The BU alumni who are giving you nightmares

Posted October 2022

With Halloween right around the corner, we spoke with five BU alums working in the horror movie industry. But while their jobs may be scary, they share how to make a career less frightening.

The Monsters

According to Kelly Gallagher (COM’11), horror is in her DNA. She grew up watching decidedly not-kid-friendly horror movies like The Evil Dead and The Shining long before she moved out to Los Angeles and eventually became one of the Directors of Development at Dark Castle Entertainment, the company known for horror flicks such as House on Haunted Hill, Splice, Orphan, and that film’s recent hit sequel Orphan: First Kill. The other Director of Development at Dark Castle also happens to be a Terrier, Rob Bell (COM’10), who recommended Gallagher to the company when he was working in development for parent company Silver Pictures. For Bell, a love of horror came when he was completing his Screenwriting I class at BU and was required to watch the Bill Paxton horror movie Frailty and analyze its story structure—or “beat it out.” Bell quickly fell in love with the film and was taken in by the opportunities within the horror genre. “It’s not just slasher movies and haunted house movies,” Bell says. The horror genre is “a great sandbox you can explore a lot of timely issues with.”

Much like Gallagher, Rob Hackett (COM’10) considers horror and genre films like The Exorcist, Jaws, Aliens, and Halloween to be seminal experiences of his childhood. Hackett studied at BU as a student in the Screenwriting MFA degree, but after an internship with Team Downey, the production company of Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey, turned into a full-time job, he transitioned his career toward developing—rather than writing—films. Whereas Team Downey had focused primarily on dramas and comedies, Hackett hoped to get back to his genre roots; so when a position opened up at Atomic Monster, the production company founded by horror icon James Wan (the Saw and The Conjuring franchises, Malignant), he pursued the job aggressively, eventually working his way up to Vice President.

A classmate of Bell’s, Aaron Fradkin (CGS’08, COM’10) always wanted to write and direct movies, but during his first few years after graduating, he focused on comedies. After quitting his first industry desk job without much of a safety net, he scrounged up a little money and directed a dramedy feature, starring a friend from his semester in the BU Study Abroad Los Angeles Program. Over the next few years, Fradkin stuck to variations on comedy, directing a romantic comedy feature and comedy web-series. His first foray into horror came in late-2019, when Fradkin and co-writer (and now wife) Victoria Fratz were prepping to shoot Val, a horror-comedy feature that was to star another Terrier, Misha Reeves (CFA’08). The switch to horror came partly from a desire to be more experimental with the filmmaking process than he could be in the comedy space. With horror, he could focus less on big budgets and star casts and more on the filmmaking “magic tricks” that would help make the films unique. As executives Rob Bell and Rob Hackett both stress, horror filmmakers are often given more creative freedom than filmmakers in other genres, because horror budgets tend to be relatively low, the films often over-deliver on their box office prospects, and audiences don’t need big-name stars to get them into the theater.

Before Val went into production, Fradkin and Fratz decided to have some fun by shooting a no-budget horror short in their apartment. They uploaded the short to their Youtube channel, just in time for Halloween, and soon after being posted, the film had received a few thousand views. It energized the filmmakers to see their tiny film find an audience so quickly and organically, and they decided to make another one, which they posted the day before starting production on Val. Little did they realize that just weeks later—two days after wrapping production on Val—the real-world horrors of Covid-19 would put their lives into quarantine. It turned out, though, that with people stuck at home, it was the perfect opportunity to focus on quick, inexpensive content that they could produce from the safety of their own apartment and with almost no outside help. Fradkin and Fratz barrelled forward, feeding the internet’s insatiable appetite for new content by creating a creepy new film every month or so. Unlike the often two-year process of making and distributing a feature film, producing the shorts was fun and fast and gave them the instant gratification of releasing their dark visions onto the screens of horror hounds across the world almost immediately. Suddenly, their little lark of a Youtube channel seemed to have a life of its own, and today, just a couple years later, the pair’s channel has racked up over 32 million views and 184 thousand subscribers.

Shari Mead (CGS’12, COM’14), had wanted to become an editor since high school, although her tastes skewed rom-com over zom-com. After completing a litany of internships at trailer houses and indie features, Mead moved to LA and got a job working nights as an assistant editor for a reality TV show. She says working in reality TV was an amazing learning experience and helped her to be a skilled troubleshooter for the editing software Avid Media Composer. With that experience under her belt, Mead was able to join the union roster for the Motion Picture Editor’s Guild, and over the next few years she held various post production jobs on dramas for CBS, TNT, and Syfy.

Before landing as an assistant editor on The Walking Dead, Mead never watched anything scary. In fact, she was the person who closed their eyes when the scary trailers played in the movie theater. But when the opportunity arose to join the editorial department at TWD, which had a great reputation in the post production community, Mead couldn’t pass it up. For her first two seasons on the show, she worked as an assistant editor, reporting to an editor who became a mentor to her. She got to cut scenes together, edit trailers that played in the main showroom during Comic Con, and even co-edit an episode. She was promoted for her third season, and then moved on to a full editing job on the spinoff Tales of the Walking Dead.

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

In our normal lives, if we encounter something that scares or disturbs us, most of us will look away—or run. So what is it about scary images on a screen that not only stop us from walking out of the theater but encourage us to come back for more?

When the pandemic lockdowns first started, Outbreak, the Dustin Hoffman-starring movie about a deadly virus, surged in popularity on Netflix, despite being twenty-five years old. To Rob Hackett, this surprising fact is an excellent example of the enduring fascination with horror. It allows people an “opportunity to project themselves onto the movie and then exorcise whatever demons or anxieties they’re dealing with.” Watching horror is a more interactive, experiential process than other genres, allowing viewers to feel the catharsis of vanquishing the bad guy, whether the threat is an airborne virus, a deadly shark, a demon spirit, or an unstoppable serial killer. “It makes the real world feel a little bit safer and more manageable.”

Similarly, Kelly Gallagher, who describes herself as “an incredibly risk-averse person in real life,” appreciates the thrill-seeking aspect of horror movies and that watching scary content allows her to play out endless scenarios that she would use for her own survival. But the pull toward darkness goes deeper. Gallagher explains that going at least as far back as the 1932 film Freaks, horror has been about outsiders and outcasts, frequently following characters that the audience doesn’t traditionally see in heroic roles. The genre is, Gallagher says, “uniquely equipped to meet an audience that wants a little more social consciousness,” and mainstream audiences today are hungrier than ever for fun thrills that also speak to our real-world fears and societal issues.

The Evil Plan

While making the jump from horror fan to horror filmmaker can be a difficult one, there are steps that BU students and alumni can take to join these masters of the macabre. Bell, Fradkin, Gallagher, Hackett, and Mead all worked film & television internships as students, which helped them get their feet in the door, but internships are just a part of the valuable process of networking. One of the pleasant surprises of the industry, according to Hackett, is that “the horror community in LA is a tight-knit ecosystem, and everybody’s helping everybody.” For aspiring writers, he says it’s not necessary to follow subject matter trends from recent films, but he recommends focusing on projects that are low-cost and highly marketable.

As a director of both $100,000 indie features and no-budget shorts, Aaron Fradkin says that one thing he has learned is that “budget really just doesn’t matter.” He advises filmmakers to focus first on creating a good story, and shaping your filmmaking style around the resources you have access to. With horror, he says, sometimes “the cheaper it looks, the scarier it is.”

Those scares are often crafted in post production, and that is where an editor like Shari Mead can turn an inconspicuous scene of a character walking down a hallway into a work of pure terror. Using the timing and speed of shots and the inclusion or exclusion of music and sound effects, editors carefully orchestrate the building of tension,and then finally release it with a heart-stopping scare. Mastering that pacing takes practice, skill, and patience, but when all those pieces come together, it can be like a symphony of terror. For Mead, it’s especially satisfying to know when she’s scaring her family and friends.

The Sequel

In horror, there’s always room for more, and these Terriers aren’t slowing down. Hackett is currently developing a new take on King Kong for TV, and—while there’s nothing official yet—Gallagher and Bell are working on several ideas to continue the Orphan franchise. Mead is embarking on a new spinoff in The Walking Dead universe, and Fradkin is talking to financiers about several projects, including horror and romantic comedy features. He’s not saying goodbye to his horror shorts, though, having released the latest last week, just in time for Halloween. Much like Freddy, Michael, and Jason, once the horror industry catches you, it’s impossible to escape.

Want to delve further into the BU horror community? Check out our watchlist of Terrier Horror below. All titles are available for streaming or rental on most major platforms, except where noted.

Orphan: First Kill – produced by Dark Castle Entertainment – Kelly Gallagher (COM’11) & Rob Bell (COM’10) – currently in theaters
Val – co-written & directed by Aaron Fradkin (CGS’08, COM’10) and starring Misha Reeves (CFA’08)
Social House Films Horror Shorts – directed by Aaron Fradkin (CGS’08, COM’10) – available on Youtube
Malignant – produced by Atomic Monster – Rob Hackett (COM’10)
Tales of the Walking Dead – select episodes edited by Shari Mead (CGS’12, COM’14)
Offseason – written & directed by Mickey Keating (CGS’10, COM’12) and edited by Valerie Krulfeifer (COM’12)
Glorious – produced by Jason Scott Goldberg (COM’05)
The Menu – starring Hong Chau (COM’01) – in theaters on November 18
Happy Death Day – starring Jessica Rothe (CFA’09)
The Fly – starring Geena Davis (CFA’79, HON’99)
Ash vs. Evil Dead (season 2) – starring Michelle Hurd (CFA’88)
Annabelle – starring Alfre Woodard (CFA’74, HON’04)
American Horror Story (season 7) – production designer Jeff Mossa (CFA’93)