“I grew up watching horror films,” Christopher Landon said. “I started at a pretty early age, probably when I was about six. And, I was just obsessed. There was never a doubt or question of was what I was going to do.” 

Landon followed the traditional route, making shorts in high school, working internships as a young adult, and pursuing the path to screenwriting. “The great benefit to the internship, which I would credit for the writing side of my career, is that I was exposed to so much material, both good and bad.”

This education eventually led Landon to write horror movies such as Disturbia, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, Viral, Happy Death Day 2U, Freaky, and five films in the Paranormal Activity franchise. 

“Script analysis inspired me to write. Any free time I had, I would sit and write and write and write. When I finally decided to step out into the world, I had spec scripts to show people. It was how I got my first job. I made a short, did a festival circuit, and a producer saw it and asked me if I had anything.”

Landon gives this advice to anyone trying to break in today, “If you can write, write. That is you controlling your own IP. That is you having a ticket for getting in front of people and that’s critical.”

Lightning Bolt Inspirations

In some of our previous interviews, screenwriters talk about taking a bit of time to come up with high concept ideas and then pursuing those ideas logistically (see our interviews with Scott Moore and Jon Lucas or Matt Lieberman as examples), but Landon doesn’t work this way at all. 

“It’s never like that for me. Hopefully, it’s a lightning bolt for one idea. I’m not a factory brain. I can’t sit there and come up with twelve loglines to see which one sticks. For me, it’s about inspiration coming from a myriad of ideas — a song, a short story, a photograph — and I try to hew towards things as character driven as possible.”

Landon understands he works in a high concept place where ideas are often blended (Freaky is a horror take on the body switching elements from movies like Freaky Friday) but he wants to start from a place of character. “If I have an inspiration, I tend to sit down with a notepad and pen. I handwrite everything first. As the idea starts to evolve, I put together a playlist for the movie in my head because I need a soundtrack for it, and that helps generate more ideas. But I try to push through the idea as far as I can get it.”

“If the idea keeps going, that’s usually the indicator that it’s something I want to pursue. If I’m halfway through an idea and I hit an insurmountable roadblock, that’s the story’s way of telling me ‘This isn’t it’ or at least, ‘This isn’t it right now.’“

Christopher Landon

More often than not, when the screenwriter has latched onto an idea and brought out his pen and paper, he’s at a place where he can get through to the end, “for at least a version of it.” Then it’s time to edit. “Then, I go back and try to figure out, ‘Okay, what did I fuck up here?” he joked. 

John Hughes Meets Alfred Hitchcock

Most screenwriters, when they narrow down an idea, will go back and watch similar films to find the creative constraints of that genre or sub-genre. With Disturbia, for example, it would make sense for Landon to go back and watch Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. But that’s not his style.

“I do the opposite,” he said. “I avoid movies that I think might be similar. I don’t want that to sort of taint or pollute what I’m trying to do. I try to find inspiration from different kinds of film that might evoke a certain feeling or tone, but I don’t go back to a movie that feels similar or close to it.”

At the same time, he said, “Rear Window was a film that I had very much dedicated to memory. No need to go back because I had seen it twenty times. For me, it was more about going to John Hughes. Movies like that. That’s really what I was trying to bring to the table with Disturbia. The Hitchcock element is there. It’s the bedrock, but for me, it was, how do I introduce a younger audience to Hitchcock?”

A few years after Disturbia hit the big screen, Landon was invited to a pitch meeting for the Paranormal Activity franchise. He had worked with Jason Blum on a few projects and was invited to watch a rough cut of the initial film. “Jason hadn’t even seen it yet, I don’t think. I watched the original film, before they re-shot stuff and it scared the fuck out of me. I remember turning to Jason and saying, ‘I don’t know what you guys are going to do with this thing, but it is insane.’”

“They sold [Paranormal Activity] to Paramount and Paramount actually wanted to scrape it and shoot a non-found footage version of the movie. Jason and some other executives fought hard to get them to test it and I think the rest is history.” 

The Paranormal Activity Universe

Years after the first one, the creators had shot about three weeks of material for Paranormal Activity 2, without a script. “They decided they could do it the Oren Peli way and just wing it with a vague idea and the results were disastrous.” At this point, the studio shut down production and did a writer’s room. Landon was brought in and they showed some of the footage and pitched some ideas to the writer. Landon, who “wears everything on his sleeve” couldn’t help but speak up.

“I’m in this room and all these writers are saying this is great. The head of the studio looked at me, the frown on my face, and said ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, ‘This isn’t good. This doesn’t work. I think you guys are in trouble. And it’s not scary. You need to have moments…’ and I pitched, in the room, the scene [that’s later] in Paranormal Activity 2 where Kristi gets ripped out of the nursery and pulled down the stairs and into the basement.”

After the meeting, the studio executive pulled Landon aside and asked him to write that single scene. This was an unusual request, but he took on the task and not long after, he was brought on to write half the movie with another writer (which also failed), but then he was brought in to write the whole movie and several more after. 

“The lesson of it was that there was a lightning in a bottle moment where you can wing something… if you’re Oren Peli. But every other time, you need a script. From that point forward, I was writing scripts for each film.”

In terms of this moment in the meeting, Landon said he was “petrified” to speak up, but saw this opportunity where the head of the studio and the filmmakers were listening to him. “I needed to seize the opportunity. It was a mixture of confidence and terror. My palms would be dripping wet but I wanted it so badly I was willing to do anything.”

The Found Footage Genre 

For Landon, the overall Paranormal Activity universe was a combination of a new untouched genre to play in and creatively constrained. “I saw the potential and I saw that there was an opportunity to build the world out and jump around in time and use different kinds of formats to tell a found footage story, but that said, found footage felt limiting.”

“A lot of people think found footage looks easy to make and it is the opposite. I think it is much harder to make a Found Footage film than a traditional film. You can’t rely on things you normally have. You don’t have coverage. You have to explain why someone is holding a camera – which is impossible sometimes. You don’t have a score to inform how you want to feel. There’s a lot of things you’re up against.”

Landon joked they pushed the sub-genre “well past its expiration date” but “we made some fun movies and did some cool, innovative things over the course of that franchise.” This also led Landon to moving into another infused genre: Horror Comedy. 

Melanie (Erica Ash), Fulton (Niles Fitch) & Kevin (Jahi Winston) Photo courtesy of Netflix

“I don’t consider myself funny, but I do think I have a sense of humor. And, so even with Disturbia, there are a lot of humorous moments. I find it’s a very powerful tool to engage the audience or to endure them to your characters. If your characters are doing funny things, the audience is more willing to go along with them, so you can drop [the characters] into peril and the audience is invested.”

When they did the test screening for Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, Landon said the first twenty minutes played like a comedy. “That’s how I knew that I had them. I’ve always tried to be funny. When I got to Happy Death Day or Freaky, I was invested in Horror Comedy. I love to blend those two. It’s a very particular type of thing.” Landon credits his initial interest in the genre to the films of Sam Raimi and Chris Columbus. 

We Have a Ghost

For Landon’s latest project, We Have a Ghost comes from a short story called Ernest by Geoff Manaugh. For years, the screenwriter/director has been chasing this lightning bolt, trying to get the film made. “I knew immediately what it was. I felt like it was this Amblin (Steven Spielberg) opportunity for me. I grew up on those movies as well. It’s not that I wanted to write E.T. or something, but it was a fresh take on an old ghost story. I had never read anything quite like it. I fell in love with it and finally sold the pitch with the short story.”

After a few years of the traditional development hell, the script finally landed with Netflix. The description reads, “Finding a ghost named Ernest haunting their new home turns Kevin’s family into overnight social media sensations. But when Kevin and Ernest investigate the mystery of Ernest’s past, they become a target of the CIA.”

In terms of persistence, Landon would tell novice writers “never to give up a script you love.” He said, “I have stuff, even now, where I have a script I’ve been carrying around for over a decade. It takes time. You have to be patient and see where things line up.” As a screenwriter and director, Landon would tell you to “write the best version of the movie first.” He said, “When I wrote We Have a Ghost, I was in the low budget world for a while, so when I delivered my first draft, [an executive] said, ‘This feels small. I want you to write bigger. You can go for this.’ I was like, ‘Oh, fuck. I forgot about that.’ So I went back and wrote some big, fun set pieces. Now I try to write the best version of the movie first and if I’m getting to the next stage, I get studio notes and try to figure out how to get the movie to fit into the budget box without compromising the integrity of what I’m trying to do.”

For two final bits of advice, Landon would tell you to write the spec script instead of obsessing over an amazing pitch with no script. “The other thing I don’t like about pitching, especially in the movie world, is that you invite too many cooks to start meddling. As opposed to, ‘Here’s my movie and let’s work within the parameters of this thing I have.’ Otherwise, your character is a completely different person and everyone is just starting to fuck with it and I hate that. I try not to pitch now.”

And, finally, there’s value to every single spec you write, whether or not it sells. “There’s no downside to writing a spec in my opinion. Even if it doesn’t sell – and by the way most of them don’t – but I learned from every single one. I’m not going to learn from a pitch. I’m not going to grow as a writer. You become a better writer by writing. I don’t see the downside in it. It’s time consuming, but if you love it and it’s what you want to do, what else are you going to do? If you have two hours in your day to sit down and write, do it. Don’t hang your hopes on a pitch.”

This interview has been condensed. Listen to the full audio version here.