Women scare up the horror stories in ‘XX’

Bela Lugosi once said that “women are born with horror in their very bloodstream,” and four female filmmakers are proving it’s in their hearts and minds as well.

It’s a genre in which female directors are largely underrepresented, but the new horror anthology “XX” (at the Music Box Theatre and on demand starting Friday) aims to change that, spotlighting stories created by and featuring women.

Producer Todd Brown came to filmmaker Jovanka Vuckovic with the concept of a female-led movie that would mix genre veterans with newcomers. “He knew being a white man, he couldn’t be the face of this,” says Vuckovic, who’d had a similar idea. She took the project over and rounded up the talent.

“It’d be really great to get to a place where the idea of an anthology directed all by women seems like a backward notion somehow. But right now, it’s so necessary,” says Karyn Kusama, a horror mainstay whose features include “Jennifer’s Body” and “The Invitation.”

Her contribution to “XX’s” freaky tales is a successor of sorts to “Rosemary’s Baby.” In “Her Only Living Son,” a mother and her son have to deal with his devilish fate as he turns 18. Kusama wanted a demonic possession story that focused on the mom of a troubled kid rather than the dad: “What does it mean to live in a very close, emotionally suffocating relationship with your child?”

Roxanne Benjamin’s “Don’t Fall” takes creepiness to the woods, where a bunch of campers run scared when one becomes possessed by something ancient. The director says she’s always been a fan of scary campfire stories: “I wanted to bring the universal tale of the mythology to a desert scenario.”

“The Birthday Party,” the directorial debut of Annie Clark (aka musician St. Vincent), follows a housewife (Melanie Lynskey) forced to deal with her husband’s dead body before a celebration for her daughter. The black comedy showcased the first-time filmmaker’s “absurdist point of view,” says Clark, who found a mentor in Benjamin. “She was a teacher, an older sister, a best friend. She held my hand through the storm and the fire.”

And Vuckovic’s “The Box” is an adaptation of a Jack Ketcham short story about a distracted mom who’s initially unconcerned when her son stops eating after looking inside a stranger’s gift box but worries when it begins to affect the family. “Instead of the dad being the one incapable of making a meaningful connection with his family because he’s too busy working, it’s the woman,” says Vuckovic.

The goal for “XX” was to increase visibility of women in horror and create opportunities where there are none, says Vuckovic, who calls the statistics “grim”: A January study from San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film found only 7 percent of 2016’s 250 highest-grossing films had female directors.

Benjamin says male horror fans have been supportive of “XX”: “I don’t think anyone’s been like, ‘You get your [butts] back in the kitchen!’ ” And the female base is there, too: According to comScore’s PostTrak audience surveys, there were more women than men for the opening weekends of recent horror movies “The Conjuring 2” (52 percent to 48 percent), “Split” (52 percent to 48 percent), “The Bye Bye Man” (55 percent to 45 percent) and “Ouija: Origin of Evil” (51 percent to 49 percent).

“The genre misrepresents women, but so does most of society, so do most art forms, so does business and politics and science,” Kusama says. “I try not to think of myself as a unicorn. I remind myself and everyone around me that I’m just another human being making work.”

Brian Truitt, USA TODAY