Could the Truman Show work as a horror movie?

[WhiteNachos]

*MINOR TRUMAN SHOW SPOILERS*

I saw someone who had heard that the Truman Show was a horror movie. Of course it isn't but that got me thinking, could it work as a horror movie?

Obviously I don't mean "could you sell the movie as-is as a horror movie", I mean could you take the same basic premise and craft a good horror movie out of it?


One problem I see is that if the person's movements are being broadcast on live TV to a hungry audience they can't kill their "Truman", so that loses some tension right there but "the threat of death" isn't a requirement of being a horror movie. I'm still not sure though.

Then again maybe they could kill other cast/crew members off screen if they seem like they're going to give the game away.

 

[Comic Sans]

Horror, maybe. I don't really see it working as is though. Psychological thriller though, that could work. Especially if the audience wasn't privy to the truth of the situation and it was revealed over the course of the film.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Sure it's a horrible movie, Jim Carrey is in it.

More seriously, not really. At least as it stands, they could have slightly changed the movie's tone, some of the ideas are quite horrific, but they never really went there in the film.

 

[Lufia Erim]

Cabin in the woods. Sort of reminds me of that kind of premis. Except with cthulu . Man that was a fun movie.

 

[WhiteNachos]

Horror, maybe. I don't really see it working as is though. Psychological thriller though, that could work. Especially if the audience wasn't privy to the truth of the situation and it was revealed over the course of the film.

This right here, this is how you make the movie work.

I can picture the trailer now.

"Mr. Truman thought he was being watched"

'You're being paranoid Mr. Truman'

'I can't shake the feeling though, it's as if people are watching me, waiting to see what I'll do next'

'I'd recommend some sleep.'

"he thought there was something off in this world"

*cue shot of extra walking around the block several times".

"and he's about to discover that he's right"

*cue a woman with a bloody mouth telling Truman to run*

*Flashy Horror Montage*

The Truman Show


Or wait I have another idea, it starts like the normal Truman show, then he becomes an asshole, or soemthing causes the TV audience to turn on him so they spend the rest of the show fucking with him.

"Truman was a man born into TV"

*image of Truman watching TV*

His whole life has been a scripted TV show, and everything went fine, until the audience got angry.

"I don't care if people think we'd make the perfect couple, I think you're a fucking creep"

Now the show has to go into a new direction

*Screen cuts to black and we here Truman screm*

"This summer, tune into the big screen, to witness the most terrifying reality show you will ever see.

The Truman Show

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Cabin in the woods. Sort of reminds me of that kind of premis. Except with cthulu . Man that was a fun movie.

Good call. They are basically the same, except Truman Show does it on a massively larger scale. The key difference there is that Truman has been grown into the world of the show, so it's what he knows and is familiar with. Therefore the horror couldn't really come so much from the world itself as much as from its breakdown (which is one of the most brilliantly executed plot movements of that type). I don't know. To make the basic premise work as a horror movie would require such massive changes that I don't think you could call it the Truman Show anymore. Maybe if you inverted it, like if Truman was a slave worker getting fucked with and tortured psychologically through audience polls or something.

 

[HardkorSB]

Try watching Dark City:


Closest thing to a horror version of Truman Show I can think of.

 

[Lufia Erim]

Cabin in the woods. Sort of reminds me of that kind of premis. Except with cthulu . Man that was a fun movie.

Good call. They are basically the same, except Truman Show does it on a massively larger scale. The key difference there is that Truman has been grown into the world of the show, so it's what he knows and is familiar with. Therefore the horror couldn't really come so much from the world itself as much as from its breakdown (which is one of the most brilliantly executed plot movements of that type). I don't know. To make the basic premise work as a horror movie would require such massive changes that I don't think you could call it the Truman Show anymore. Maybe if you inverted it, like if Truman was a slave worker getting fucked with and tortured psychologically through audience polls or something.

That actually sounds easier to do. A horror movies where people are bred to be killed,or psychologinally tortured ,reality tv style. With viewers voting on who to kill and how. It would be a mix of final destination, survivor and cabin in the woods. Have 5-6 people They would grow up as best friends , and seeing them get picked off one by one, everyone in town being oblivious or acting as if the last person to die never existed, which in turns instill even more fear in those left alive.

I dunno, that's the best i can come up with.

 

[WhiteNachos]

Cabin in the woods. Sort of reminds me of that kind of premis. Except with cthulu . Man that was a fun movie.

Good call. They are basically the same, except Truman Show does it on a massively larger scale. The key difference there is that Truman has been grown into the world of the show, so it's what he knows and is familiar with. Therefore the horror couldn't really come so much from the world itself as much as from its breakdown (which is one of the most brilliantly executed plot movements of that type). I don't know. To make the basic premise work as a horror movie would require such massive changes that I don't think you could call it the Truman Show anymore. Maybe if you inverted it, like if Truman was a slave worker getting fucked with and tortured psychologically through audience polls or something.

It would come from the breakdown and it would need a "this could happen to you" kind of thing like the Matrix. Maybe the horror in realizing that your world has been so heavily scripted and the friends you made turned out to be fakes.

 

[NihilSinLulz]

You mean like Haneke's Cache or Funny Games, or the more recent and excellent Resolution (a more interesting version of Cabin in the Woods)?

Yeah, it's been done. Quite a few times actually.

For more horror-comedy versions, there's Rubber and Series 7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVKgY1ilx0Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKM5Qq-ZuLM

 

[FalloutJack]

The Truman Show makes a decent plot for an episode of The Twilight Zone. Your Mileage May Vary on the horror aspect.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Horror, maybe. I don't really see it working as is though. Psychological thriller though, that could work. Especially if the audience wasn't privy to the truth of the situation and it was revealed over the course of the film.

This right here, this is how you make the movie work.

I can picture the trailer now.

"Mr. Truman thought he was being watched"

'You're being paranoid Mr. Truman'

'I can't shake the feeling though, it's as if people are watching me, waiting to see what I'll do next'

'I'd recommend some sleep.'

"he thought there was something off in this world"

*cue shot of extra walking around the block several times".

"and he's about to discover that he's right"

*cue a woman with a bloody mouth telling Truman to run*

*Flashy Horror Montage*

The Truman Show


Or wait I have another idea, it starts like the normal Truman show, then he becomes an asshole, or soemthing causes the TV audience to turn on him so they spend the rest of the show fucking with him.

"Truman was a man born into TV"

*image of Truman watching TV*

His whole life has been a scripted TV show, and everything went fine, until the audience got angry.

"I don't care if people think we'd make the perfect couple, I think you're a fucking creep"

Now the show has to go into a new direction

*Screen cuts to black and we here Truman screm*

"This summer, tune into the big screen, to witness the most terrifying reality show you will ever see.

The Truman Show

No...you have to have a loud noise every time the scene in the trailer changes, and the scenes get shorter and shorter towards the end so you've got no idea what the hell is going on. Also, it should cut to random words in big font for no reason.

 

[Queen Michael]

I think a bigger horror is what "reality TV" turned to eventually, Truman Show is nothing in comparison.

Could you take a break with the truth bombs? I haven't had my coffee yet.

 

[Darks63]

He could find out that instead of being in a TV show that instead all of the people around him are monsters that feed of his emotions. After this discovery the 3rd act of the film could be them trying to capture him in order to wipe his mind so they could go back to feeding. Add in that he has no idea if he can even escape the complex or if their is a safe haven if he does ala Cube will heighten the terror.

 

[Therumancer]

*MINOR TRUMAN SHOW SPOILERS*

I saw someone who had heard that the Truman Show was a horror movie. Of course it isn't but that got me thinking, could it work as a horror movie?

Obviously I don't mean "could you sell the movie as-is as a horror movie", I mean could you take the same basic premise and craft a good horror movie out of it?


One problem I see is that if the person's movements are being broadcast on live TV to a hungry audience they can't kill their "Truman", so that loses some tension right there but "the threat of death" isn't a requirement of being a horror movie. I'm still not sure though.

Then again maybe they could kill other cast/crew members off screen if they seem like they're going to give the game away.

Well, yes and no. You'd have to add a more malevolent intent to the entire thing rather than people simply watching someone's life and being entertained. While the network was profiteering off of Truman, they did take very good care of him which is part of what the climax and final confrontation was about, giving up a virtual Utopia that revolves around him in exchange for privacy and a greater control over his own life.

The idea of people being tormented for entertainment is one of the foundations of the "torture porn" genera, which involves plots like people making snuff flicks and/or broadcasting kills over the internet. We've also seen a number of horror premises done with reality TV gone wrong ranging from things like "Grave Encounters" where a ghost hunting show finds a haunted location that does horrible things to them, to episodes of shows like "Doctor Who" where you have a version of "Big Brother" where those voted off are executed. To say nothing of concepts like "The Hunger Games" or "Battle Royale".

That said as a work of deep science fiction you might see something a bit more Trueman like. Say in a future where genetic engineering has made humanity immortal, and far superior to what we're like now. As a result they can take a long view in terms of entertainment, and ordinary people by today's standards are inferior short lived beasts if self aware. Within such a premise you might see them genetically create modern people in controlled environments and then do horrible things to those environments for the entertainment of watching the inferior humans suffer for the more evolved ones to whom they are the equivalent of fully sapient monkeys. If they say kept a person or people alive for say 20 years and had literally hundreds or thousands of different environments probably spread across an interstellar civilization they could literally watch the cattle being raised and prepped for their eventual trial by disguised clones or robots, and after the first 20 or so years if they had enough of them they could always have one or two maturing and getting to the "good part" at any given moment. Done correctly you could say have a protagonist who lives a normal life, with a few surreal hints, but then things eventually go crazy, with the eventual surprise reveal being that it was even crazier than suspected and revealed to be a complete no win scenario. There would be a degree of cosmic horror in that like "Under The Dome" (the book, I haven't seen the mini series yet) or Cthulhu stories, except rather than the unfathomable puppet master being alien children or an elder god humanity has simply evolved to become the equivalent for the less advanced version of itself it creates merely for cruel amusement.

 

[Kevlar Eater]

Spoiler

Horror, maybe. I don't really see it working as is though. Psychological thriller though, that could work. Especially if the audience wasn't privy to the truth of the situation and it was revealed over the course of the film.

This right here, this is how you make the movie work.

I can picture the trailer now.

"Mr. Truman thought he was being watched"

'You're being paranoid Mr. Truman'

'I can't shake the feeling though, it's as if people are watching me, waiting to see what I'll do next'

'I'd recommend some sleep.'

"he thought there was something off in this world"

*cue shot of extra walking around the block several times".

"and he's about to discover that he's right"

*cue a woman with a bloody mouth telling Truman to run*

*Flashy Horror Montage*

The Truman Show


Or wait I have another idea, it starts like the normal Truman show, then he becomes an asshole, or soemthing causes the TV audience to turn on him so they spend the rest of the show fucking with him.

"Truman was a man born into TV"

*image of Truman watching TV*

His whole life has been a scripted TV show, and everything went fine, until the audience got angry.

"I don't care if people think we'd make the perfect couple, I think you're a fucking creep"

Now the show has to go into a new direction

*Screen cuts to black and we here Truman screm*

"This summer, tune into the big screen, to witness the most terrifying reality show you will ever see.

The Truman Show

No...you have to have a loud noise every time the scene in the trailer changes, and the scenes get shorter and shorter towards the end so you've got no idea what the hell is going on. Also, it should cut to random words in big font for no reason.

Loud noise? Try this: