Most horror movies go with the tried and tested classic locations such as a haunted house, a deserted derelict town, or even a cemetery. However, we love the ones that stretch the imagination a little bit, finding new and unusual settings for the supernatural spine-tinglers. Here are some of our favourites:
The sewers: It
In It, Pennywise the demonic clown lurks in the sewers waiting to grab unfortunate children, in this instance, Georgie who he loses his paper boat down the drain. The dark, dank, twisted concrete maize is utilized by Stephen King as another world, almost – an underworld; the dark underbelly to the protagonists’ childhoods. These grim fortresses are usually home to monsters and other dark undesirables and have generally helped echo the sentiment to audiences that they are severe no-go zones, on and off the big screen.
The Internet: Unfriended
There are lots of things that are scary about the internet, so it is not surprising that it has been the basis for numerous horror movies. Unfriended, Friend Request, and Hard Candy have all featured scary storylines revolving around the world wide web in some form, seeing victims be controlled by a distant power via the internet one-way-or-another. Given the growing usage of the internet over the past two decades, it makes sense that the deep dark web provides a new angle to horror movie scenes, as the idea that it grants immense power to every unknown face, is a terrifying reality indeed.
A casino: Remains
You wouldn’t usually associate the glamour of the casino with the horror genre, but there have actually been quite a lot of movies based in many variations of the classic Vegas venue; such as the 2011 movie, Remains. The first saw a group of zombie apocalypse survivors that fortify a casino to defend themselves from cannibalistic zombies. Who knew there were so many scary characters lurking about around casinos? Maybe this is why move people are choosing to do their gambling online these days – probably not, but there is no doubt that the casino aesthetic continues to inspire people’s imaginations, both on-and-off the screen. As well as a good old fashioned scare, people continue to seek out that adrenaline buzz both in land-based and online venues. For example, for online casinos go to BonusFinder, where you can find the latest bonuses, slots, and tabletop games in the safety of your own home, away from all those ankle-grabbing, brain-eating zombies!
An art gallery: Velvet Buzzsaw
Jake Gyllenhaal stars in the 2019 Netflix original art-based movie, Velvet Buzzsaw which sees haunted artwork as the unusual killer of numerous greedy art collectors. The art galleries of LA have been the setting for many movies before but nothing quite like this. It makes you wonder whether art collecting is a more dangerous hobby than it appears to be, with greed and ego seemingly making more monsters out of people than demons ever did. An intriguing angle for a movie, it received mixed reviewed but was generally applauded for its unique take on the supernatural.
A Movie Studio: Scream 3
Similar to the art world, the idea that Hollywood corrupts the cold-hearted is ever-present in modern film and society. Scream 3 centers around the film production of fictional film Stab 3, with the majority of the murders taking place around Hollywood’ Sunrise Studios, which is actually the CBS Studio Center. The film never quite achieved the same levels of cult prowess as the first two movies in the franchise, and Scream 3 inevitably only racked up a 39% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Even the return of the big-name stars like Courtney Cox, Neve Campbell, and David Arquette couldn’t boost the critic reviews.
If you can think of any other unusual scene settings for horror movies that veer away from the over-used traditional horror settings, tell us about it in the comments box below!
Categorised in: Horror Movies
This post was written by Nadia Vella