Christopher Landon: An American Cinematheque Retrospective

ABOUT THE SERIES:

The American Cinematheque is pleased to welcome filmmaker Christopher Landon in-person for a retrospective centered around an advance screening of his newest film, DROP. Regardless of genre, Landon consistently tells character-driven, compelling stories that drape deceptively human themes behind striking visuals and a darkly comedic tone. Landon’s breakthrough directorial work came when he was brought on to the Paranormal Activity franchise, writing and producing PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2, 3 and 4, as well as writing and directing its spinoff PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES. Many of his most notable genre works involve personal themes pertaining to both history and time, observable in such films as HAPPY DEATH DAY, HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U and FREAKY. Although these films explore themes of time in terms of the past, or in looped stagnation, Landon’s more recent films do so in ways that look forward, with WE HAVE A GHOST, which utilizes the advent of social media and explores the consequences of virality in the modern age; and with DROP, which finds its peculiarity and subversive horror, again through a use of modern technology, but also through the dread that fills the contemporary dating scene.