The closest Ron Howard ever came to making a horror movie: “It was shocking!”
Despite being one of the industry’s ultimate directorial everymen who never met a genre they weren’t willing to take a crack at, horror remains conspicuously absent from the unpredictable filmography that Ron Howard has been amassing for the last half-century.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to; he just hasn’t found the right story yet. He’s no doubt perused many scary scripts over the years, but as of yet, his spine-chilling pickle remains completely un-tickled. Then again, what would a Ron Howard-helmed horror flick even look like? Is he capable of such a thing?
He’d be able to create the right atmosphere, sure, and it would be a typically accomplished piece of work. However, does the living embodiment of white picket fences, apple pies, and endless wholesomeness have what it takes to craft something that genuinely strikes fear into the hearts of audiences around the world? Maybe, maybe not.
On the other hand, Howard has ticked drama, biopics, sci-fi, action, thrillers, fantasy, period pieces, literary adaptations, and comedies from his to-do list, but horror remains that final Rubicon that he’s yet to cross. He’s determined to make it happen eventually, though, even if he’s almost 30 features deep into his filmography and hasn’t gotten around to it yet.
He’s adamant that he’s come close, although that’s entirely open to interpretation. It’s a very Ron Howard perspective, but when Tom Hanks’ Robert Langdon gets shot in the head and starts suffering from amnesia in 2016’s trilogy-closer, Inferno, the continent-hopping symbologist begins experiencing vivid and hellish visions, which the director was adamant constituted his horror debut.
Stating his case that there were “elements of horror” to the scenes in question, he used Dan Brown’s source novel and Dante Alighieri as the jumping-off point. “Many of these tortures for the sinners were the moments that you’ve seen in all the great films,” he explained to Cinema Blend. “Whether it’s something bursting out of a chest or wrapping around your throat. It was shocking!”
The filmmaker was aware “this was new territory for me, which, of course, is what I’m always looking for as a director anyway.” It’s as close as he’s ever come to flirting with full-blown horror, but in a movie that wasn’t a horror film in any other way, shape, form, style, or fashion, it wasn’t as if he was embracing his inner Tobe Hooper or Wes Craven.
As a PG-13 release, Howard knew Inferno “can’t go all the way there,” but he still “felt like it was a great opportunity” to apply horror elements to one of his pictures for the first time. Anyone who’s seen even a handful of terrifying tales on the big screen may have been left wondering what the fuck he was talking about, because even for a family-friendly film, it’s not like those scenes had audiences cowering behind their seats.
Of course, this is Howard we’re talking about, so he wouldn’t suddenly throw caution to the wind and tip his hat to the torture porn craze. He’s never been closer to horror, but he was also a million miles away.
