The first horror movie I ever saw was also a Christian movie
Christian movies and horror movies are surprisingly similar in a variety of ways
THERE WILL BE NO PLACE TO HIDE
The first horror movie I ever saw was hosted at my Christian school when I was eight or nine years old. Or, more exactly, at the church that ran the school. It was an evening event we were all invited to, and I was excited. A movie at church?! Sounded amazing.
It was, as I mentioned above, a horror film though1. And it terrified me for literal years.
The name of the movie? A THIEF IN THE NIGHT.
A Thief in the Night is a rapture-horror film, where the main character wakes up one morning to discover ALL THE CHRISTIANS ARE GONE! An announcer on the radio is suggesting maybe the rapture happened.
Weirdly, the children are all still here (no mention of this that I remember, just an odd thought thinking back on it). So there’s no “age of accountability” or anything in this story world.
Forty years later, I have two very clear memories of this movie from when I was a kid:
1. A kid who comes home from school to hear the tea kettle whistling and in a moment of terror realizes she has been left behind (I think this may have been a fake out but that’s what I remember).
2. A toddler gets beheaded at the end of the movie because he believes in Jesus. Straight to the guillotine. My memory is that he has a balloon and we heard the blade fall and then see a balloon flying off into the sky, but that might be invented. (This may be from a later installment, I’m not sure… I somehow saw the sequels as well?!)
The movie was designed to elicit multiple types of terror, and here are the main ones:
1. If you’re not a good Christian you might get left behind on a messed up Earth with none of your Christian loved ones.
2. If you DO get left behind you better become a good Christian or you will absolutely burn in Hell.
3. If you are a Christian you cannot trust anyone because because your non-Christian neighbors will betray you and turn you over to the government.
4. You definitely cannot trust the government, it is evil. (The government in THIEF is a one-world outfit called UNITE which has spent all its money on white vans and guillotines).
It’s a sort of fever dream of personal accountability (be a better Christian) and persecution complex (if you are a better Christian they’ll try to kill you). And I can say as a Christian school kid, it was very effective, and certainly part of the foundational set of values encouraged by (some of) my Christian schools and (some of) my Christian teachers and pastors.
Just in case you’re not convinced this was meant to be horror, the main character keeps waking up and realizing it was all a dream and then discovering it wasn’t a dream and also (SPOILER) when she is guillotined eventually, she’s positioned face up so she can see the blade coming for her.
Christian movies and Horror movies have a lot in common (as genres)
There’s significant overlap, in fact, between horror movies and Christian-genre movies.
For instance, the Christian concept that “the wages of sin is death” is a deeply embedded part of the horror genre. People who die in most horror movies did something to earn it, whether it was having illicit sex at a spooky summer camp or being mean to a janitor who has knives for fingers or something.
But even more so, both horror and Christian-genre moviegoers have a similar set of values:
- The movie doesn’t have to have a big name actor in it
- The movie doesn’t have to be big budget
- The movie doesn’t have to be high quality
- It just needs to provide the promised emotional response
So, for instance, Friday the 13th is a movie that was made for about $550,000 dollars, had no recognizable stars2 and went on to make millions and millions (and millions) of dollars and set off eleven sequels (so far). Low budget, unknown actors, but it was scary. And that’s all horror fans needed to know.
Look, that’s not to say that horror doesn’t do high budgets or big names or huge quality, of course they do. But the point is that horror audiences will come if it’s scary.
The Christian movie industry is successful for more-or-less the same reason.
If the movie has the right emotional beats, people will show up!
This varies a little more than “is it scary” but I’d say it’s something along the lines of “Is the movie inspiring” and/or “Does it reinforce Christian values.”
Quality, budget, recognizable actors are all secondary to that, just like in horror.
A GREAT recent example is the movie HIS ONLY SON. This movie (the story of Abraham) was made for $250,000, has no actor you’ve heard of in it, and went on to make 5.5 million dollars3.
Hollywood loves horror movies because it’s a pretty predictable formula:
- create scary movie at a low price point
- release movie
- PROBABLY the kids will show up to get scared
- If they don’t, well, it was only a couple million dollars4
Christian movies follow a similar pattern, and it’s very tempting for some folks to jump into the fray. We see, for instance, the Kendrick brothers movies5 doing very well with low budget films and smaller stars (or in the beginning, no stars). If you’re a Christian movie fan you’ve surely seen a few of them: OVERCOMER, COURAGEOUS, WAR ROOM, FIREPROOF, FACING THE GIANTS, etc.
FACING THE GIANTS was made on a roughly 100k budget and went on to make $10 million at the box office (and at least double that in DVD and other sales later). Not only did it not have big actors, it was mostly just folks from their church who played the parts (and did a lot of the work as volunteers!).
What’s been interesting to me is that some studios have seen the Christian movie market (it sort of shocked a lot of people when Christians turned Mel Gibson’s R-rated Jesus movie THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST6 into a blockbuster… a $30 million dollar film with no big stars that wasn’t even in English and went on to make $600 million worldwide) and thought hmmmm we could get in on that but not understood what Christians want from Christian-genre films.
So, for instance, here’s a movie that I LOVED but *isn’t a Christian-genre movie* despite being about Jesus:
You’d think it would be a big hit in churches.
It’s literally about Jesus!
EWAN MCCGREGOR PLAYS JESUS (and he’s great, by the way). Most review aggregators would give it “generally favorable” reviews.
And Christians did not show up to see it7.
Why?
Well — unlike HIS ONLY SON — it wasn’t particularly inspiring to people of the Christian faith and it didn’t reinforce Christian values8.
It was like making a horror movie that wasn’t scary at all.
Now there are, of course, high quality horror movies with big names and big budgets and the same goes for Christian-genre movies!
The Erwin brothers, for instance, make movies that are higher budget for the genre (the latest, JESUS REVOLUTION, was reportedly around $15 million), and sometimes have a recognizable star and a recognizable Christian event of some kind at the center (a Christian band, the Jesus movement)… sort of the equivalent of Christian IP.
JESUS REVOLUTION9 is well done. Whether you like the genre or not, you can watch the movie and go, “Hey, these people know what they’re doing.” It’s high quality, higher budget, bigger names and that’s not why people went to see it.
That’s not at all to say that the quality isn’t part of what makes it successful… it almost certainly reaches more people because Kelsey Grammer is making the talk show rounds and telling everyone how meaningful the story was to him personally. The writing, the acting, the direction are all well done!
But: Did it inspire? Did it reinforce and/or celebrate Christian values? Absolutely. And that’s the first and most important value for the Christian-genre fan.
JESUS REVOLUTION, by the way, blew every expectation out of the water for how it would do at the box office. In fact, it was Lionsgate’s highest grossing film since 2019. I haven’t heard from a single Christian-genre fan who disliked it.
So, you know, there’s this understanding in the film industry that has grown over the years and is still growing:
Christians also have wallets and they will open them for the right kind of movie.
I’ve been on a variety of “Christian movie” email lists for a number of years and it’s always interesting to see studios trying to pitch their latest blockbuster as “Christians will really like this one.10”
But, again, the Christian genre fan REALLY wants uplifting, inspiring stories that reinforce Christian values. So a truly gorgeous movie with strong Christian themes that also *critiques the church* may not go very far as a “Christian film.” I’m thinking here of a movie like PHILOMENA, which is a deeply spiritual, deeply Christian film but deals with painful and difficult things Christians have done in addition to being a beautiful story about faith11. This movie’s success wasn’t because it caught on in churches is all I’m saying, despite its big Christian themes. JUDY DENCH IS IN IT.
But Christian-genre moviegoers, again — just like horror fans — don’t care who is in it!
Another one that I love — one of my favorite movies!!! — is LADYBIRD. It’s a movie about faith and growing up and parents, is beautifully done and 100% does not fall in the Christian *genre* despite having a pretty uplifting message about finding your own way back to faith.
But LADY BIRD has a lot of complicated emotions in it and doesn’t have the clarity that the Christian movie genre requires.
BUT WAIT you might be wondering, how about A THIEF IN THE NIGHT?! Was it inspiring? Did it reinforce Christian values?12
Actually, yeah, I think it did.
(And remember that this movie sits near the front end of Christian movies *as a genre*. There are tons of movies with Christian values or targeting Christian audiences before this13.)
A THIEF IN THE NIGHT told audiences “It’s good to be Christian and there is something noble in fighting against secular forces, even if it ends in our death.” That’s a message that was catching fire in Christian circles in the ‘70s. There’s a reason A THIEF IN THE NIGHT was being shown in churches around the country, including the little church in Missouri where I was going to school.
It’s because at the end of the experience, despite the movie not being very good (and hoo boy, it is not good), Christians walked away believing that our value set was not just good but the best value set. That it was worth fighting for.
And if you don’t fight for it, well, you just might get left behind.
Thus began my love of horror films! Thanks, Christian community! :) 14
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I’m talking to Gene Yang and Wendy Yang about AMERICAN BORN CHINESE
I love graphic novelist Gene Yang, and also our new friend, composer Wendy Yang. We had them both on for our podcast’s season finale to talk about the really wonderful Disney show AMERICAN BORN CHINESE, based on Gene’s graphic novel of the same name!
Bruce is not afraid
Not in this picture anyway.
Bruce is only afraid of two things:
1. The hiss of the propane BBQ grill.
2. The sound of really big trucks.
Which is just to say: if you’re making a horror film for a rabbit, just remember they have very sensitive ears and will be scared by weird noises.
—Matt
Did they know it was a horror film?! I have no idea. Many of the filmmakers have passed away, but it would have been a spectacular documentary.
Kevin Bacon was in it, but he wasn’t a recognizable star yet!
I won’t comment on quality, as I haven’t seen it! I’ll just say that it’s really hard to make a quality movie on $250,000 dollars.
So, for instance, the Juneteenth horror comedy THE BLACKENING ($5 million budget) released the same weekend as THE FLASH ($220 million-ish) and has *made more profit* at the box office. THE BLACKENING is headed into the weekend with $13 million at the box office, THE FLASH worldwide at $215 million. Which is only to say that a small-ish horror film with medium-sized stars has (so far) made more profit than a global blockbuster sequel with huge stars and gigantic IP. Which is only to say, it’s pretty enticing to look at the risk/reward ratio and think, “Hmmm I bet we could free up 3 million for no-name actors in a non-IP horror film, maybe we’ll get triple that in profit and set off a franchise.” I’m guessing some of you reading this have *never even heard of THE BLACKENING* because you’re not the target audience.
My very dear friend Aaron Burns has been producer on several of these!
The HIGHEST GROSSING (inflation unadjusted) rated R movie
Actually, I’m not even sure I’m finding accurate box office numbers for it, because the ones I found say, more or less, no one went to see this. And I know *I* went to see it at least, so that can’t be right!
In fact, if you look at Christian reviews they largely found the movie weird and couldn’t figure out what it was trying to say. In their defense, the script felt very much like an “inspired by” fan fiction of someone who had read the Biblical account a couple decades ago and were going off their vague memory of it. Having said that, again, I really loved this movie and was pretty deeply moved by the theme of “when you bury someone in a place, that becomes home” and how God buried Christ on Earth and, therefore, “made a home with humanity.”
I’ve hung out with Jon Erwin, who is great! And my old friend Kevin Ernst was involved in the movie as well!
Probably my favorite was when, for a while, there were studios that would send out “suggestions for sermons” that included clips from the movie, photos, and *spiritual connections you could make from this movie*. Some of them were good, but many of them were, unsurprisingly, commercials that had been gussied up to look like sermon illustrations. Did they work? I have no idea.
Or the work of Terrence Malick, which is 100% Christian and also can be really challenging… it doesn’t as clearly get us to that desired emotional response. Maybe like those art-house horror films that are more weird than scary. Horror fans are like, uh, that was fine I guess? So Terrence Malick makes Christian movies that don’t generally fit in as genre films.
There are, by the way, a decent number of horror movies with really strong Christian messages. Possession movies, by and large, have a Christian message: demons suck and you should pick Jesus who is your only hope (I don’t watch possession movies, fyi). Or THE BLACK PHONE, which is basically a movie about serial murderers, ghosts, and prayer (seriously, it’s probably the most prayer-focused movie since WAR ROOM).
BEN HUR and the sword and sandal genre in general being the obvious example. There are Christian movies in *content* going back to more-or-less the beginning of filmmaking (1912’s FROM THE MANGER TO THE CROSS for instance, and Cecil B. Demille made a living off telling Christian stories for years). But most of those movies were still designed for a wide audience. I think the self-consciously “This is a Christian movie” as a genre really started in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s.
First rated R movie I saw in the theater: super-weird gymnastics-martial arts-horror-adventure film GYMKATA. So weird. First rated-R horror film I saw (at a “rock in” rocking chair fundraiser/sleepover) was THE SEVENTH SIGN, a very weird horror film with a whole lot of religious imagery and also Demi Moore.