Horror Director Tyler Christensen Talks House Of Purgatory

Halloween is here and as such we crave juicy horror movies that are filled to the brim with blood and scares.

Young horror director Tyler Christensen knows exactly how to satisfy that desire and did so with his new indie horror film House of Purgatory.

Coming from a reality television background, Christensen has made his first move into feature film with a uniquely plotted horror flick. PopCultureNow.com spoke with Christensen about the movie, the horror genre inspirations that helped shape it, and what made him jump across the pond from reality television to the big screen.

“My goal was always feature films,” he said. “I came out to Los Angeles to write and direct horror movies. And then you get out here and go, ‘Gee, that’s not quite how this all works.’ I wound up getting into reality because I needed a job. I wound up doing some producing and got to do some storytelling. It was more fun than what I thought it would be, but it still wasn’t what I came out here to do. Then I just quit. Because I thought, ‘If I don’t do it now, I’ll never end up doing it.’ Then I wrote House of Purgatory and realistically thought ‘how can I make this happen’ and then started putting the pieces together. If I had not done it, I would have regretted it forever.”

Christensen put a lot of time and effort into funding House of Purgatory, but there were other script picks that he wanted to produce. Unfortunately, the reality of budget came in and helped make the decision pretty clear.

“It was a lot of begging and pleading,” he said. “There were a couple horror scripts I had written that were like ‘Ehh’ and others were too grand in scope that you’re not going to be able to do this horror movie you wrote that takes place on a sunken Titanic. So I had to write something realistic. Then I found out about this urban legend about this haunted house that it’s so scary you can get your money back. And I grew up into my late twenties thinking it was a true story. I got kind of wrapped up in that idea. And I thought, ‘how could it be so scary that they didn’t make it through?’ And that would have to be something unique to each character. And I thought it would be scary if this house knew all of our deep dark secrets – shining a flashlight into our closet and seeing the skeletons there.”

Any young, talented horror writer/director is bound to have a library of filmmaker influences that he or she has studied and emulated over the years. In Christensen’s case, his horror influence was the Michael Myers master himself. He also will forever have respect for the company that helped get his project, and many others, off the ground.

“Anything that is based around the holiday of Halloween you have to give a little bit of credit to John Carpenter,” he said. “When this was all coming together, I don’t think BlumHouse had done anything at that point… I don’t think. And what they are doing now, I’m in love with. These little horror films that are original voices. They are allowing directors to tell these stories.”

Want to watch House of Purgatory? Go here.