‘A match made in heaven (or hell)’

Abstract

This chapter examines the collaborations between horror franchise films and virtual reality (VR) media between 2014 and 2020, a period that reflects the second wave of interest in contemporary VR. Immersive media is now an integral part of multimedia franchise encounters, and VR helps to characterize the shifting sensorial effect central to franchise media and processes of remediation. Horror film franchises were quick to incorporate VR into their exploration of intellectual property as horror’s established affective qualities made VR a logical textual extension for the genre. This was partly enabled via the economic structures that the horror film occupied just as interest in VR piqued; that of franchise properties, reboots and adaptations, massive investment in promotion and marketing, and integrated studio divisions. These viable production structures supported investment and experimentation in the expensive-to-produce VR format. Looking at a range of franchise properties including Saw, It, The Conjuring, Alien, Hotel Transylvania, and Night of the Living Dead, this chapter explores how this period reveals the valuable intersection between horror aesthetics and immersive media; how this drives franchising and marketing of film properties; and how entertainment industry infrastructures explore emergent technologies through the relative stability of the established franchise property.