An insightful and intimate documentary from veteran actor Ruben Pla, The Horror Crowd spotlights the dedicated nightmare makers who make up the Hollywood horror community.
We've all seen a horror movie and wondered who came up with such insane material and, furthermore, who would watch such insane material. The Horror Crowd, a documentary directed and presented by actor and filmmaker Ruben Pla, tries to offer an insight into the people behind the genre, as well as those who can't get enough of watching it.
Director: Ruben Pla
Stars: Lin Shaye, Greg Grunberg, Russell Mulcahy
At its core, the film wants to consider what draws people to horror as performers and viewers. Divided into a series of awkwardly titled chapters, Pla's documentary touches on a wide range of influences beyond the films themselves, be it the personal darkness of his subjects, their life experiences, our universal fear of death, etc. .
Despite the overall unevenness of the documentary, Pla at least deserves credit for amassing a solid cast of subjects, including Lin Shaye, Russell Mulcahy (Highlander), Oren Peli (Paranormal Activity), Adam Robitel (Escape Room), Darren Lynn Bousman ( Saw II), Chelsea Stardust (Satanic Panic) and Greg Grunberg.
It's a shame the end result is such a crude hodgepodge, then; a fairly perfunctory series of stapled-together interviews, with little revealing commentary. If he's interested enough in horror to watch this movie, the discussions of most movies here will seem relatively easy and won't tell him much he doesn't know; it is a feat of preaching to the converted.
While there are certainly some amusing anecdotes as subjects discuss their formative experiences with the genre, with The Exorcist, The Omen, and Alien invoked by various interviewees, the final product lacks cohesive form. In one section, Pla veers wildly off course to suddenly discuss interviewees' romantic relationships and how that ties in with terror, which feels a bit too frothy for a document that's already blatantly unnecessary.
It's certainly more interesting when filmmakers discuss their challenges starting out in the industry, but their coverage here isn't substantial enough to satisfy. Thematically, The Horror Crowd too often feels like a rushed homage to the director's friends, with circumscribed diversions and no sequences to discuss tangential issues, but little in the way of actual momentum.
Even for a low-budget produced documentary, tech credits are approximate; cheap-looking intertitles are painfully reminiscent of the glory days of Windows Movie Maker, much of the interview sound recording is of varying quality, there are awkward jump cuts, and a ton of low-quality JPGs used for B-roll .
The film is also accompanied by some buff-sounding narration from Pla himself, which simply underscores how cohesive and unpolished this project feels. If it's more intimate than would be, say, a brilliant Netflix documentary on the subject, it also lacks the finesse to make the most of the significant access gained to major figures in the genre.
Watch The Horror Crowd 2022 Movie Trailer
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