A solid and reliable voice in the horror film world, Blumhouse Productions have been spooking us since 2007 with their Paranormal Activity, following that up with The Purge series before having a major hand in bringing Jordan Peele's scathing and current "elevated horrors" to life in Get Out and Us. Not satisfied with just creating the freshest of horror takes, in 2014 they produced the inarguably wicked Whiplash, in which cast member JK Simmons won Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars. They would go on to have hands in Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman and the great HBO series Sharp Objects with Amy Adams.
Blumhouse's latest feature film, The Black Phone, is a terrifically fun horror from the minds of Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill that focuses on a town terrorized by a child abductor known as "The Grabber" is currently getting rave reviews and making a pretty penny at the box office to boot.
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And Blumhouse's The Black Phone is a hoot for sure, with MovieWeb's review calling it a "[G]reat accomplishment. Wonderfully directed, expertly acted, and intelligently scripted." The film's a real throwback to the very late 1970s in its setting, characters, and filmmaking style (this could absolutely take place in the same town as The Lost Boys, and every single character feels like a variation on Corey Feldman), alongside its mix of modern day scares. However, one small thing stood out in particular.
The New Blumhouse Logo
From the very first second the film played in the theater, it was clear that the Blumhouse company had changed up their production logo. Following the well known Universal globe-spanning intro, Blumhouse's (frankly tacky) self-advertising had been updated, and it now included one of the most famous faces (masks, sorry) in horror film history.
Peeking from within the shrubbery is Halloween's Michael Myers. Kitchen blade in hand, the camera shoots through a window of a house and into a darkened room. We pass two more masked figures moving through the space; now the brightly LED-covered faces of the hooligans in The Purge Election Year. We move past a living room and sofa, through to a dingy bathroom with an overflowing tub, by some aliens and a rocking chair, and finally out of the home, where we are met by the title of BLUMHOUSE PRODUCTIONS. You can watch it in full below.
You may ask: why should this be a talking point whatsoever? While most definitely an update on Blumhouse's former animation (a bland smattering of clichéd horror tropes dizzily showcased inside a CGI haunted house), there's more to it than merely being some cool Easter egg for Halloween fans. A cameo of sorts, but for what reason?
Blumhouse's Modern Day $cares
This particular addition is a statement from the Blumhouse company, and it implies: Michael is ours now. We own one of the biggest and most iconic villains in horror history. He is why we're doing this, and we're going to put a generation of new killers on the screen after him too.
More officially, founder and CEO Jason Blum told Deadline: "Our new logo is a fun tribute to our Blumhouse films and television series, and I’m curious to see if our fans can spot all the hidden symbols we’ve included throughout [...] I’m thrilled we unveiled it with Scott Derrickson’s The Black Phone, so fans saw the new logo on the big screen." Blumhouse's Chief Marketing Officer Karen Barragan adds:
The original Blumhouse logo holds a special place for horror fans like me, so we wanted to honor that legacy while creating something new. This new logo pays tribute to the original version and incorporates a lot of fun Easter eggs from Blumhouse films and TV series from the last decade that we think fans will enjoy the discovery[.]
Spooky Season
As the first of the Big Three in Horror (alongside Freddy Kreuger of Nightmare on Elm Street and Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th), Michael Myers and Jamie Lee Curtis helped popularize the stalker/horny teen slasher trend that would dominate the 1980s. Skip forward to the 2000s, and Rob Zombie (today slumming it with a PG Munsters reboot) released his version of Halloween.
After the series felt long dead, Blumhouse would revive Halloween in a tight and fresh re-do on the characters in 2018. Halloween Kills, a way more-fun-than-it-should-have-been sequel followed in 2021, with the final part, Halloween Ends, releasing at the end of this year (with a trailer dropping just recently).
Since 2007, Blumhouse have operated a small-risk, high-gain work ethic that has only ballooned gradually with ambition. Their Paranormal Activity was made on a miniscule $15 thousand and reaped in just under $200 million at the box office. Their Halloween, in turn, cost only $10 to $15 million, and yet raked in $255 million.
The Shape (of Things to Come)
Now in control of Halloween and Michael Myers, Blumhouse have the final say over a film that is still one of the most financially successful independent movies of all time — in 1978, on a budget of $300K, Halloween made $70 million globally, around $315 million in today's money. The simple but unkillable constancy of Michael Myers and the character's original roots reflect the modern company's ideals of low budget shocks with healthy returns, and is a more than welcome addition to the family as he rubs shoulders with The Purge's own psychopaths.
Blum assures us that he's done with the franchise, with the rights reverting back following this year's Halloween Ends ("We have no more rights to make any more Halloween, so it goes back to Malek [Akkad]," he told Screen Rant). This seems to make the Michael Myers cameo in the new Blumhouse logo feel like a temporary addition for now, though it does seem like a hell of a lot of trouble to go through for something they'll soon lose the rights to.
However, Blumhouse seems to be taking on even more major horror icons, so perhaps this logo is but a prelude. They'll be making a proposed trilogy of legacy sequels and reboots to The Exorcist in the same vein as their Halloween films (which will even be directed by David Gordon Green, of the Halloween trilogy). Additionally, with recent rumblings that Jason Blum and his Blumhouse are keen on doing a Nightmare on Elm Street, maybe Freddy will be joining Michael in the bushes outside the house sooner than we think...