Scariest Moments From Paranormal Activity, The Purge & More (Ft. Jason Blum)

The moments in our movies that stand out,

that still scare me.

The moment when Katie throws Mika at the camera

at the end of Paranormal Activity,

the films inside of sinister in particularly

the one with the parents hanging,

but all of the 16 millimeter films in Sinister,

I find those incredibly unnerving and disturbing,

and they certainly make me jump.

I certainly recoil from the violence and Halloween,

and more recently,

the moment where the throat is slit

in The Invisible Man when the two women

are at the restaurant,

that moment is still incredibly unnerving.

And I flinch every time I see that.

Hey, my name is Jason Blum,

and I'm gonna be to GQ today,

about some of my favorite and scariest moments,

in a bunch of Blumhouse movies.

So this is the moment of Paranormal Activity.

It's as Mika's frame his famous frame,

looking at the bed,

and this was actually a re-shoot that we did.

So we got involved with this movie.

Oren had sent a rough cut to us.

I thought it was very special

but he wanted to make some improvements

and it was very inexpensive.

So we did a bunch of different improvements along the way.

And one of them was actually this scene,

and this is a scene where you're looking at the bed.

We think the ghost takes the sheet

and pulls it slowly off the bed.

And it kind of disappears in the corner of the room.

What actually happened is,

the crew on this movie,

as you probably know, was like two people.

And so now that I was there, it was three people.

And actually we were on the set

and someone else is gonna do it.

And I said, Oren please let me do it.

I wanna pull the sheet,

and he let me do it.

And I laid down in the very corner of the room

and Oren said go,

and the sheet slowly moved across the bed.

It was the cheapest, most practical, scary effect ever done.

[character thuds]

I came today because,

last night I had a dream about this place.

I was in this house,

but it was late in night.

Insidious was our follow-up to Paranormal Activity.

And it was directed by the amazing James Wan

and Leigh Whannell wrote it.

And they had come up with Saw.

They worked in various capacities on all the Saw Movies.

And this is before James Wan was quite

the superstar he is today.

Although he was just as talented

he was just wasn't as well known.

And I learned a ton about scary movies

from James Wan, a ton.

I remember just as an aside a funny story.

when we first screened the movie,

people weren't jumping,

and I looked at James,

I said, what's wrong?

I had no idea what was wrong.

I just knew that it wasn't as scary

as James promised it would be.

And James said, Jason, I know exactly what to do.

Give me two weeks.

He set another screening.

It looked like the same exact movie,

and people were jumping out of their seats

and he had just adjusted the timing,

of all the scares.

And what I learned from James,

is that the timing of the scare is as important

as the timing of a joke.

And you could not even be aware.

It can be the same dialogue,

the same images, the same and everything else.

But if the timing isn't exactly right,

the scares just don't work.

So in this particular scare,

which I think is one of the best scares in the movie,

Joseph Bashar, who actually did all the music for Insidious,

which is amazing.

Put this very simple demon face on.

And I remember when we were on the set,

just thinking doubting James as usual, thinking like

this looks like super campy and like,

this is not going to be scary.

And when he did it,

it wasn't scary at all on the set

which just goes to show you

James has every right instinct

and I have every wrong one.

The one choice I did make that was right

was I believed in my filmmaker and we always do.

That's the one thing I've learned

over the years is to bet on our filmmakers.

Anyway, James put this thing together.

He did that first screening

and it was like, Oh, we're not quite there.

And then the second screening,

there were 10 great moments, but that's maybe my favorite

because it's so simple and so effective.

And it was all because of the brilliance of James Wan.

I can still hear that voice.

[demon shouts]

[woman screams]

There's a lot of rounds.

What do I do?

You gonna cover the other side of the house.

You're right this is our home.

Our kids live here.

Anybody tries to come in,

you blast him you will not hesitate.

The Purge also holds a special place in my heart.

The key to our business in 2012 and today,

is we like, we look for big concepts,

high concept we say and low budget.

Usually big concept movies

or high concept movies are expensive.

It's very hard to find,

a big idea that could be done very inexpensively.

And what I loved about The Purge was,

it was the ultimate high concept low budget movie,

from seven to seven, all crime is legal.

There's total anarchy.

America is crazy, but we're gonna tell it

from the point of view of a single family,

inside a house, and actually that made it even scarier.

And that's really what I loved,

initially about the concept of The Purge.

You missed her James.

I'm sorry to tell you this,

but your time is essentially up,

and you failed.

You failed to deliver, the homeless Swan.

So I bid thee farewell sweet Sandy.

[gun cocks]

Release the baseboard it's like the killing command.

One of the things James DeMonaco did so well

with The Purge is he's strung out the story.

So if it was a Hollywood version of the, of The Purge,

the bad guys would have broken into the house on Purge none.

But I don't think it happens in The Purge

until we're almost halfway through the movie.

And the result of that,

is that you got comfortable with this.

The family's very comfortable.

They have all these safeguards,

they've been through many purges before.

And the audience kind of relaxes,

enough time has gone by in the film,

but you kind of think,

no one's ever getting in this house.

I mean after all the father

his job is selling security systems for houses.

You've got to assume he's got the

best security system you can buy.

And I think one of the most effective scenes

in The Purge is when the outside world,

finally comes inside to the house,

and you know, super bad things are gonna happen.

And the part of the brilliance of that moment

is where it comes in the actual movie.

[gun firing]

[glass shatters]

[tense music]

This movie was so good.

I'd always wanted to make a movie with Knight,

because he he's one of the great genre filmmakers

of our time and I also thought

he would really thrive in our system.

It's really an auteur system.

We give the filmmaker total grade of control.

And when I first read the script of Split,

the connection to unbreakable and glass,

was not in it that last scene wasn't in the script.

And the movie worked great as a standalone movie.

And it really wasn't until much later on,

that Knight told me that he was gonna make

it part of this trilogy.

And there was even a rights issue.

Like there was a way,

we had to make it work both ways,

we had to make it work independently.

And we also had to make it work as part of the three movies

in case he couldn't figure out the right situation,

which he did.

And he kept that he never circulated a script

with that last Coda,

which connects it to the other two movies.

And even when we screened the movie, we were very careful.

A lot of the times we screened the movie,

we left that part out.

So the secret would would remain safe until the film opened.

And miraculously, even after screening

it at South by Southwest,

the secret stayed until opening weekend,

which was incredible.

The creepiest moment in that movie although there are a lot

is when is when Kevin dies.

And I guess,

I guess that's a real tribute

to kind of Knight's storytelling

because it's a dialogue scene.

It's not action nothing happens.

No one jumps out.

There's not a scare,

but the words and the the,

the content of what he's saying is so surprising

and disarming and you start to catch up.

Kill me.

Then kill me.

Wait wait wait wait!

No no no don't do that.

Don't do that.

He can't handle reality.

My name is Jade.

Dr. Fletcher been getting over emails.

The great thing about Split is that,

Knight keeps the audience just far enough behind the story

that you're kind of on the edge of your seat.

And that's a moment where he brings you closer

up to the action that's actually happening,

at the time on screen.

And it's just an incredibly effective moment in the film.

[Knight patting]

What about your mother?

What about her?

Wait, are we?

Where were you when she died?

I don't wanna think about that.

When I first read the script of Get Out,

I remember thinking kind of

it checks every box for,

for the kind of movie that we're looking for.

So at the company,

what I look for is the movie

has to scare me or be unnerving.

It has to be able to be shot relatively inexpensively

which that was possible with Get Out.

We look for originals and originality,

and there was more of that,

baked into every page of Get Out.

Then maybe maybe any other film

or television project we ever did.

And I read it I loved it.

I met with Jordan,

and I wanted to make sure that,

gives that movie is about a lot of things,

but it's obviously about race.

And I wanted to make sure like it was comfortable,

talking with the director about race

and that Jordan would be comfortable talking

about it too 'cause clearly,

that was something we were gonna have to do

if we were gonna endeavor to make this movie together.

And I remember being incredibly impressed

with Jordan all across the board

in terms of his grasp of the script

and his super super specific vision.

And though he'd never directed before,

he'd been a show runner

which I think in a lot of ways,

it's harder than a director.

So he was fully equipped to,

to direct this movie

and could talk about race very easily.

And, and we had a great first meeting

and we were off to the races.

Now, one of the most unsettling moments,

they're bigger I think they're bigger

kind of jump scare moments in Get Out.

But one of the most unnerving moments,

is when when Catherine keener,

hypnotizes Daniel and she's slowly stirring the teacup.

And I think what's so spectacular about that moment

is Jordan has set it up in such a way,

that you kinda think like these people

are pretty creepy and pretty awful.

And you kind of think like her steering the teacup,

like nothing's really gonna,

like she's just bananas, and it works

and he's hypnotized.

And I think that in itself is shocking enough.

And then the fact that you see how he's hypnotized

and what him falling into the sunken place,

which has done incredibly simply and elegantly,

but it's incredibly unsettling

because you think these people are off their rockers.

And the fact that she's able to do this,

makes you suddenly feel that you're worried

about Daniel's life,

and, and that these guys,

these guys may be really evil,

and it's gonna be very very hard to overcome and really,

really hard to literally get out of the house.

My personal favorite moment in Get Out,

is when you realize that the character played

by Alison Williams is not what she appears.

And in fact, she's evil just like her mother and father.

And that happens when Daniel discovers

inside this kind of cubby hole,

attic kind of space, these old photographs

where Alison has had a series of black boyfriends.

And it's very clear,

that she's going out with Daniel

because he's black and it's clear

that she has a plan for him,

which is gonna be similar to the plan for her

10 past ex-boyfriends.

And it's the moment when he realizes,

it's not just her parents who were weird, but she is too.

And, and I think what makes that moment so effective is most

most people, including me

when I read the script, just don't see that coming.

You don't see any of that coming.

And Jordan, just so cleverly orchestrates everything.

If you watch the movie again,

you can they're all these tales,

but the first time I read it

or the first time you see the film,

you really don't know

or you're not sure that she's bad until that moment.

And you have the realization along with Danielle

and it's, it's probably my favorite moment in the movie.

[door bangs]

Hey, you ready?

Happy birthday.

Thanks. But I already ate it last night.

What?

You killed me!

Chris Lens is one of my favorite favorite filmmakers.

We've worked with him on a bunch of movies.

We met on Paranormal Activity two,

and he worked on two three, four,

and he's working.

If we ever get this reboot up,

he's working on the new new incarnation

of Parallel Activity, whatever that may be.

Most of the movies that we've made

aren't new brand new ideas that come out,

they're movies that haven't really

been able to find a home

and have been lying around for a while.

And Happy Death Day was one of those movies.

I think it had been, I forget what it was called

something else, but it had been written four

or five years before we made it.

And I loved it.

I loved everything about it.

And there's one moment.

It's very confused.

I think one of the fun things

about the movie is you don't really know what's happening.

And the moment the tree actually figures out,

who is, who is killing her

and why she killed her, or how she killed her.

You have these series

of revelations and Chris goes to these flashbacks.

There, things that you've seen through the course

of the movie, that now suddenly in this scene

make sense to the audience at the exact same time.

They make sense to tree.

And, and that's a, that's a terrific scene in the movie

because Chris is able to tie

up all these things that seem to be not connected

in this really, really elegant way.

[woman screams]

[glass shutters]

[woman thuds]

[girl screams]

[upbeat music]

[phone ringing]

You have reached the Colorado Springs chapter

of the KU Klux Klan.

Please leave a message and God bless white America.

Jordan and I were in my office

and we were, we were meeting spike to talk

to him about, you know, his desire to do black management.

And it was really one

of the most exciting meetings I certainly ever had.

Spike Lee has been one of my heroes since I first started.

I made a movie called Kicking and Screaming

that Noah Baumbach directed many many years ago.

And one of the, one of the directors we talked

about having a successful career

in independent film and the success of she's got to have

it was, was spike Lee, and I'd never met him before.

So anyway, here he was sitting in my office talking

about how he was going to direct black plans

but it was awesome.

It was amazing.

We said, yes, yes, yes, yes

yes. A hundred times John David who plays Ron Stallworth

who was there.

And I met Ron

and Ron actually had that, had his KKK card at a reading.

We did, we did a reading

of the, of the script at, at Spike's office in Brooklyn.

And there was Ron and he passed his KKK card around.

And I will tell you that my favorite scene

in the movie is when he actually calls the

the, the, the head of the KKK.

And, and they believe him.

What's your story?

Well, since you asked,

since you asked I hate,

I hate Jews, spics and mix.

Day goes and chinks,

but my mouth to God's ears, I really hate those.

And anyone else really that doesn't

have pure white alien blood running through their veins.

I will say that when you read it,

it just, it doesn't have the same impact.

But when you see a black man

calling the head of the KKK and them having

this very friendly conversation,

it's a great example of how in stories,

storytelling and movies like that.

10 second or 15 second phone call,

just says more about how stupid the KKK is,

and ignorant and backwards than almost

anything else you could do.

And it was such a simple moment in such a spectacular moment

and a moment that could only work in a film.

You are just the kind of guy that we're looking for.

Listen now, where can you meet?

How about Friday night after I get off work?

That's the deal buddy.

Boy I'll get right back to you with the details.

Take care now.

God bless white America

It didn't really work in Ron's book.

It didn't really work in the script.

You know, the power of it is only seen when you can see it.

And that by far is certainly my favorite moment

in, in Black Klansman.

I just hear you use your real name.

Oh motherfucker.

[piano music]

[dramatic music]

[gun cocks]

[gun fires]

[glass shatters]

I sent an email to a David Gordon great filmmaker.

I've always admired him.

I sent him an email,

and I was one word,

it's at Halloween question Mark.

And he wrote me back.

He said, I think he said, I'm in.

I think that's what he said,

or something close to that.

And, and that that was the beginning of,

of the new the new iteration of Halloween

and neither David or I wanted to do without John Carpenter.

And so we went to John,

and asked him to participate in,

and be an executive producer with us.

And I'm very glad he said yes.

'cause if he hadn't said yes

I don't think either one of us would have made the movie.

So it was, it was amazing.

And we got Jamie Lee Curtis back and just really fun to do.

And the fan base around Halloween is very rapid.

So we were concerned about making it new

but also not making a mistake.

And I think David did an amazing job in the movie.

And obviously the biggest moment in that movie is

when we think Jamie Lee Curtis has finally gotten,

after 45 years has finally gotten her revenge

on Michael Myers and finally been able

to kill Michael Myers.

And that happens right at the end of the movie

when he's trapped in the basement.

And she, she throws the fire in and shuts

shuts this trap door.

And, and we're led to believe that he, he burns to death.

That was, maybe the combination of 45, how many years?

45 or 50 years of Halloween.

[girl screams]

Kayla.

[man panting]

So we did The Lie with Vena Sued who's who was,

you know one of my favorite, one of my favorite directors.

I had a genuine meeting with her,

and I said we wanna do anything you wanna do.

And not that long after she gave me

the script of The Lie,

which I loved,

I loved it because it was so relatable.

It just, it just poses the question.

How far would you go to protect your child?

How many laws would you break?

What would you do to protect your child?

You were just joking around.

Where's your friend?

Where's she?

Where's your friend?

That question,

is posed at the very, very beginning of the movie.

So this there's this scene, which I think is the most talked

about because it sets up that question

at the very beginning of the film,

when Peter Skarsgard Pines

the character played by Joey King on the bridge,

and Joey admits to her dad what she's done.

I pushed her! [panting]

You kind of see the whole next 90 minutes of the movie

on her dad's face

because you see his wheels turning,

and you see him starting to make little decisions,

little twist to the truth

which I think everyone knows,

for no other reason that it's the beginning

of the movie are gonna grow.

And that's a lot of what the movie is

about is that one lie begets gets another

and a smaller lie begets a bigger lie.

But again, you

the great fun thing about the movie or the interesting thing

about the movie is it's the one instance

or one of the few instances

you can really forgive someone for lying to a certain point.

Then it gets, it gets out of control.

But I think

I think the reason that's the most effective moment

in the movie is

because it sets up the premise of what you're about to see.

Vena does such a good job of building to that place.

That even though you understand why they're doing it,

you realize at that point that these people are,

are out of their mind.

Hey hey hey!

[car accelerating]

Thank you so much GQ for letting me talk about a few

of my favorite moments from, from a small handful of

of our movies, but there are many more to come.