At the Dark Carnival last weekend we saw Sculpture, a new horror movie co-starring (and co-written) by our longtime acquaintance (dare I say friend?) Marv Blauvelt, along with Raine Browne and Alan Rowe Kelly, of course.

Marv was talking at one point about how Sculpture is interesting in part because it features an inversion of the classic horror trope where a huge, hulking man, often a monster as well (think Jason from the Friday the XIIIth movies) hunting down frail female leads. In Sculpture, a woman is not only the lead, with the story told from her point of view, she is also (spoiler)…. the brutal killer. *cue dramatic music*

I couldn’t help but think of Sculpture when I read this article recently about the controversy surrounding Jennifer’s Body, a horror movie geared toward women that may have been killed by bad advertising that was instead geared to another audience entirely:

If you somehow managed to exist within the American mediascape and miss the ads for Jennifer’s Body, count yourself lucky. Nearly all of them featured Megan Fox (and her title-inspiring body) in a sexy pose, as if we were about to watch a teen sex comedy where boys slaver after the unapproachable cheerleader. Tease campaigns about the movie emphasized that there would be a sexy lesbian kiss between Fox and Amanda Seyfried, the film’s nerdy, point-of-view character. In short, the ad campaigns were aimed at straight young men, who are the core audience for most movies starring Megan Fox.

Source: I09

Apparently horror movie audiences are often dominated by women these days, according to another article in Entertainment Weekly:

For decades, it seemed the sole purpose of movies in which masked and/or disfigured men hunted down lusty young damsels was to give guys a 90-minute outlet for their own aggression and hormones. Today, however, the genre’s biggest constituency of die-hard fans is women. Name any recent horror hit and odds are that female moviegoers bought more tickets than men. And we’re not just talking about psychological spookfests like 2002′s The Ring (60 percent female), 2004′s The Grudge (65 percent female), and 2005′s The Exorcism of Emily Rose (51 percent female). We’re also talking about all the slice-and-dice remakes and sequels that Hollywood churns out.

”I don’t think there was anyone who expected that women would gravitate toward a movie called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” says Chainsawproducer Brad Fuller of the 2003 remake, which became a female-driven $81 million hit. ”For us, the issue now is that it’s harder for us to get young men into the theater than women.”

Two things that I take away from this, regarding Sculpture:
1: It’s a very good time to make a horror movie with a strong, unusual female character as the lead
2: The people behind Sculpture know how to market their work, as opposed to the studio behind Jennifer’s Body