Alphabetical Horror Films - Q & R Quiz

Answer: A Quiet Place

Directed and co-written by (and partly starring) "The Office" actor John Krasinski, "A Quiet Place" actually proved to be a bigger star vehicle for his wife, Emily Blunt, who led the movie from start to finish as a pregnant woman during a compelling post-apocalypse. In this film, the world was beset upon by creatures that reacted to and killed anything that made sound. You might think that bringing a newborn into such a world would be a detriment. You would be correct. The film attempts to tackle this at multiple opportunities.

"A Quiet Place" released in 2019 and was quite popular at the box office, resulting in not only a sequel starring Blunt in 2021 (filmed just before COVID-19) but a prequel, set during "Day One" in Manhattan, starring Lupita Nyong'o and releasing in 2024. All three made significant amounts of money.

Answer: Quarantine

While "REC" is considered a Spanish horror classic (and a popular instance of the handicam horror trend that popped up in the genre following "Paranormal Activity's" release), "Quarantine" was a nearly shot-for-shot remake based on the original, opting to shift the setting from a Barcelona apartment complex to a Los Angeles apartment complex. More than this, while the Spanish series elaborated on itself with several sequels pointing to a religious origin for the virus that spreads in tight quarters, the U.S. remake simply looks at the disease as a rabies-based zombie virus. Oh well.

The remake, starring "Dexter's" Jennifer Carpenter as a reporter trapped in the nightmare, was filmed by "Poughkeepsie Tapes" filmmaker John Erick Dowdle, who went on to make the horror sleeper hit "As Above, So Below". All three of these, interestingly, were made on handheld cameras and put forth as found-footage.

Answer: Resident Evil

With "Resident Evil" fast-becoming one of the most popular horror gaming franchises of all-time, Paul W. S. Anderson, who'd previously adapted "Mortal Kombat" (1995), was brought on to bring the zombie tale to life. What resulted was VERY loosely adapted with very little of the original games making it to the screen. Instead of a puzzling trip through the Spenser Mansion with memorable characters, he instead created Alice (thinking of Wonderland), Milla Jovovich's inevitably-psychic tour de force, to descend into a massive complex known as 'The Hive' to get to the bottom of the recent bioweapon outbreak.

The series, at least before it was rebooted, received five sequels, all starring Jovovich and eventually bringing classic characters and (rarely) known settings into the fold. Anderson and Jovovich would marry somewhere between the third and fourth films in the series and work together to adapt the "Monster Hunter" video game series, also from Capcom, for release in 2020.

Answer: Ready or Not

Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (perhaps better-known as Radio Silence), "Ready or Not" was a cheeky horror comedy that managed to take something as simple as a game of hide-and-seek and turn it into a deadly night for poor Grace, a newly-married bride forced to undergo a bizarre ritual set upon her by her new in-laws. When Grace draws the fateful card, she's given 100 seconds to hide in their sprawling manor before the folks try to kill her. If she makes it to sunset, she survives...but the curse put upon them suggests that they won't.

"Ready or Not" released in 2019 to stellar reviews, particularly for its deft handling of horror content with moments of actual comedic satire. The directors, known for their work in the horror space before this, were given the opportunity to continue directing films in the "Scream" franchise shortly thereafter.

Answer: Red Dragon

Also happening to be the original first novel in Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter novel series, "Red Dragon" pertained to the hunt for a serial killer inevitably determined to be Francis Dolarhyde (played by Ralph Fiennes). This meant utilizing Hannibal Lecter's particular insight to hunt down the most dangerous of foes.

"Red Dragon", despite releasing a decade after the immensely well-received "The Silence of the Lambs" (which swept the Oscars), took in more than $200,000,000 at the box office. It would mark Anthony Hopkins' third and final turn in the Hannibal Lecter role. Lecter would later be played, in younger years, by French actor Gaspard Ulliel in the poorly-received 2007 prequel "Hannibal Rising" and by Mads Mikkelsen in the renowned Bryan Fuller TV adaptation, "Hannibal", which ended in 2015 with the "Red Dragon" plotline.

Answer: The Rental

Co-written with indie filmmaker Joe Swanberg, "The Rental" was directed by Dave Franco and starred Dan Stevens, Jeremy Allen White, and Franco's wife, Alison Brie (who would later co-star with him in the 2025 horror movie "Together"). In this one, a pair of couples headed out to the Oregon coast to stay in a house rental for a weekend only to discover, as they let themselves become more reckless, that odd events were starting to occur. Eventually they realized that they were being surveilled, but maybe not until it was too late.

The movie was quite well-received but failed to make much of a profit due to its mid-2020 release. It did, however, receive significant viewership when it went to VOD and streaming platforms in the first summer of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Answer: Return to the House on Haunted Hill

A unique feat, even with DVD technology being on the market for the better part of a decade at this point, the schlocky sequel to the 1999 Dark Castle reboot of "The House on Haunted Hill" managed to execute a choose-your-own-adventure premise quite well. Although the movie was an opportunity to put another group of hapless people through the bloody and ghostly wringer, it gave the audience a number of juncture points to determine what routes the cast took to attempt escape (or, else, safety). There were ultimately just under one hundred permutations of the film that could result, only one of which could actually change an outcome substantially enough to fully change the plot.

"Final Destination 3" would attempt to do a similar DVD, and most of these 'Choose Your Fate' options wouldn't change much in the grand scheme. That said, if you stopped the cast from getting onto the rollercoaster at the start of the film, the movie would head to the credits then and there.

Answer: The Ring

Based on the 1998 Japanese horror film "Ringu", "The Ring" didn't change much of its premise in which a cursed video tape manages to lead its viewers down a rabbit hole of horror before the vengeful ghost of a young, drowned girl ends their life. When Gore Verbinski brought this film to American audiences, he put Naomi Watts into the lead role and kicked off a trend in horror filmmaking that couldn't be shaken for the better part of the 2000s.

"The Ring" was immensely popular with many believing it to hold up despite the dated tech used in the film. The American version made nearly $250,000,000 USD in the box office when it released in 2002. Watts would return for the first sequel while a reboot, "Rings", would release in 2017.

Answer: The Ruins

In this one-off film, a group of college students headed to Mexico for a tropical trip south of the border and, following a German tourist looking for his brother at a deeply-hidden Mayan ruin, decide to tag along and found themselves haplessly stuck at the archaeological site, held there by the locals who refused to let them leave once they cross the threshold of unique vines growing along the structure, kept in by a ring of salt. What they found was that the ruins were being protected by a unique type of plant life that thrived on consuming meat and blood, and it would attempt to draw them in with troubling methods, getting under their skin in even worse ways.

"The Ruins" was the exact type of grisly horror film one would expect to come out in 2008. Despite the unique premise (based on a perhaps better book), it failed to recoup its budget at the box office.

Answer: Rosemary's Baby

Considered a horror classic, "Rosemary's Baby" was based on Ira Levin's horror novel released only a year prior. With Roman Polanski in the director's chair and Mia Farrow dealing with the collapse of her marriage to Frank Sinatra throughout the filming, the result was considered, over time, to be one of the greatest psychological thrillers of its time. In it, Rosemary Woodhouse faces one odd event after another, many involving people in her immediate sphere, that contribute to her concerning pregnancy. All of this leads to the belief that evil forces are at work.

The film was nominated for two Oscars, winning one (for Ruth Gordon's supporting role), and it would leave a legacy of sequels, prequels, and TV adaptations that wouldn't live up to the original by a longshot.