You described Fatal Fest as your most “twisted” story yet. What did you push further here than in your previous IDW series?
With Fatal Fest we go full fledged; we’re pushing characters to the absolute limit. [Smile: For the Camera] is child’s play compared to what is in store for [Fatal Fest]. We listened to the audience, people kept saying, ‘Hannah, I would love for you to do more gore, like more of a horror book,’ and I was like, you know what, it’s coming. There’s twists and turns in every element, there’s death at every issue. The hope for Fatal Fest is that I hope that you read one issue and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I wasn’t expecting that.’
You’ve said Hollywood is a system that consumes people. How did that idea shape Frank Finch and the world of Fatal Fest specifically?
I think it comes back to what we talked about, and I think at the core of most horror movies is trauma. And that’s why Smile is so brilliant, because Parker managed to use that trauma and create an entity around that. In a lot of horror, the underbelly is something traumatic. You know, we’re now at a time period now where the main focus in theaters is incel trauma and incels in general, but everything horror has always had a really layered substance, and I think now we’re finally giving it credit and we’re paying attention and realizing that these movies weren’t just slapstick.
With Fatal Fest, it’s a meta-narrative on the horror industry as a whole. A lot of horror directors have their thing, right? Horror directors specifically have a thing, a niche. They’re kind of characters in their own way, and in Fatal Fest, we get to put that at the forefront, where our lead [Frank Finch] believes that to show horror, you have to experience horror. So he basically puts all of the contestants to the test to be like, ‘Your movie was good, but you didn’t get there because you haven’t experienced real trauma.’
Now that a studio as closely tied to modern horror as Blumhouse is adapting The Exorcism at 1600 Penn, are there any story elements you would consider non-negotiable for the film to include?