The winning formula is clear: a low-budget horror film that capitalizes on its low budget, amplifying the elements of horror, while technically well-executed is a strong foundation for success but true success is made or broken on the quality and uniqueness of the story. While it may seem tempting to continue the trend of using budgetary constraints as part of the story, the technique was revealed to be a gimmick as it has already been exhausted through many films: Unfriended, The Dark Tapes, The Visit, and VHS, just to name a few. Another gimmick that has been exhausted by the genre in general is the use of the super-natural threat, and the associated “jump-scare,” with way too many examples to count. It would thus be too challenging to make any noise these days with a film that employs any of these gimmicks. To succeed, a horror story will have to employ a unique story concept that doesn’t rely on gimmicks, while holding true to the winning formula outlined above.

To create a truly unique concept you first have to play off the elements that came before. The element that’s common to all the above-mentioned horror films, and horror films in general, is the presence of a stalker, and killer - whether human, animal, or supernatural. Ruling out a supernatural threat, from a writer’s perspective, a human threat is the most compelling when explored properly. While there are plenty of films with masked villains that kill senselessly, there are less films that actually explore the psychology and struggle of the killer, with the killer as the protagonist, with examples being A Clockwork Orange (1971) and American Psycho (2000). These films are so complex that they’re not regarded strictly as horror movies but as dark comedies or satires, both films sharing a significant comedic element; and both are regarded among the top movies of all time as well as cult classics. Along with the relatively new Nightcrawler (2014), these films form a sub-genre of satirical horror, that while modestly successful, is more often lost on wider audiences.

All that changed with Get Out (2017), a well-executed, relatively low-budget movie, with a non-paranormal human threat. While the movie is not told from the perspective of the killer, it is in effect a satirical horror film that capitalizes on the real life horror that faces a certain subset of people, black people, in a predominantly white society on a daily basis. And therein lies the last piece of the winning formula: a fictional threat that reflects on a very real threat in society and what greater threat is there than the threat against women. In this satirical or exaggerated world, all men would be toxic and all women under threat.

It all starts when a well-intentioned albeit frail man tries to rescue a woman from getting raped only to get murdered and have his body thrown in the toxic Gowanus Canal, where he mutates into The Toxic Masculine. It’s a play on The Toxic Avenger (1984) a cult classic in which a nerd gets killed and thrown into a vat of chemicals where he transforms into a hideous but well-intentioned creature. In this version, he is transformed into a muscular, attractive version of himself but with the illest of intentions. It’s also a play on superhero films like Spiderman in which the titular character is bitten by a spider and is given more abilities and muscular definition, but in this case, what if he used those abilities for evil? Playing off the horror films of the 1980’s, I also incorporated light supernatural elements like the transformation scenes of The Fly (1986) and a climax heavily inspired by a famed scene from the The Thing (1982), both of which are great excuses for cheap-looking SFX. In this way, The Toxic Masculine matches up with the best of the genre, using a very real human threat, exaggerated to satire, in a unique story that doesn’t rely on any gimmicks. With a low-budget aesthetic and solid technical execution, it has the makings of success.

The final element of the formula is intricately tied with the film’s intended audience. If Get Out offers a satirical perspective on the threat facing black people in society, from a black man’s perspective, The Toxic Masculine offers a satirical view on the threats facing women in society but from the conflicted perspective of a male offender, a return to the style of American Psycho and Clockwork Orange, at least at the outset. To take the genre a step further, the perspective changes to the female ‘victim’ midway through the movie, though in the spirit of progressiveness, she is no longer the victim, but the killer and the film becomes a “revenge movie;” not only does she enact personal revenge but a revenge for women at large, overturning both the genre itself and the standard male gaze in film. The Toxic Masculine can be easily marketed as the long overdue female revenge story for the 52% of women that make up the overall population of film-goers, most of whom live in "blue states,” where issues such as female empowerment would be very well-received.

Box Office Projections

Budget: $17-34 million/Gross: $600 million

The budget is deduced by averaging the budgets of the cheapest comparable 80’s movie mentioned above (Toxic Avenger, $500k) and the most expensive comparable 80’s movie (The Fly, 15M) which equals 7.75 million, adjusted for inflation equals roughly 17 million, which is twice the budget of recent comparable films American Psycho and Nightcrawler (both 8M), which neatly accommodates the fact that Toxic Masculine will have twice the run time over two installments. Budget can be doubled to improve quality and reception.

Additional cost savings can be derived by producing The Toxic Masculine in conjunction with Soul Custody. While both films are of different genres with a sharply different tone, both films were written with the same settings, character archetypes, and actors in mind.

The gross is deduced from the recent returns of Get Out (250 million), its success mostly generated through word of mouth due to its social relevancy. An additional 50 million is added to projections given the clear connection of the title with social relevancy and the fact that all women film-goers is a bigger demographic than all black filmgoers. Gross is then doubled because the movie would be split up into two 90-100 minute installments.