How to make a bad horror movie: The rite of Michael Hasfrom

One evening, surrounded by my friends, I had the silly idea to propose a cinema trip to see the latest horror film released in movie theatres : The rite of Michael Hasfrom. Only two adventurous accepted my invitation. I’m never very popular when I submit a horror movie.

This Sunday, we dealt with the umpteenth exorcism movie, but with Anthony Hopkins as an interpretation bonus. I went with low expectations, only the hope of tiny horror entertainment. The director has already did a pleasant horror movie with his third project: Room 1408,  an adaptation of Stephen King, release directly onto DVD in France. 

In fact, The rite was a waste of time, so boring, I moved every five minutes in my seat with and gave many huge yawns. But this torture have an advantage, to inspire this article: 

How to make a bad horror movie !

You will need :

•    A scenario with no plot, no tension and it does not matter to insert scenes which might create fear. And if your characters are very unpleasant, it’s always a plus.
•   To hide this terrible story, use the marketing effect: “inspired by real events”.
•  A lead actor with no charisma worthy of a peanut forgotten at the bottom of the bowl. But he has to look like a underwear model.
•   An Anthony Hopkins who needs some cash to pay his taxes or a new pair of boobs for his new and young wife. Thus, you can use his name, face, reputation on every poster, to attract gullible viewers, like me. However, Anthony Hopkins ‘s performance has to be poor and ridiculous.
• Create grotesque exorcism scenes, inspire you more laugh than fear.
• Make sure that anything happen for more than half of the movie.
• Do not give importance to music and sound effects.
•  A lack of staging.
• Use bad and old clichés from other exorcism movies.
• Put in the trailer scary images that doesn’t exist on film.
•  Lengths, lengths and even more lengths.
• Very few and outdated visual effects.
• Write ridiculous dialogues. 

Incorporate all these elements in one movie and you will get The rite, a very horrible horror movie. If like me you made the mistake of going there, I can prescribe The Exorcist of William Friedkin, a classic, in my  opinion the best film on this topic. It’s from it that I learned the meaning of fear.

 Sarah.