Blumhouse Films Might Not Always Succeed, but They’re Doing This Right

The Big Picture

• Blumhouse gives young directors an incredible amount of creative freedom, allowing them to make horror movies in their own style.
• Many successful horror filmmakers got their start at Blumhouse and have since returned to the production company for multiple projects.
• Blumhouse takes risks by giving budgets and creative control to directors, resulting in both successes and disappointments, but ultimately allowing artists to thrive.

Few studios in Hollywood have the track record for hits that Blumhouse does. Jason Blum has repeatedly shepherded one new modern horror sensation after another, with titles like The Purge, Happy Death Day, and the latest run of Halloween movies all setting sail under his company’s banner. This studio is known for making movies on the cheap and with a resourceful mindset. In carrying out such a practice, they have developed a somewhat shoddy reputation for making junky, gimmicky cash grabs — their latest title, Night Swim, isn’t performing too well at the box office or with critics. While there might be some truth to that in a few of their releases, at other times, Blumhouse’s best projects are great for giving visionary directors the creative freedom to capitalize on their limitations.

Blumhouse directors have it better than most others in Hollywood. They’re given an astounding amount of artistic liberties, have a crafty producer behind the scenes that will plant butts in seats, and often have these things handed to them for their first or second movie. On several occasions, Blum has brought along numerous first-time feature filmmakers, as well as those who only have a feature or two to their name to basically do whatever they want… as long as they scare the wits out of people. This has paved the way for new and interesting artists to actually have a voice, giving audiences the chance to experience horror in a way that they never have before. And yes, it also has paved the way for many disappointments. But if it comes down to giving hungry artists a chance to work, then that’s a risk worth taking.

Blumhouse Gives Young Directors More Creative Freedom than Most Other Studios

Blumhouse almost always make horror movies on a resourceful and low budget and tends to work with indie filmmakers. Despite their current uniformity, they started out making a good bit of indie dramas. These were projects like the 2002 made-for-HBO film Hysterical Blindness, the 2006 romance movie Griffin & Phoenix, and the 2008 coming-of-age drama, Graduation. Everything changed in 2009 though, when a little film called Paranormal Activity came along. Blumhouse took a chance on first-time director Oren Peli, and with that decision, they changed their business model forever.

Blumhouse’s first horror film did absolute gangbusters, pulling in $193,355,800 worth of cash, to be exact, becoming the most profitable movie of all time. From there, you’ll notice that they almost exclusively ran with this mindset. Bring in new artists, let them make horror movies in their own style, and rake in boatloads of cash. This directorial style comes at a cost though. In a 2013 interview with IndieWire, Blum explained the mindset behind sacrificing budgets for more creative freedoms by saying, “I’ve said this a lot, but I fundamentally believe that the higher the budget of a movie, the less risks you can take…” By giving these people the creative leeway to do what they want, the business minds back at Blumhouse can focus fully on getting the word out there about their movies.

Many of Today’s Biggest Horror Filmmakers Got Their Start at Blumhouse

So, because Blumhouse essentially focuses on marketing more than anything else, filmmakers typically get to work with little studio interference. While many other studios often put all of their chips in one basket, Blum has a different way of looking at things. In a 2020 interview with the Observer, Blum acknowledged his company’s unique approach to making movies by saying, “We were very disciplined about keeping our budgets low so that when we do miss it doesn’t hurt too bad.” He goes on to detail the way Blumhouse chooses to finance their films, saying, “We work with the same directors in many cases, over and over and over again and we have this system where we relinquish creative control in exchange for reducing the budget and reducing everyone’s fees. And that has proved to be a successful formula creatively to do a good kind of quality movies that feel different, and also commercial.”

Directors like James DeMonaco can come in for his second movie to make The Purge (a perfect elevator pitch film), Mike Flanagan for his sophomore effort in Oculus, and Patrick Brice can get the chance to make his debut, Creep. These young directors might have gotten their start at Blumhouse with these films, but have each since returned to the production company on several occasions. DeMonaco has made multiple Purge movies, Flanagan returned to Blumhouse for Hush and Ouija: Origin of Evil, and Brice continued his original endeavor with Creep 2. Blumhouse likes to spoil the members of its club. And why not? If someone proves that they can make a hit, why not bring them back to make more?

Although Blumhouse gives their directors the budgets and elbow room to go creatively nuts, that doesn’t mean it always pans out into an instant classic. Emma Tammi had only directed one feature before stepping up to bat for one of the studio’s biggest properties, Five Nights at Freddy’s, which, despite mostly negative reviews, has now gone on to be their highest-grossing movie ever. We’ve also seen them take on Bryce McGuire‘s debut, Night Swim, one of their more visually inspired, if financially disappointing, efforts. It’s proof that no matter what the box office or critical reactions prove to be, there’s almost always some sort of upside to every Blumhouse project. Both Tammi and McGuire are the kinds of directors that have tons of potential. Just because their movies might not be well received, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t a shot worth taking for Jason Blum. They both got to practice their craft and in the meantime, one of them gave the studio their biggest moneymaker yet!

Rob Savage’s Filmography is Proof of the Opportunities that Blumhouse Provides

More recently, we’ve seen Rob Savage get snatched up by these guys after making Host, a 2020 found footage Zoom horror film that also happened to have a timely COVID-19 setting. With that movie, Savage established himself as someone who could terrify audiences, find fascinating ways to frame his stories, and even be relevant to the current times. These creative attributes seem like they spoke to Blumhouse. For his sophomore feature, Savage teamed up with Blum and made Dashcam, which kind of acts as a more out-there practice of his previous effort, allowing him to take that found footage perspective on the road and ramp the horror up to a more extreme degree than Host ever could. After Dashcam, Savage would leave Blumhouse for a Stephen King adaptation over at 20th Century Studios. That resulted in 2023’s The Boogeyman, a project that still has plenty of solid scares and interesting directorial choices, but is easily Savage’s safest work yet. That’s just par for the course, given that it’s a big studio horror film. It still makes you wish that he would return to Blumhouse to make something as inspired and weird as Dashcam again!

Blumhouse Have Worked With Some of Cinema’s Greatest Directors, In and Outside of Horror

If Blumhouse gave less-experienced filmmakers creative freedom, then you better believe their well-established hires got the same treatment. David Gordon Green, Eli Roth, and Rob Zombie have all been helped by Blum to get weird projects like The Green Inferno and The Lords of Salem off the ground. David Gordon Green’s Halloween movies don’t exactly scream his name and style, but he very clearly got to do whatever he wanted with those movies, especially with Halloween Ends. As for The Exorcist: Believer… as we said, Blumhouse has seen a lot of highs and lows, and Believer is probably their lowest point yet.

And let’s not forget Blum’s taste goes beyond horror, for both veteran filmmakers and indie auteurs. Damien Chazelle got his break with Blumhouse after they helped him make Whiplash go from an acclaimed short to an Oscar-winning feature. Spike Lee got to make the biographical crime drama and one of his strongest films to date, BlacKkKlansman! This might be a horror studio first and foremost, but they’re clearly movie fans more than anything.

Blumhouse has proven time and time again that they are taking the biggest risks out of any studio in Hollywood, and it’s only working out in their favor. With a wide variety of films like Glass, Hush, The Purge, and Get Out to their name, they’ve proven that they’re more than a one-trick pony. One minute, they’re making a psychological thriller with an iconic filmmaker like M. Night Shyamalan, and the next, they’re helping a young filmmaker like Mike Flanagan get his start. It seems as though it doesn’t matter to Blum whether you’re an established auteur or not — if you come to work with him, you’ll get to make the movie that you want to make.

In doing so, he’s completely reaped what he has sewed, planting himself as one of the most successful producers in the business. Blumhouse might have a few stinkers to their name as well, but that’s just going to happen anywhere. More studios should take note of Mr. Blum. Treat your artists right, because it will pay off big time.

Night Swim is in theaters now in the U.S.

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