The only movie genre Ron Howard knows he’d fail at: “I’ve never really pulled it off”
If you lined a dartboard with the names of as many movie genres as possible and then let rip like Phil Taylor in his prime, there’s a 99% chance that every single one of them would land on a genre that Ron Howard has tackled at least once in his career.
For what he lacks in style, the two-time Academy Award winner more than makes up for in versatility. Whether or not that’s a good thing is a debate that’s raged around Howard’s workmanlike filmography for decades, but if God loves a trier, then security will wave him straight into the pearly gates.
Whether it’s comedy, fantasy, fantasy comedy, drama, thrillers, or dramatic thrillers, the former child star will tick off all available boxes. That’s without mentioning literary adaptations, period pieces, blockbusters, sci-fi, action, romance, and every other kind of film that Hollywood has a vested interest in.
Sometimes it works, when he smashed the biopic and the cosmic adventure together to deliver the best work of his career in Apollo 13, and sometimes it doesn’t, like that time he thought he was the perfect guy to helm a Kevin James comedy, a sin that he’s since admitted he’s willing to atone for.
Comic book adaptations are a notable omission, but that’s not on Howard. He’s been offered a couple of superhero flicks, but it isn’t something that interests him, so he’s stayed away. However, there is one style of cinema that he is keen to tackle, and has been for a long time, but it sounds as though he’s worried that he wouldn’t be able to pull it off.
“Horror,” he declared, when asked what he’s always wanted to do that he’s avoided. “I like horror when it’s good. But whenever I’ve tried to create a moment that scares you, I’ve never really pulled it off. I don’t know what it is. And modern horror, I would be open to a good monster, but modern horror that’s slasher; and I can enjoy those too, I love movies of all sorts, but to live there, I don’t think I’d enjoy it.”
He’s a noted fan of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, but anyone who’s ever seen at least one Ron Howard film will easily recognise why scaring audiences shitless has remained forever out of his grasp. He’s a good director, and on his best day, he’s a great one, but there hasn’t been any evidence at any point to indicate that he’d be able to make a decent scary movie.
To underline that point, the Happy Days alum has pointed to the third entry in the Da Vinci Code trilogy, Inferno, as the closest he’s ever come to the genre, because it has a scene where Tom Hanks’ Robert Langdon experiences spooky visions. The picture was crap, the sequence in question was entirely unmemorable, and didn’t convince anyone that he was secretly Wes Craven in disguise.
Now that he’s in his 70s, will Howard ever get around to scratching that itch? It’s becoming increasingly unlikely, and it might not even be worth the hassle, since he doesn’t think he’d be very good at it anyway.
