In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, ‘The Invisible Man’ director Leigh Whannell picked the most terrifying scene in horror.
Whannell named it the blood test in 1982’s ‘The Thing’ and said, “The blood test scene in John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’ is a high water mark of terror for me. Kurt Russell’s character MacReady is using a flamethrower to heat up a wire and then stab it into a blood sample taken from every member of the science team.”
He continued, “We know that the blood will react and reveal which of them has been taken over by the alien, and the suspense is unbearable. As a filmmaker, I’m always trying to come up with scenes that deliver suspense but do it in a way that is somehow new. This scene does that so well.”
“It’s so scary, but it’s such a unique setpiece,” the director further talked about the scene. “Simply testing each person’s blood becomes the engine of suspense, and it’s simple – but when the scene explodes, it gets me every time.”
Whannell added, “In a movie that is, in my opinion, perfect in every way, this remains the highlight. The first time I saw it I could barely look at the screen…but even now, after the dozens if not hundreds of times I’ve seen the film, it still works.”
Whannell’s latest film ‘Wolf Man’ will arrive on January 17, 2025. This reboot of ‘The Wolf Man’ (1941) stars Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner, with Jason Blum producing under Blumhouse Productions.
“It came to me right after ‘Invisible Man.’ They said, ‘Do you want to do ‘Wolf Man?’ And at first I was like, ‘I’m not sure, I just did ‘Invisible Man.’ And then I came up with an idea that I thought, ‘Oh, this version of the ‘Wolf Man’ I would like.’ And then I asked Corbett, my wife, we co-wrote it — she’s over there on her phone. I was like, ‘Let’s co-write something together,'” Leigh said of the film.
The film was first planned in 2014 as part of a shared Universal Monsters universe, but after ‘The Mummy’ flopped, Universal shifted to standalone films. Filming began in New Zealand in early 2024.
