“No, it’s NOT cool that the scene in your new movie is exactly like that one scene from your favorite film when you were a kid... “
drew daywalt
by Drew Daywalt
04/19/2013 - 8:00pm
I get asked all the time how I’ve managed to put more horror in 2-4 minutes than many features manage in 90 minutes or more. I think, because I started out in long form (features and TV) and then created horror shorts, I felt the need to concentrate more storytelling into less time. It’s like a distillation process. I hook up a feature to a few tubes, put it over a Bunsen burner, and distill the bare essence of the thing into a tiny little decanter. That’s the short film. That’s how I think about it.
by Drew Daywalt
03/08/2013 - 3:00pm
As a writer and director, the single best reason to work in the horror genre is because it’s the only genre that can draw an audience without a star attached. That is, to say, you can put asses in seats based solely on the story or the concept alone.
by Drew Daywalt
02/14/2013 - 8:00pm
I was just sitting by the hot tub at our apartment complex, texting a friend on a hot Los Angeles summer day. Sounds harmless enough, right? But that moment. That slice of time. That otherwise innocuous, mundane series of seconds in my life preceded one of the worst moments of my existence.
by Drew Daywalt
02/04/2013 - 2:00pm
Writers are like everyone else. Doesn’t matter what genre they write in. And when it comes to working styles, even within the same genre (Horror, in my case), we’ve all got our habits and our mannerisms and our quirks. And those things change over time. For instance, I used to love to write in total solitude with just the right music going.
by Drew Daywalt
01/25/2013 - 7:30pm
Fear has a twin, you know... a sister. She’s a fraternal twin, because the two are not identical, not by a long shot, but they are twins nonetheless.
by Drew Daywalt
01/21/2013 - 4:00pm
The fear paradigm. That’s what I call it. It’s something all horror scholars know about through study, and what all members of the horror-movie-attending audiences know instinctively.
by Drew Daywalt
01/10/2013 - 3:00pm
With all the shooting tragedies that have occurred this past year, there’s been a lot of finger pointing going on in our culture. To a degree, that’s healthy. When something that horrible happens we should reflect on what the fuck is wrong with us. But we have to decide on a plan of action based on reason, not fear. Think equally with our hearts and minds, not just our lizard brain in a state of terrified survival mode.
by Drew Daywalt
10/17/2012 - 4:00pm
An interesting thing happened to horror films over the past 10 years when no one was looking. They became more horrific.