The period of light and celebration over the pending return of Tales From the Crypt has been somewhat dampened by reports that the Cryptkeeper and the weekly-anthology structure won’t be a part of TNT’s reboot, which will reportedly be Cryptkeeper-free and follow a single story all season. But despite that, we want to believe that the new show will still serve as an outlet for a diverse array of filmmakers. And because of that stubborn belief, we decided to think on which filmmakers might be able to captivate us by continuing Tales From the Crypt‘s legacy. So here now are our picks for the filmmakers we want to see put their unique spin on an episode… should they get the chance.
Edgar Wright
One key staple of the OG Tales From the Crypt that must be represented is the show’s dark sense of humor. That’s something Shaun of the Dead’s director could handle easily. He’s already shown that he can capably pay tribute to the horror genre while telling his own story and it would be fun to see him try it again. — Jason Tabrys
Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani
The cult-beloved French directorial team of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani have completed two features: 2009’s exquisite Amer and 2014’s exquisite-but-a-little-less-so The Strange Color Of Your Body’s Tears. But their ravishing visual style — all smoke in the air, black leather on bare skin, and psychedelic experiments of color and sound — works most effectively in the short form, as it did with their “O Is For Orgasm” segment of the horror anthology The ABCs Of Death. They would be more than up to the challenge of a bit for a new Tales From the Crypt, springing some giallo-schooled displays of art-horror on unsuspecting TV viewers. It’d feel like a coup, smuggling work so defiantly abstract onto the U.S. airwaves, as if Hannibal had decided to dispense with plot altogether and focus instead on the amorphous shots of blood flying through the air and the kaleidoscopic lesbian sex scenes. — Charles Bramesco
Jennifer Kent
I liked It Follows slightly more than The Babadook, but that one was much more conceptual. The Babadook was pretty brilliant at creating scary scenes through sound and editing, so I imagine she could translate what she does pretty well to the shorter format. — Vince Mancini
Cary Fukunaga
Director Cary Fukunaga is best known for two things: the first season of True Detective, and the Netflix original film Beasts of No Nation. The former, of course, immediately brings to mind Matthew McConaughey’s performance as nihilist detective Rust Cohle, and the latter recalls Idris Elba’s brutal Commandant. But what about Fukunaga’s contributions? He won the 2014 Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series for True Detective, and his work — director, writer, cinematographer — on Beasts is getting lots of buzz at the moment. Audiences still unfamiliar with his name can appreciate his ability to convey an otherwise disparate and brutal narrative on television and film. Combining the two, it isn’t difficult to imagine just how beautifully horrifying his work on the new Tales From the Crypt series could be. Besides, considering the director’s outspoken stance against losing creative control to commercial interference (i.e. his now-defunct It project at New Line Cinema), Fukunaga certainly wouldn’t let his take on Tales devolve further into showrunner M. Night Shyamalan’s vision. –– Andrew Husband
Ruben Östlund
Marital discord is at the heart of a lot of classic EC Comics stories. Usually a no-good woman is at the heart of the problem, the sort of dime-store femme fatale who never met a man she didn’t want to betray. There are many reasons to seek out the stories in old issues of Tales From The Crypt and other EC titles, but progressive gender politics aren’t one of them. So, why not bring in Swedish director Ruben Östlund for an episode? Not only would his slow-burn approach to tension be a nice change of pace, he might balance out some of the unchecked misogyny. After all, his 2014 film Force Majeure not only built tension out of a crumbling marriage it laid most of the marriage’s problems at the feet of a guy who didn’t even realize he was a a jerk until life showed him otherwise. There’s depth to his portrait of a marriage, but also the possibility that the remaining civility between husband and wife could crumble with just a nudge. Horror’s not really his thing, but give Östlund a camera, a couple of actors who know what they’re doing, and throw in a decapitation or two and you’re most of the way there. — Keith Phipps
David Lynch
Tales From the Crypt has always been a nostalgic favorite because, beyond being “scary,” it’s strange, with a unique brand of campy horror that we don’t see much of today. Which is why David Lynch — a filmmaker who excels at telling strange and darkly comedic stories — would be a masterful candidate to helm an episode. — Jameson Brown
Park Chan-wook
Embedded within the work of Park Chan-wook are two things: a sick sense of humor and a great understanding of the fragility of the human condition within that sickness. Who else could make a man stuffing his mouth full of squid such a complex mixture of shocking and moving? The man behind Oldboy, Lady Vengeance, and Stoker moves back and forth between almost Bergman-esque morality drama (Lady Vengeance’s finale shapes up to be like a twisted riff on Murder on the Orient Express) and tragic comedy (Stoker perverts Hitchcock even further). To have Park Chan-wook, as singular visionary of flaws and follies, work on Tales from the Crypt would be a dream come true. Or maybe nightmare. — Kyle Turner
Bong Joon-ho
It’s been a few years since the last time I watched Tales From the Crypt, so you’ll have to forgive my foggy memory. But I don’t recall an episode that ends with the main character confessing to not only eating another human, but knowing that “babies taste best.” This, among other non-cannibalistic reasons, is why Bong Joon-ho should provide punny, entertaining fodder for the Cryptkeeper. The Host and Snowpiercer are so horrific that they’re funny; that’s what Tales From the Crypt 2.0 ought to be, too. — Josh Kurp
