The latest installment in our series Terror Taught Me, on screenwriting lessons from horror movies.
Saturated colors. Melodramatic scores. Black gloved killers. Knife + Heart, written by Yann Gonzalez and Cristiano Mangione and directed by Gonzalez, revolves around a serial killer stalking the sets of a gay porn company in France in the 80s. It’s specifically a modern reinvention of the giallo, an Italian subgenre that inspired the American slasher but definitely plays by it’s own rules. It’s worth a watch – but it’s also the subject of our latest Terror Taught Me.
Know Your (Sub)Genre
Amongst many things, Knife + Heart gets right the giallo subgenre. Giallo means yellow in Italian, so named because the books they were inspired by had yellow covers. They focus on murder mysteries with inventive and gory kill scenes, mounting body counts, and in your face visuals and scores. Pioneered by Mario Brava and perfected by Dario Argento before he moved onto supernatural horrors like Suspiria, the giallo has many great films to its name. But it’s also a form that has waned in the international horror scene.
Knife + Heart resets the conversation. Fastidiously true to the genre in execution and storytelling while making room for reinvention. Masked and gloved killers abound, but now they haunt gay porn scenes. Hallucinogenic and neon drenched images meld with the modern polished horror aesthetic. This movie knows the giallo and honors it while also finding new avenues to explore. Just one of many ways the filmmakers demonstrate their control over the material.
For writers, especially writers of horror, you have to know your subgenre. After The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later, you can’t open a zombie story with a character waking up after the apocalypse has happened. Cabin in the Woods nuked the dumb teens in a cabin trope so thoroughly that a writer has to have something new to say when creating a similar movie.
When you repeat other movies without innovation, you write boring scripts. Full stop. People write horror because specs actually sell. But that also makes it a crowded market. To stand out, you have to know the field so you can make sure you have the fresh spin on a familiar subgenre.