Why Manitoba is a hotbed for horror movies

A Manitoba cat born without eyes can be seen in ‘The Long Walk,’ which opens this Friday.

From sadistic slashers to haunted houses, horror movies and Halloween go hand-in-hand, and Manitoba has become a cauldron for creepy films.

Over the past two decades, dozens of frightening flicks have been filmed here… from this year’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Long Walk to 2011’s The Haunting in Connecticut, which made over $77 million at the box office.

“The thing I always highlight when I talk about it, it’s not the ‘The Haunting in Manitoba’, it’s The Haunting in Connecticut, because Manitoba doubles so well for other places,” said Adam Smoluk with Film Training Manitoba.

Smoluk says Winnipeg easily fills in for the bright lights of a big US city, while rural Manitoba’s farmland is the perfect backdrop for slashers like Clown in a Cornfield and Dark Harvest.

“I love the genre and I definitely think it lends itself very well to our community. And to the budget ranges of projects that are shooting here,” Smoluk said.

And that’s ideal for film production manager Aaron Graham. He says the genre thrives here because horror movies don’t need a bunch of money or big names attached.

“It’s more of a director’s or writer’s medium where they can kind of put a lot of scares on the page without requiring, you know, a top-of-the-line cast,” Graham said.

Graham has worked on several Manitoba-made horror films, including Fractured, I Still See You, and a sequel to Child’s Play called Cult of Chucky.

“You’re shooting at three in the morning, and you see that puppet come out, which can be a great deal of fun,” Graham said.

Other recent horror movies filmed here include Bring It On: Cheer or Die, The Grudge, and Silent Night, Deadly Night.

Graham said the most important element of a good horror movie is the writing—particularly when it focuses on suggestion more than gore.

University of Manitoba film professor Brenda Austin-Smith wholeheartedly agrees.

“There has to be a good story. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s high-tech, or a low-tech film with a phone filmed in a studio; it’s got to have a good story, otherwise it won’t work,” Austin-Smith said.

She says horror movies work best when they tap into something dark and sinister.

“The fear of the other, whatever the other is, whether it’s a disease, whether it’s somebody coming back from the dead, whether it’s the return of a problem that we thought we had solved. It’s always about a deep-seated fear.”

She adds horror films have evolved over several decades—pointing out classics like Psycho and Halloween and contemporary hits like It Follows—but filmgoers are still drawn in time after time.

“We love the feeling of being scared. Sometimes it’s as easy to explain, perhaps, as the adrenaline kick that you feel when you get a jump scare,” Austin-Smith explained. “But also, I think there is a kind of intellectual satisfaction in watching a really good horror story end in a way that you weren’t expecting.”