

Your favorite horror franchises? This doc pulls back the curtain on how they were born.
Horror bleeds into the 21st Century in an incisive documentary looking back at the late 1990s film industry on a global scale to find out what happened at the turn of the millennium to allow for the huge wealth of horror films flooding out from all corners of the globe. From SCREAM (1996), THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999) and FINAL DESTINATION (2000), to WRONG TURN (2003), HOSTEL (2005) and SAW (2004), with insight from Joe Lynch, Xavier Gens and Bill Malone who track the technology, the industry and the societal changes behind the next generation of horror films.
Direction
Appleton and Escott weave archival chaos into a coherent bloodline.
Production
Rare access to the architects of torture porn and found footage.
Editing
Smartly cuts between eras to show horror's evolutionary jumps.

Director
Phillip Escott
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The doc traces how post-Y2K anxiety and affordable DV cameras let anyone become a horror filmmaker overnight.
Adam Wingard discusses how he literally couldn't afford film stock, making digital his only option—accidentally defining an era's aesthetic.