Filmmaker Christopher Nolan has certainly flirted with the horror genre, and he almost committed to it with 2002’s Insomnia. But despite his love for the genre, he has never made a horror movie. In a recent interview, the Oscar-winning director explained why that is.
“Dunkirk”
Warner Bros. Pictures
“I’ve always been interested in doing a horror film,” Nolan tells the Empire Podcast. “But horror is most successful when the conceptual framework of whatever the story is is just so undeniable. I think there are very few really great horror movies.”
It’s hard to argue with that. The horror market is pretty overstaurated with low-effort, low-budget (not to be confused with high-effort, low-budget) content. Add in the whole fear-is-subversive element, makes it even harder to create something that audiences find frightening.
Nolan & Horror
“I’ve never clicked with a particular idea or concept that worked for me,” he explains. “I love the genre. Of all genres, it’s the most visceral. Where the direct response to the audience is the most important. That is to say, you’re trying to make people literally feel something in their bones about what’s going on on-screen.”
Part of horror’s appeal to Nolan is how innovative it had to be by nature. Calling it a “genre in which experimentation is demanded.”
“I go to see a lot of horror films with my kids and stuff these days, and you’ll see things in the first half an hour, 45 minutes of any horror film that you’d never see in another genre. Risks that are taken. Dangerous approaches to things and all the rest. Admittedly, a lot of movies can’t sustain that to the end. But in the horror genre, that kind of innovation is not just respected – it’s really demanded.”
Nolan’s The Odyssey is currently playing in theaters nationwide.
