The horror genre is currently experiencing an impressive boom (in terms of box office numbers, as well as with critics), and there doesn't appear to be an end in sight for the creative possibilities that it presents. In fact, Blumhouse Productions CEO Jason Blum recently admitted while promoting the release of Insidious: The Last Key that his company is still exploring the possibility of merging Insidious and Sinister into a horror crossover at some point.
That revelation has caused our own wheels to start turning and think of horror crossovers that could work. With that in mind, we have put together a list of nine potential horror crossovers that have the potential to drive fans of the genre absolutely wild. Without further ado, let's kick things off with another idea that Blumhouse could easily make happen.
Get Out/The Purge
Although they tell very different stories with very different levels of scope and scale, The Purge and Get Out both lean heavily on similar themes. Both rely on ideas of racial and social inequality to tell their respective stories, and both use exaggerated depictions of real-life prejudice to provide a layer of substance to the scares and thrills. Blumhouse Productions owns both properties, so realistically-speaking, it would not be entirely outside the realm of possibility for a future film to reveal a connective thread between the operations conducted at the Armitage estate and New Founding Fathers. In fact, with The Purge: The Island reportedly explaining the origins of the hellish, crime-filled night, it would be a perfect chance to merge the timelines and show moviegoing audiences how both of these worlds exist in the same hate-filled universe.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre/The Hills Have Eyes
Anyone who wants to take a road trip through the American South and the American Southwest would be wise not to watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Hills Have Eyes before getting behind the wheel; if you do, you'll spend the entire trip paranoid about being murdered by a roving group of inbred psychopaths. The families depicted in the Texas Chainsaw and Hills Have Eyes movies have very different methods of operating, but both do the same thing: brutally murder you and then eat what's left. Films from each franchise have spent decades showing us what happens when a group of survivors walks into their respective paths, but combining continuity and making each family compete for the central group of protagonists would add a new dimension to the cannibalistic horror that we have never seen before.
Hush/Don't Breathe
What would happen if you pitted a woman who could not hear her attacker coming up against a hunter who could not see his victim? That's what would go down if you were to combine the mythology of Mike Flanagan's Hush (a thriller about a deaf woman facing off against an unknown attacker) and Fede Alvarez's Don't Breathe (a horror film about a blind veteran who traps a group of burglars in his house). Utilizing the respective handicaps of each character could make for some truly bizarre (and endlessly entertaining) set pieces, as well as offer up a sense of originality that we haven't seen in a movie like this before. With a sequel to Don't Breathe reportedly already in the works, this would be a perfect way to try something different and move away from the strengths of the original.
Fright Night/Rear Window
For this one, we are thinking less regarding actual continuity crossover and more in terms of ideas crossing over. Both of the Fright Night movies (the 1985 original, as well as the 2011 remake) have become well-regarded as solid horror films in the years since their respective releases, but one of the weaknesses of the stories was the size of the map used to tell the tale of a teenage boy dealing with his vampire neighbor. That's where Rear Window (or Disturbia, depending on how old you are) would come into the equation. We want to see a Fright Night movie that uses the premise of a sociopathic vampire neighbor, but also keeps the action confined to the neighborhood in which we meet our central characters at the beginning of the movie. As is typically the case in most horror movies, the smaller the space, the higher the tension.
Trick 'r Treat/Krampus
Thus far, Michael Dougherty's two significant forays into feature filmmaking have involved cutting to the core of two major holidays, and then finding the scariest elements from each. For Trick 'r Treat, that involved telling a loosely-connected anthology of horror stories set on Halloween night. For Krampus, that involved telling a siege movie about a dysfunctional family forced to band together when a devil-like entity decides to punish them for not embodying the spirit of the holiday. Neither film has officially been recognized as taking place within the same universe, but considering the fact that both films stem from the creative mind and vision, it wouldn't be challenging for Dougherty to create a sense of connective tissue between them and explain how Krampus and Samhain are actually part of a shared monster universe.
Bone Tomahawk/The Descent
Bone Tomahawk and The Descent tell very similar stories, albeit set in radically different time periods. Bone Tomahawk centers on a group of frontiersmen who are forced to face off against a group of inbred, cannibalistic natives while on a rescue mission for a man's wife, while The Descent centers on a group of women who encounter a mutated race of blind cannibals while cave-diving in an uncharted, subterranean hole. In terms of tone and style, the shared DNA between both properties is incredibly easy to notice, and it would be utterly fascinating to see how these two films could crossover. Besides, who doesn't want to watch a group of unwitting travelers face off against a team-up of blind monsters and sadistic cannibals? That pretty much sounds like a horror fan's dream.
Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash
With this one, we are admittedly taking inspiration from a project that has remained dormant for years, and really only materialized in comic book form and the imaginations of die-hard horror fans. Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash has long been rumored as a potential sequel to Freddy vs. Jason, with Evil Dead's Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) joining the fight against the central serial killers of the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th franchises. Evil Dead is currently riding high on the popularity of Ash vs. Evil Dead, and considering the fact that there doesn't appear to be a Nightmare or Friday movie on the horizon anytime soon, now seems like the perfect time to dust this long-awaited project off and give it the right blend of horror and comedy that fans have come to expect from this particular trio of icons.
Insidious/The Conjuring
Many horror fans already draw clear comparisons between Insidious and The Conjuring. The original installments in each franchise were released only a couple of years apart from one another, both franchises prominently feature Patrick Wilson and both stem from the creative mind of horror icon James Wan. Couple those qualities with the fact that each franchise utilizes similar styles of scares and set pieces, and it seems like a no-brainer to assume that they could intermingle storylines with one another at some point. The last two installments in the Insidious franchise have (by necessity) been prequels to Insidious Chapter 2, and a potential fifth installment could keep that trend alive by showing Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye) actually meeting Ed Warren (Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) in the earlier years of her career as a medium.
Unbreakable Universe/The Visit
M. Night Shyamalan pulled off one of the most insane twists in recent memory when the ending of last year's Split revealed that the film actually existed in the continuity of the Unbreakable universe, and that idea will go one step further when Split and Unbreakable officially cross over in next year's Glass. However, we also think that there's even more potential to expand this concept based upon ideas presented in his 2015 thriller, The Visit. Shyamalan has spent his last two movies cinematically exploring a world in which phobias, cognitive disorders and mental illnesses can manifest themselves in physical ways. By continuing to blend the continuity of these films, we could see an entire cinematic universe develop in which the "broken" (as The Beast would call them) develop abilities that defy logic or basic understanding of science.
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