Ohio native penned horror movie ‘Orphan’

Mansfield News Journal staff

Since Patty McCormack’s murderess Rhoda Penmark in “The Bad Seed” in the 1950s, the horror movie subgenre featuring wicked kids has been scaring people no matter their age.

Now comes “Orphan,” by screenwriter David Leslie Johnson, who broke into the movie business in his hometown of Mansfield.

He began his career as a production assistant on director Frank Darabont’s “The Shawshank Redemption.” The 1994 movie, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards, was filmed at the historic Ohio State Reformatory, where Johnson’s great-grandfather had once worked as a prison guard.

In an interview Tuesday with DailyActor.com, the 1988 Lexington High School grad said he spent the next five years as Darabont’s assistant, using the opportunity to hone his craft as a screenwriter.

Johnson is a fan of “The Bad Seed,” the 1956 Academy Award-nominated film in which a pigtailed schoolgirl turns out to be a sociopath, killing a classmate, a neighbor and a teasing janitor with relish. Adopted, Rhoda’s bad behavior turns out to be genetic — her mother was a well-known serial killer.

“There’s just something really primal in that mother-child relationship,” Johnson says, “so I felt like that was really the best relationship to exploit and corrupt, to take what should be the most natural bond in the world and turn them into enemies.”

In “Orphan,” Isabelle Fuhrman stars as Esther, who comes across as the perfect child — until she smashes a bird’s head and forces a nun to drive off a snowy road. That’s just for starters.

In many of the evil-child films, the father is absent or bamboozled by his precious kid; it’s left to the mother to come to the slow realization about her offspring.

Johnson follows suit with “Orphan”: Vera Farmiga’s character — troubled by alcoholism, a miscarriage and guilt over the near death of her deaf daughter — figures out there’s something wrong with Esther. Peter Sarsgaard as the father doubts his wife because of her past unreliability and is quite taken in by his adopted child.

Johnson has a special bond with his mother as well — she turned him on to Hitchcock when he was growing up, and “Psycho” was one of their favorite movies.

“My parents were great — I had a completely normal childhood. Everything was fine, I’ve just been a fan of the horror genre and read a lot of Stephen King,” he told DigitalCity.com recently. “I’ve always been fascinated with dark subject matter.”

The local native developed his interest in storytelling as a child, writing plays as early as the second grade. A later interest in film led him, at age 19, to write his first screenplay. He has a fine arts degree from The Ohio State University. In 1999, Johnson wrote an adaptation of the classic Doc Savage pulp novels. Johnson then wrote a miniseries sequel to John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” which brought him to the attention of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way, for which he wrote “Orphan.” He’s teaming up with Appian Way again for one of several developing projects — an epic horror and fantasy inspired by a classic fairy tale. Johnson’s next project will be an adaptation of the Australian ghost story thriller “Lake Mungo.”

Stephen King’s book “Cell” to be miniseries?

Terra King – The Examiner

Eli Roth was originally attached to the feature film “Cell”, based on the Stephen King book.

However, the project is now being shopped as a  miniseries.

John Harrison penned the script for  “Book of Blood”,  based on the Clive Barker novels, which premiered at Montreal’s “Fantasia Film Festival” earlier this month. He is now penning the script for “Cell” as a four-hour miniseries.

Cell is the story of a pulse that goes through everyone’s cell phone at the same time. If you were on the phone…you were “screwed”. This pulse at first makes everyone “Zombie like”, however they start changing into something else….

Several Stephen King novels have made it to TV as miniseries. These minis are some of King’s best work.

Storm of the Century-specifically made for TV. Was a  scary story about an island (Little Tall Island,) that is hit by the “storm of the century”, and cut off from the rest of the world with a stranger on the island that wants something….

Rose Red-a great ghost story

The Shinning-remade as a miniseries             

‘Salem’s lot-also remade as a miniseries.

Riding the Bullet

The Stand

I hope “Cell” gets made. It was a great  book and will make a great miniseries.

Borrowing From Himself: Sam Raimi’s “Drag Me To Hell”

by Eric Kohn

   Sam Raimi’s “Drag Me to Hell” feels like the director blowing off twenty years of steam. The slapstick/horror duality that he mastered with his brilliant “Evil Dead” movies, repeatedly and explicitly referenced in the new feature, marks a crowd-pleasing return to form. At once absurdly cheesy and amazingly self-aware, it’s a reminder of the lunacy that brought acclaim to Raimi in the first place.

   The script, by Raimi and his brother Ivan, offers paper-thin characterizations and mostly transparent special effects, but they emerge with such calculated glee that it would appear the director wants his audience to see the mechanics of the ride even as it thrills them. The story sets up a typical horror movie framework and delivers on its requirements. Hoping to impress her boss (David Paymer) and land a promotion, loan officer Christine (Alison Lohman, in a role originally meant for Ellen Page) chooses to evict a helpless woman of curious ethnic origin and promptly winds up getting cursed (perhaps a hat tip to Stephen King’s “Thinner,” but not the bad movie adapted from it). In the aftermath, she learns from a no-bullshit psychic (Dileep Rao) that she must protect herself from an evil being intent on dragging her to—well, you know. Dealing with her skeptical boyfriend (Justin Long), Christine gradually falls into one viscerally unsettling situation after another: She vomits blood, swallows insects, and vainly attempts to save her soul by sacrificing her beloved kitty. Like Bruce Campbell in the brilliant early scenes of “Evil Dead II,” the best moments of “Drag Me to Hell” occur when the protagonist’s only co-stars are strange and dangerous forces. Needless to say, audience reactions at the Paramount screening last night thought it was a riot.

   Of course, that doesn’t mean the movie really scare anyone, at least for any lengthy duration. Raimi’s elaborate sequences generally caused laughter—not the nervous kind, but still the sound of contentment. As Christine deals with a series of increasingly ridiculous supernatural conundrums, the room fell for the gags as if they were visual punchlines. Those annoying moments when the soundtrack goes “boo!” rarely occur here. Raimi wants to entertain, so he covers all his bases with frightening images doing comical things. If “Evil Dead 2” relied on the Three Stooges as its primary referent, “Drag Me to Hell” aims more for the Looney Tunes approach, but it’s the same basic playbook. At a time when studios relentlessly borrow from J-horror conventions, Raimi’s new work finds distinction because he borrows from himself.

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