Why So Many Comedians Are Making Horror Movies
The comedy and horror genres might seem like they’re at odds. One is built around making the audience feel joy, while the other is built around terrifying the audience and making them feel uncomfortable. But, under the right circumstances, comedy and horror can go hand-in-hand. A handful of genre-bending comedy-horror gems have found a sweet spot between the two that proves these strange bedfellows are surprisingly well-matched. Movies like Shaun of the Dead and An American Werewolf in London have handled the tonal balancing act beautifully, with plenty of big laughs and just as many genuine frights.
Humor has become more prevalent in the horror genre in the past few years, because more and more comedians are taking a plunge into the gruesome and the macabre. Since Jordan Peele managed the astonishing transition from acclaimed sketch comic to Oscar-winning horror filmmaker, comedians like Chris Rock and Danny McBride have put their own stamp on horror cinema. Rock starred in Spiral, a police-procedural reinvention of the Saw franchise, based on his own pitch, while McBride has co-written the Halloween reboot trilogy and played a supporting role in Alien: Covenant.
This Horror Masterpiece Has No Signs Of Horror For The First Hour
Writing comedy and writing horror are fundamentally the same – they’re based entirely on instinct. It’s all about timing: the monster needs to jump out of the closet at just the right moment, much like the punchline to a joke needs to be delivered at just the right moment. When Peele, Rock, and McBride made the transition from comedy to horror, they just tuned their creative instincts to look for the next scare instead of the next laugh.
The effectiveness of both comedy and horror can be measured by
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