“Haunt: Screenplay & Filmmaker Diaries”

A new book from the writers of A Quiet Place.

Over the years, I’ve gotten to know the filmmaking duo of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods pretty. I first interviewed them in 2018 upon the enormous success of their movie A Quiet Place. Then I invited them to a screenwriting event at DePaul University where they spoke in front of a packed house of film school students.

Beck and Woods are busy. In 2023, they have two movies scheduled for release: 65 which they co-wrote and co-directed (the movie stars Adam Driver) and The Boogeyman which they co-wrote (based on a Stephen King short story). Yet with several other projects in development, the duo found time to do a passion project: They put together “Haunt: Screenplay & Filmmaker Diaries.” As they wrote in the book’s introduction:

The following pages contain excerpts from each of our journals during the making of Haunt, written separately but collated and edited for a streamlined experience.

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There are better filmmaker who have written better journals that we encourage you to explore: Stephen Soderbergh’s “Getting Away With It,” Robert Rodriguez’s “Roadracers: the Making of a Degenerate Hot Rod Flick,” and Tom DiCillo's “Box of Moonlight & Notes from Overboard,” to name only a few. It is in the tradition of those books that we have assembled our own. And our humble dream is that every filmmaker who reads this book considers keeping their own journal, and one day shares it with us too.

Here is a trailer for the movie Haunt:

The book not only contains Beck and Woods journal entries, it also includes the film’s shooting script. Plus, there is a Q&A I conducted with the duo about the making of Haunt. Here is an excerpt:

SM: The current state of Hollywood and TV is awash with nostalgia. You mentioned John Carpenter as a touch point, and when I watched Haunt I was thinking, there is Funhouse, House, Slumber Party Massacre, you know some of those movies from the 80s. Were you trying to say we're going to do an homage, or get into the spirit of those movies from the 80s and 90s? Or what were some of the movies are inspired you?

BW: We were trying to do something specific, which is to be a nostalgic and modern at the same time. That's kind of a weird thing to say, but it's like we were standing on the shoulders of Tobe Hooper's Funhouse and even Texas Chainsaw Massacre to a certain extent, and certainly John Carpenter films like Halloween. There are many influences that are obvious that we're standing on, but we didn't want the movie to feel retro. It wasn't like we wanted the throwback synth score and the granny 16-millimeter look at those movies. We wanted her to feel like now. And to a certain extent, the movie’s also, maybe not consciously, but certainly subconsciously, it's almost nostalgic for the 90’s slasher genre in a weird way too, which is odd to say because it's not something we talk about intellectually. We're not like, “Oh man, remember the slashers of the 90s,” but that's what we grew up with. That's what we were watching when we were kids, and so we can't really escape that.

SB: But also from the 90s, David Fincher’s The Game was a movie we were thinking of outside the horror genre, just from the standpoint of always keeping the audience on their toes and not knowing left from right and who's actually telling the truth and who's not, because we thought, especially from the villain standpoint, disorientation can be more suspenseful than a villain just running around with a weapon. It's the distrust or having to have the trust in another character to hopefully lead you out of danger, only to find out, no, they actually were may be the most dangerous of all.

For horror fans or movie fans in general, “Haunt: Screenplay & Filmmaker Diaries” is a terrific resource, both entertaining and offering loads of insights into the filmmaking process.

The book is set for release on December 6th. You may pre-order it here. All profits will go to the St. Jude Children’s Hospital.

One more thing: Scott and Bryan, who grew up in Iowa and have known each other since elementary school, recently announced their involvement in a new movie theater in downtown Davenport, Iowa, transforming this:

Into this:

How awesome is that!

Twitter: @beckandwoods.