How Ghost House Stages Its Evil Dead Hauntings

Horror's Hall Of Fame: Ghost House

This is #HouseOfHorrors, where Prahlad Srihari compiles the definitive guide on the modern production houses that comprise the genre's hall of fame.

This is OTTplay’s House Of Horrors, an 8-part guide to the contemporary production houses that have cemented their spots in the genre’s hall of fame. In part 7, we look at Ghost House Pictures. Also read the previous instalments on Blumhouse, A24, Platinum Dunes, IFC Midnight, Hammer Films and NEON.

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What is Ghost House?

Few names in genre filmmaking, whether it is horror or superheroes, carry as much heft as Sam Raimi. The same goes for the production house established by Raimi along with Xena: Warrior Princess co-creator Robert Tapert in 2002. Ghost House Pictures has been behind a few of the bigger box-office hits when it comes to horror in the 21st century, starting with The Grudge in 2004, Drag Me to Hell in 2009, Don’t Breathe in 2016, and Evil Dead Rise this year.

What is Ghost House Pictures known for?

Ghost House announced itself by jumping on the J-horror remake bandwagon with The Grudge. Two years earlier, Gore Verbinski had been hired to direct the Hollywood remake of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu. Raimi and co, on the other hand, brought on Takashi Shimizu to direct the remake of his own film Ju-on. The results were tepid, so much so that “remake” became the dirty word it is in horror films. In 2007, Ghost House let David Slade take a stab at Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith’s comic book miniseries 30 Days of Night. Despite some energetic action sequences and all the bloodthirsty ballet, the film ultimately flatlined. It took Raimi himself returning to roots for the production house to earn its first real triumph. The Spider-Man trilogy done and dusted, the director dug deep into his old bag of tricks for the gross-and-goofy Drag Me to Hell.

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One of Ghost House’s biggest success stories has been the rise of Fede Álvarez. The studio was where the Uruguayan director honed his craft, jumping from microbudget short films to Hollywood feature films. Alvarez was directing commercials in his native country until a five-minute giant-robot short he made called “Panic Attack!” ended up on Kanye West’s blog in 2009, secured him a meeting with Raimi, and got him the keys to reboot the Evil Dead franchise. Not only did he deliver an original take in a rare instance of a remake done well, he followed it up with a perfectly calibrated exercise in tension with the home-invasion thriller Don’t Breathe. Seeing how Alvarez sharpened his cinematic language under the mentorship of Raimi, it shows how director-led production houses can function as a test lab for emerging filmmakers.

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FRIGHT CLUB

How Ghost House Stages Its Hauntings

By Prahlad Srihari

What are the hallmarks of Ghost House Pictures' productions?

Much like Blumhouse, Ghost House has a motion logo every horror fan will instantly recognise. We begin in a haunted house where a door slams shut by itself. As the camera approaches the keyhole, a skull pops into view through the opening, as in a jump scare, and the words “GHOST HOUSE PICTURES” materialise.

If you are watching a movie with Raimi’s name attached to it as director or producer, expect to see demonic POV shots, Dutch tilts, jump scares, slapstick gags with Looney Tunes logic, chainsaws and everyday objects weaponised, from a box cutter in Evil Dead to a baster in Don’t Breathe to a cheese shredder in Evil Dead Rise.

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Drag Me to Hell, being the only film Raimi directed and produced under the Ghost House banner, is classic Raimi, starting with his protagonist being put through the wringer. It was Bruce Campbell in every other movie. Here, it was Alison Lohman as loan officer Christine who refuses to extend a mortgage loan to an elderly woman and pays the price. We have seen possession-based horror before. This is repossession horror as Christine is forced to endure three days of demonic torture before eternal damnation. The visual style is kinetic as ever in a movie full of freaky-hilarious moments: Christine being attacked in the car parking lot, Christine projectile nose bleeding all over her boss, Christine dropping an anvil on the old woman’s head, Christine having maggots being vomited into her screaming mouth, and a goat getting possessed and bleating insults.

The credit crunch is as real as it gets even in Don’t Breathe, where three amateur burglars break into the home of a blind man rumoured to have $300,000 in cash, thinking it will be an easy score. Once inside they discover the blind man is anything but helpless and he won’t let them get out alive without a brutal cat-and-mouse game. Raimi has always thrived on misdirection. After the DIY schlock fest of The Evil Dead (1981), few would have expected him to take a more slapstick route as he did with the sequel Evil Dead II (1987). When Álvarez soft-rebooted the franchise, the comedic stylings were swapped for a more brutal take. The terror unleashed by the Necronomicon was retooled as a blood-soaked allegory for addiction in 2013’s Evil Dead. A decade later, the follow-up Evil Dead Rise went all Looney Tunes-slapstick, best exemplified by a scene where a Deadite-possessed single mom bites a neighbour’s eyeball and spits it into his son’s mouth, agape in shock, choking him to death.

Who are the directors and actors Ghost House has worked with?

The writing-directing team of Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues have been behind three Ghost House films: Evil Dead (2013), Don’t Breathe (2016), and Don’t Breathe 2 (2021) — with the ever-remarkable Jane Levy being the face of the first two films. After The Grudge (2004), Shimizu returned to direct the needless but inevitable sequel in 2016. Nicolas Pesce helmed another ill-advised reboot of the franchise in 2020.

Which are Ghost House Pictures’ defining horror movies?

The Grudge (2004), 30 Days of Night (2007), Drag Me to Hell (2009), Evil Dead (2013), Don’t Breathe (2016), Evil Dead Rise (2023)

Which are Ghost House Pictures’ best horror movies?

Don’t Breathe (2016), Drag Me to Hell (2009), Evil Dead (2013), Evil Dead Rise (2023)

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