting something evil in the world. It’s about reckoning with evil.”
His movies tend to use established conventions as ways to introduce mystery and religious faith. “Emily Rose was a courtroom demon-possession film. It kind of classically follows the structures of both of those [genres] at the same time,” he explains, while Deliver Us from Evil is “a police procedural.”
It's important, the director says, not to impose one's own beliefs or perspective on the audience. Instead, a moviemaker should seek to get “the audience to accept the character’s point of view as the character’s point of view.” The movie shows how the protagonist feels, believes, thinks, and interprets the world. The audience may agree or disagree with the character's world view, but they should also accept it as that of the character. It is not necessarily the director's own point of view. “I’m never trying to propagate that,” Derrickson observes.
For Derrickson, horror movies are “not about putting something evil in the world. It’s about reckoning with evil.”
His movies tend to use established conventions as ways to introduce mystery and religious faith. “Emily Rose was a courtroom demon-possession film. It kind of classically follows the structures of both of those [genres] at the same time,” he explains, while Deliver Us from Evil is “a police procedural.”
It's important, the director says, not to impose one's own beliefs or perspective on the audience. Instead, a moviemaker should seek to get “the audience to accept the character’s point of view as the character’s point of view.” The movie shows how the protagonist feels, believes, thinks, and interprets the world. The audience may agree or disagree with the character's world view, but they should also accept it as that of the character. It is not necessarily the director's own point of view. “I’m never trying to propagate that,” Derrickson observes.
Derrickson cites, as authors who have influenced him, G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis. For those new to horror, who may want to “test the waters,” he recommends, besides The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Deliver Us from Evil, The Sixth Sense, The Exorcist, and the Spanish-language film The Orphanage.
Science fiction and horror have often been combined to produce hybrid films such as Alien, The Fly, Jurassic Park, Frankenstein, and, more recently, A Quiet Place (2018), Annihilation (2018), and The Cloverfield Paradox (2018). Derrickson's use of courtroom drama and the police procedural suggest two other genres that can be combined with that of horror to produce new types of hybrid films, half-horror, half-other. Like other serious filmmakers, he also believes that, to be worthy of an audience's time, attention, and money, horror films must be about more than blood and guts; they must address themes that transcend mere gore.