Before Yellowstone crowned him the king of neo-Western television, and before he took the world by storm in the 2010s with his unofficial American Frontier trilogy, Taylor Sheridan was best known as an actor who appeared in shows like Sons of Anarchy and Veronica Mars.
But somewhere near the tail-end of his acting career, Sheridan followed in the footsteps of many great filmmakers — such as Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi, and even Francis Ford Coppola — by helming a horror movie as a first-time director. Now, all these years later, we think Sheridan ought to revisit the genre with a powerful Western-flavored horror that only he could bring to life.
A Taylor Sheridan Neo-Western Horror Is the Genre Crossover We Need
There’s no denying that Taylor Sheridan is first and foremost Hollywood’s resident neo-Western guy. The vast majority of his projects take place (at some point or another) in the modern American West, highlighting contemporary cowboys, lawmen, or outlaws. Be it in Texas or Montana, Sheridan knows how to offer a unique perspective on the genre, whether you think Yellowstone is a bit too melodramatic or not. However, back in 2011, the filmmaker hadn’t a single directing job to his name when he was awarded credit for Vile, a low-budget indie horror flick that doubled as a Saw II rip-off. It was the film that not only began his directing career, but it proved how important directorial vision is to a project — and emphasized what can happen when the director does not have that sort of creative control. Although Sheridan has purposely distanced himself from that directorial effort (more on that later), he’s the type of writer-director who could thrive within the horror genre if he just gave it the old cowboy try.
Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
Jason
Michael
Freddy
Pennywise
Chucky
01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
Perhaps the best way for someone like Sheridan to revisit the horror genre is by blending it with his pre-existing passion for the American West. Western horror movies are few and far between, but even taking from the filmmaker’s ventures into thriller territory, such as in films like Wind River or Those Who Wish Me Dead, we can see that he has the chops, and could definitely take it all a step further. Part of what makes Sheridan’s other two directorial efforts stand out is the flawless balance between character and suspense. This is, naturally, pivotal to horror as a genre, which is all about the intersection between those two ideas. Of course, Wind River is structured as a neo-Western mystery first and foremost, while Those Who Wish Me Dead, at its core, essentially boils down to being a survivalist chase. Yet both films have horror bones in them and assert that, with a bit more genre emphasis, Sheridan could tackle horror just as well as the rest of them.
Taylor Sheridan’s Addictive 3-Part Neo-Western Is the Perfect Binge for ‘Yellowstone’ Fans
The show may not return until next year.
Telling horror stories in the modern American West isn’t something most filmmakers dive into. Sure, you have John Carpenter‘s Vampires or Robert Rodriguez‘s From Dusk till Dawn (ironically, both vampire pictures), but many horror flicks take place on either the coasts or in suburban middle-America rather than the middle-of-nowhere Nevada or Wyoming. But there is certainly potential for these sorts of horror features, especially if Sheridan can rope in modern cowboys, pitting men like Cole Hauser‘s Rip Wheeler or Jeremy Renner‘s Cory Lambert against whatever threat (be it natural or supernatural) is out there in the dark of night. He certainly has the right technical vision for such a genre, not to mention his ability to evoke powerful performances from his stars. If we take into account sequences like the trailer shootout in Wind River or the river scene in Those Who Wish Me Dead, a Sheridan-directed neo-Western horror movie seems like a match made in heaven. We’re almost surprised that he hasn’t tacked one already.
Taylor Sheridan Has Distanced Himself From ‘Vile,’ but He Should Return to Horror
A man sitting in a chair in Vile.Image via 2012 Tony-Seven Films & Vile Entertainment
Perhaps part of the reason that Taylor Sheridan has not leaned back into the horror genre (besides a potential lack of interest on his part), is due to his poor experience making Vile. The results of this indie thriller speak for themselves, but Sheridan has also gone on record to explain why he believes that Wind River ought to be considered his directorial debut rather than Vile. When speaking with Rotten Tomatoes about his work as a director, he revealed the truth behind his work on that first horror movie:
A friend of mine raised — I don’t know what he raised — 20 grand or something, and cast his buddies, and wrote this bad horror movie, that I told him not to direct. He was going to direct it and produce it, and he started and freaked out, and called and said, “Can you help me?” I said, “Yeah, I’ll try.” I kind of kept the ship pointed straight, and they went off and edited, and did what they did. I think it’s generous to call me the director. I think he was [trying] to say thank you, in some way. It was an excellent opportunity to point a camera and learn some lessons that actually benefited me on Wind River.
Although Sheridan didn’t have the creative input with Vile that he would later enjoy with Wind River, we can see how the experience would benefit his future work behind-the-camera. But if there’s ever been a time for Sheridan to redeem his brief venture into the world of horror, it would be now, complete with his trademark neo-Western flair. We can only hope he gives the genre another chance some day.
