CraveOnline: Did getting out of a single house in The Marked Ones give you a lot more to play with?
Christopher Landon: Oh my God, yes. That was one of the first things that we talked about when we were developing the script. A) getting out of the ‘burbs, then B) just getting out of a single location because while I think the claustrophobia has played very well for us and has been our friend, I think that element started to feel a bit stale. The idea here especially is that there’s danger out in the world. Especially since we’ve set up this premise that if you’re marked, it doesn’t matter where you go. This thing’s following you. It’s a part of you. You can’t leave it or escape it or go somewhere. So we thought we could still create tension and scares out in the world versus being stuck in a house.
Was body horror a subgenre you wanted to explore in The Marked Ones too?
A little bit, yeah. I think when we really started discovering this possession story, we felt that body horror was definitely a part of it and it was something that was a little outside, again, of what we’ve done before but not in a way that didn’t feel organic to the story and ultimately true to the franchise. Again, trying to introduce new elements without jumping the shark, and keeping it inside our wheelhouse.
Did male protagonists open up a new world for both the franchise and the horror genre in general?
For me, and I didn’t really even approach it that way, I was just interested in this story about a friendship. I felt that the dynamics there would help open up the world a little bit for us. Again, when we do these movies, the nice thing is we really do tend to start with characters first because we want to make sure that the audience goes for it and believes that these are real people, that they can like them and get invested in the story.
That’s the cardinal sin I think of most horror movies is that they spend so little time on character development. They’re all just so two-dimensional so that when they’re in peril or when they start to get killed or whatever may happen, you don’t care. That’s a huge, huge mistake so for me it was really just being able to have an opportunity to set up a really strong central relationship in the film that would then allow us to get involved.
After Paranormal Activity 3, was there ever any talk of going back even further in time?
You know, after 3 there was talk about going forward but not to present day. I don’t know if that makes sense.
Somewhere between the ‘80s and 2006.
Exactly. There’s been that talk and we still like to talk about that stuff because that storyline, Katie and Kristi, is still a really viable and interesting storyline that we love and will continue to pursue. We do this with each movie. Every time we make one of these, we take a step back and we go, “How can we do something a little bit different?” We don’t want to completely throw everything off axis because I think if you go back and look at other franchises that have tried to completely jettison the thing that made them famous, I think they usually fail.
You saw it with Blair Witch. It’s even happened in older franchises like Halloween when they made Halloween III: Season of the Witch. It was so way outside of what people were wanting that they kind of flopped. So we always try to challenge ourselves because we want to have fun too when we’re making these and it’s no fun to keep repeating yourself. We always try and do something a little different, but this time clearly we did something a lot different but it still has the same DNA.
Are there things in The Marked Ones that will pay off in Paranormal Activity 5?
Yes, there are. Absolutely.
Might we see Jesse again?
It’s very possible. I don’t think Paramount’s going to let me say much.
