Hello, and welcome to the final full week of Horrorfest 2020! It’s insane to me that we are already at the end of the month of October, but all good horror must come to an end. This week, I am focusing on some of the most influential actors and actresses in horror and their terrific performances that have made our favorite scary stories that much scarier. Please enjoy our final full week of Fandom Horrorfest!
Patrick Wilson
Today we’re talking about an actor whose horror profile kind of snuck up on me, to the point that when I was making my list for this week of Horrorfest I had to stop and go, “Oh, wow, he has been in a lot of stuff!” Patrick Wilson is an excellent, flexible actor who has embraced the horror genre with open arms, and we horror fans are all the better for it. While Wilson’s reign as the leading male horror actor seems relatively recent, his early career itself also offers meaty horror parts. From co-starring in 2004’s Phantom of the Opera to a uniquely sinister yet complicated role in the underrated 2005’s Hard Candy, Patrick Wilson established an early claim on interesting roles in horror. His claim was further established and fully legitimized in the 2010s as he landed the main role in two major horror franchises: The Conjuring and Insidious. These performances basically let Wilson pick and choose whichever horror roles he wanted, and since then he has continued to go for nuanced, complex character portrayals like Bone Tomahawk and Stephen King’s In the Tall Grass.
I’m one of those unusual people who actually prefers the Insidious franchise to The Conjuring universe, but Wilson’s portrayal of Ed Warren warrants discussion, especially from someone like me who loves occult history. Patrick Wilson, the excellent actor that he is, lends significantly more nuance and charisma to the Warren patriarch than the real historical figure ever possessed himself. Given the success of the Conjuring movies and both Wilson’s and Vera Farmiga’s performances as the Warrens, it is worth clarifying the topic: the real Warrens were terrible, predatory people. They were hoaxes; their supposed exorcisms never received endorsement from any Christian church or the occult Thelema movement, and they made a fortune conning and preying upon older, superstitious people who thought Ed and Lorraine were the real deal. I bring this up not to shame Patrick Wilson in any way; he’s a brilliant artist who brings life to his roles and genuinely respects the horror industry. However, it consistently rubs me the wrong way when Wilson’s portrayal of Ed Warren is considered an authentic depiction of the supposed folk hero rather than the trash pile of a human being that he really was.
Anyway, Wilson is a terrific actor with tons of great horror movies under his belt, and any of them would make great additions to your personal October film festival. Many horror fans and casual moviegoers have probably already seen one or more of the Conjuring and Insidious films, but a movie that may have flown under your radar is Wilson’s 2015 film Bone Tomahawk, a movie about a cannibalistic tribe of Natives set in the Wild West. With a cast like Wilson, Kurt Russell, Matthew Fox, and Lili Simmons, you’re hard-pressed to find a better acted horror film.
