Hear Me Out: Peter Jackson should return to horror
It’s easy to forget that when it was first announced that Peter Jackson would be adapting The Lord of the Rings, there were serious concerns that he was the wrong choice, and while Jackson’s talent for practical effects and memorable visuals was evident, the New Zealand-born filmmaker had spent his early career making low-budget horror comedies.
However, any doubts were silenced when he delivered three back-to-back masterpieces, especially when considering that each of The Lord of the Rings films contained elements of horror that proved they were made by the same director of Braindead and Bad Taste.
The conclusion of The Lord of the Rings allowed Jackson to move on, and at first, it seemed like he had found a way to make horror-adjacent films, with his version of King Kong carrying some of the same horror that was present in the 1933 original, and his disappointing adaptation of The Lovely Bones tried its best to include some supernatural suspense. However, he got so caught up making The Hobbit movies, which he admitted to “winging”, that he’s left a void in the scare-friendly community.
Make no mistake, it’s exciting that Jackson has used his technical wizardry to restore the works of The Beatles, givne that he’s managed to uncover important chunks of musical history, but it’s deeply unfortunate that one of the most genius modern filmmakers hasn’t made a narrative film in over a decade, and arguably hasn’t made a good one in twice that time.
He has such an inherent ability to stage creative sequences and imagine unique worlds that his presence is sorely needed in an industry that doesn’t always support its legacy filmmakers, which is where my claim comes that should he finally return to the director’s chair, horror would be the best way to do it.
Jackson’s early horror films were groundbreaking because of the sheer force of will that they took; it didn’t matter that they had almost no budget and required laborious shoots, because he was able to solve most of his problems with a little creativity. He also showed a willingness to get extreme and exploitative in a way that a major studio could never allow; I mean, who else would have made an extreme puppet sex movie like Meet the Feebles?
The biggest criticism the man has faced with The Hobbit trilogy is his overreliance on CGI, as the excessive use of greenscreen made the three films feel less lived-in and polished when compared to The Lord of the Rings, which making a low-budget horror film again could let Jackson work under constraints where he would have more freedom, not answering to the whims of production houses and instead scaling down to exercise complete creative control.
In this vein, one filmmaker with a career arc similar to Jackson is Sam Raimi, who also got his start in low-budget horror films made independently, spending his most recent years making CGI-heaving Disney blockbusters with Oz: The Great and Powerful and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. However, setting the blueprint, he is finally making a new horror film again with Send Help, and there is no reason why Jackson can’t follow in the footsteps.
Now is also a perfect time for such a return because of the mainstream respect that the genre is receiving, wherein the days of prestigious film critics dismissing the gory as ‘trash’ are in the past, as the last few years have seen titles like Get Out and The Substance earning ‘Best Picture’ nominations. This welcoming atmosphere for the genre should encourage Jackson further to revert to his scary roots, as it’s possible that his prior work will be treated with more respect, and his upcoming looked forward to.
