Traditionally, horror isn't a genre that depends on digital trickery.
Taking a practical approach is often not only cheaper, but more effective when it comes
to unnerving an audience—and horror movies rarely enjoy the freedom of a big budget,
especially when the big studios aren't involved.
Advances in technology in recent years have made convincing visual effects far more accessible,
however, to the point that even low-budget productions can take advantage.
Green screens are now commonplace on horror sets—and if you strip away all the special
effects, what you're left with isn't very scary at all.
Hollow Man
Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man fell well short of recouping its $95 million production budget
at the domestic box office and it took a hammering in the media, with 27 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
But even the harshest critics of the film admitted that the special effects were impressive.
Verhoeven told DVD Talk,
"We really tried to link the special effect shots with the actors as much as possible.
[...] We wanted coherence between the special effects and the actors so people would accept
the effects as part of the actor's scene."
Jerome Chen, Senior VFX Supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks, told FX Guide,
"That film was all done with Rotomation off the performance of Kevin Bacon.
No motion capture, just hard thousands of hours of labor."
The Ring
Gore Verbinski's box office smash The Ring kick-started Hollywood's obsession with Japanese
horror during the mid-2000s.
Naomi Watts plays a Seattle journalist who's investigating an urban legend about a videotape
that kills anyone who watches it in seven days.
When her son unwittingly pops said tape into their VHS player, the pair are haunted by
Samara, who crawls out of a well and straight through the television.
But the look of the vengeful ghost was the in-camera work of special effects makeup artist
Rick Baker.
He said,
"I think the scariest thing about Samara, for me anyway, is not knowing what's under
that hair."
Crimson Peak
Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of the Water marks a return to form for the director, whose
2015 gothic romance Crimson Peak tanked hard at the box office.
The latter relied on what VFX supervisor Chris MacLean called "practical hybrids" for the
most part, mixing green screen with creature builds.
One example can be seen towards the end of the movie when Edith has a farewell moment
with Thomas and her fingers pass right through his face.
The Conjuring 2
James Wan's The Conjuring, in 2013, was the first film in what would later evolve into
a shared movie universe encompassing the Annabelle series as well as The Nun and The Crooked
Man.
Visual effects artist David Ridlen worked on a few shots for the first Conjuring movie,
rendering some everyday items that you probably didn't realize were CGI — including the
scariest bedsheet ever.
VFX artist Didier Konings was hired to take care of the little details in 2016's The Conjuring
2, removing security cameras and altering buildings to make the 1970s setting look authentic.
The Thing
"On action, the beast comes forward, it's gonna be on fire.
Action."
A prequel to John Carpenter's 1982 horror classic of the same name, 2011's The Thing
follows the plight of a doomed group of scientists who discover a living alien buried deep in
a block of Antarctic ice.
"How's this motherf----- wake up after thousands of years in the ice."
The film's VFX supervisor Jesper Kjolsrud described his process to Art of VFX, saying,
"As the teeth of the alien mouth rip the skin, we see the inside tentacles push through while
Juliette's head is forced towards her back."
Gross.
Godzilla
Director Gareth Edwards landed on Hollywood's radar with his visually impressive low-budget
breakout Monsters in 2010, and the following year he was offered the job of rebooting Godzilla.
Edwards was initially concerned that signing on for a Hollywood blockbuster meant he would
have to relinquish control to a certain extent, but the studio's reaction to the first teaser
trailer he cut put his mind at ease.
He told FX Guide,
"I just wanted to do what I thought would give me goosebumps."
Edwards brought in VFX house, MPC, to make the trailer, and they went on to render several
set pieces in the final film, including Godzilla causing havoc in San Francisco Bay.
The Shallows
Survival horror thriller The Shallows seemed to come out of nowhere in 2016, going Certified
Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.
The predator stalking Blake Lively throughout the film was created by brilliantly-named
Important Looking Pirates, a Swedish VFX house that specialize in sharks.
Visual effects supervisor Scott E. Anderson told FSR,
"Most animals, sharks included, are designed to blend into the environment.
Our job is to use visibility selectively to meet the needs of the film and direct the
audience and eye when we want or need to."
The Purge: Election Year
Visual effects veteran James Hattin has worked on countless horror franchises over the years,
but none have been quite as timely as 2016's The Purge: Election Year.
Thanks to Hattin's company VFX Legion, viewers were able to experience another frightening
night on the lawless streets of a bleak near-future America, though for the actors involved, many
of those scenes were created in post.
According to Hattin, his priority on a project like this one is delivering value for money.
He told FrightFind,
"Horror movies do not have huge budgets, and so the idea that CG's going to be in your
horror movie, it's really hard to do because they're not funded to do that."
Hattin went on to explain that it's his "personal policy" to make sure that any shots his company
is responsible for don't look cheap, even if they are cheap by blockbuster standards,
adding,
"My goal in delivering shots out of VFX Legion to the world is they should not bump in the
cut."
Prometheus
A number of top VFX houses worked on Ridley Scott's 2012 return to the Alien franchise,
including MPC, Fuel VFX, Luma Pictures and Weta Digital.
The New Zealand-based company was tasked with rendering the film's new race of giant humanoid
extraterrestrials, which involved digitally enhancing the on-set performance of a costumed
actor.
Weta's VFX supervisor Martin Hill said,
"Usually we would strive to make a digi character as anatomically accurate as possible in terms
of its musculature, articulation, and the thickness and pliability of the fat under
the skin.
[…] We had to make some compromises to match an actor in silicone prosthetics."
Designing the look of the "engineers" was a job that fell to concept artist Neville
Page.
He told Wired that when Scott first approached him, the director envisioned the engineers
as a mixture between some well-known statues and one legendary musician.
Page said Scott had specific metaphors in mind for the artist, telling Wired,
"I was looking at references of the Statue of Liberty, the Michelangelo sculptures…
specifically David, and, oddly, Elvis Presley."
World War Z
When he sat down to discuss his team's achievements with Wired, World War Z visual effects supervisor
Scott Farrar explained it was always their intention to break from the traditional zombie
mold with this movie.
They went with a scientific approach, reckoning that a real virus of this nature would make
humans fast, vicious and relentless.
The biggest example is the epic moment when 8,500 computer animated zombies pile on top
of each other to breach the walls of Israel.
Farrar said,
"The single hardest thing about that was just making those piles look right without something
going wrong.
You're always battling with what looks good and cool in a movie and still feels real.
You can look at these shots every day for months and then all of the sudden you're almost
ready to go to final and somebody will spot something that's wrong in the shot.
It's like Where's Waldo?"
While CGI clearly played a massive part in bringing this world to life, animation director
Andrew Jones favored a mixture of computer graphics and practical performances, hiring
talented contortionists who could mimic the semi-possessed look they were going for.
Krampus
To promote their work on the 2015 Christmas horror movie, Krampus, Weta released a mock
interview with the film's "Chief Gingerbread Handler," who claimed,
"Working with the gingerbread men on set was a real challenge.
They were easily startled, fragile and skittish."
In reality, they were one of the smaller challenges Weta faced on the project, which was approached
in a largely practical fashion for the sake of nostalgia.
Weta Workshop co-founder Richard Taylor said,
"This is a classic '80s monster movie.
This is fantastic stuff, this is what we live for, this is what gets us up in the morning."
From the animatronic Cherub that attacks Toni Collette in the attic to the terrifying Jack-in-the-box
operated from the inside by three puppeteers, Krampus' minions were as ingenious as they
were unnerving—none more so than the Anti-Claus himself.
The titular demon was portrayed by Luke Hawker, who wore a custom made costume complete with
hoof-stilts and prosthetic finger extensions.
He said of the heavy suit,
"Your muscles are just burning and you're sweating and you're thinking am I gonna throw
up… and then Mike comes in and the smile on his face just says it all"
I Am Legend
The Will Smith-led adaptation of Richard Matheson's seminal zombie novel I Am Legend did pretty
well with the critics and didn't disappoint at the box office, but it's widely accepted
that the CGI sucked.
The film was fast-tracked into production before a script had even been completed, and
the schedule started to get backed-up when the practical creature effects looked terrible
on camera.
The decision was made to render the undead digitally, though in reality there was never
enough time to make them look convincing.
Director Francis Lawrence told Den of Geek,
"It was better than doing the live versions at that time, because it didn't work, but
we needed six more months on the post end to get all the visual effects right.
Because there were some close-ups that were stunning, and then you get some shots that
I never got right, and […] it just kills it.
One of the big downfalls for me with that movie, personally, was with the visual effects."
VFX supervisor Janek Sirrs told AWN that the animators were still redesigning creatures
during post-production to match the, quote, "continually evolving nature of the film."
Deadly Honeymoon
Even if you consider yourself a true gorehound, chances are you've never heard of Deadly Honeymoon.
This low-budget TV movie from 2010 probably would have flown under the radar altogether
had it not been based on true events that took place five years earlier—a story that
grabbed news headlines and became the subject of a Dateline report.
In 2005, newlywed George Smith and his bride Jennifer set sail on their dream honeymoon
cruise, though only one of them would survive.
The groom simply vanished one night — a mystery that has never been solved.
Lifetime adapted the story into a television feature, changing the names and creating their
own explanation.
They cast Summer Glau in the role of wife-turned-widow Lindsey, which was a dream come true according
to the actress.
She told My San Antonio,
"I've wanted to do a Lifetime movie since I was a little girl.
It's a really good way for girls to get challenging dramatic roles."
Her faith in the network was rewarded when they hired an experienced VFX crew to turn
the set into the open ocean.
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