Modern Horror Movie Trivia
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50 free Modern Horror Movie trivia questions with answers. Horror has had a remarkable quarter century, from Saw and Paranormal Activity kicking off the micro-budget boom to Get Out winning an Oscar and Sinners breaking nomination records. This quiz sticks strictly to films released from 2000 onward: the Conjuring and Insidious universes, Jordan Peele's Get Out, Us and Nope, Ari Aster's Hereditary and Midsommar, Robert Eggers' The Witch, The Lighthouse and Nosferatu, plus It, A Quiet Place, The Babadook, It Follows, Talk to Me, M3GAN, Smile, Barbarian, Terrifier 2, Longlegs, The Substance, Weapons and 28 Years Later. Easy questions ask who played Pennywise and what the doppelgängers in Us are called; the hard ones want The Lighthouse's aspect ratio, where Midsommar was really shot and which show Final Destination was first pitched to. Studios and directors get their turn too, from Blumhouse and A24 to Zach Cregger's sketch-comedy roots. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the individual films, franchises and filmmakers, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up. If you want the classics, our classic horror and 90s horror quizzes cover everything before 2000.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which director broke through with Saw (2004) and later created The Conjuring Universe?
James Wan
James Wan. He and writer Leigh Whannell filmed one trap scene as a short and sent it out on DVD with the script, which won the backing to shoot the feature in just 18 days.
Q 02Paranormal Activity (2007) was originally shot for roughly how much money?
$15,000
$15,000. Oren Peli shot it in his own home, and its return is often cited as the highest of any film, passing The Blair Witch Project, though such sums leave out marketing costs.
Q 03In The Conjuring (2013), the Warrens help which family in a Rhode Island farmhouse?
The Perrons
The Perrons. The film sent so many trespassers to the real Rhode Island farmhouse that its later owners sued Warner Bros. in 2015; the case was dismissed two years later.
Q 04Which doll, introduced in The Conjuring's opening scene, went on to headline spin-off films of her own?
Annabelle
Annabelle. The films' cracked porcelain figure is an invention: the doll the Warrens kept in a display case at their Connecticut museum is a soft Raggedy Ann.
Q 05The demon nun of The Conjuring 2 and The Nun is an incarnation of which entity?
Valak
Valak. The nun did not exist until about three months before The Conjuring 2 opened: reshoots swapped out a horned, winged demon for Bonnie Aarons in a habit.
Q 06In Insidious (2010), what is the name of the spirit realm where Dalton is trapped?
The Further
The Further. The Lamberts move house to escape the haunting, only for it to follow them, because the spirits want Dalton's empty body, not the building.
Q 07Which Academy Award did Get Out win at the 2018 ceremony?
Best Original Screenplay
Best Original Screenplay. The ending Jordan Peele first shot had police arrest Chris; after a test audience deflated, he reshot it as the more hopeful rescue.
Q 08What sound does Missy Armitage use as a hypnotic trigger in Get Out?
A spoon stirring a teacup
A spoon stirring a teacup. The clink drops Chris into what Missy calls the sunken place, a dark void where he is awake but cannot move a muscle.
Q 09What are the doppelgängers called in Jordan Peele's Us (2019)?
The Tethered
The Tethered. Abandoned in tunnels beneath the country, they surface in a mass uprising and join hands in a human chain, a dark replay of 1986's Hands Across America.
Q 10In Us, young Adelaide first meets her double in 1986 at a funhouse on which beach boardwalk?
Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz. The Lost Boys was filmed on that same boardwalk in the summer of 1986, the year the prologue is set, and Peele counts it among the 1980s nods he planted on purpose.
Q 11In Nope (2022), Jupe's childhood sitcom starred a chimpanzee with what name?
Gordy
Gordy. Bursting balloons sent the chimp into a rampage on set, and the grown-up Jupe has turned the tragedy into a sideline, charging fans to see his hidden room of memorabilia.
Q 12Which company released Hereditary (2018), the first feature from writer-director Ari Aster?
A24
A24. Aster pitched it to studios as a family tragedy, careful not to call it horror, and it became the company's highest-grossing film worldwide at the time.
Q 13Midsommar is set at a festival in rural Sweden, but in which country was most of it filmed?
Hungary
Hungary. Ari Aster said he could not afford to shoot in Sweden, so the commune's village was built in an empty field outside Budapest and dressed to look Swedish.
Q 21A 2020 Broadband Choices study measured heart rates and named which film the scariest ever made?
Sinister
Sinister. It began as a nightmare: after watching The Ring, co-writer C. Robert Cargill dreamt of finding a box of Super 8 reels in his attic that showed a whole family being hanged.
Q 22Who wrote Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later (2002)?
Alex Garland
Alex Garland. The novelist behind The Beach took his opening, a man waking in a deserted hospital, from John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, as director Danny Boyle has said.
Q 23The Spanish found-footage hit REC (2007) was remade in America the following year under what title?
Quarantine
Q 14In It (2017), Pennywise preys on the children of which fictional Maine town created by Stephen King?
Derry
Derry. King moved his family to Bangor, Maine, to write the novel, walked the town collecting its stories, and has said Derry is his portrait of the place.
Q 15Who played Pennywise in It (2017)?
Bill Skarsgård
Bill Skarsgård. He built Pennywise's physical behaviour from wildlife programmes, borrowing the restless energy of hyenas and the lower-lip scowl of bears.
Q 16Who directed A Quiet Place (2018), also co-starring alongside Emily Blunt?
John Krasinski
John Krasinski. He refused to cast a hearing actress as the deaf daughter and hired Millicent Simmonds, who is deaf, wanting someone who lives it and could teach him.
Q 17The Babadook (2014) was made in which country?
Australia
Australia. Jennifer Kent shot it in Adelaide and shielded her six-year-old lead by telling him a gentler version of the story, one in which young Samuel is the hero.
Q 18In It Follows (2014), how is the pursuing entity passed from one person to the next?
By sexual intercourse
By sexual intercourse. Writer-director David Robert Mitchell took the slow, never-stopping follower from a recurring nightmare of his youth, which he links to his parents' divorce.
Q 19What is the name of the family's billy goat in The Witch (2015)?
Black Phillip
Black Phillip. He was played by a goat named Charlie, so unruly that director Robert Eggers credits the editor with piecing the performance together from what little footage was usable.
Q 20Who plays the junior keeper opposite Willem Dafoe in The Lighthouse (2019)?
Robert Pattinson
Robert Pattinson. The film's nearly square frame began as a tease: the cinematographer joked that 1.19:1, a shape used briefly at the dawn of sound, would suit the director, who took him at his word.
Quarantine. The remake swaps the cause: the Spanish outbreak traces to a possessed girl studied for the Vatican, the American one to a mutated rabies stolen by a doomsday cult.
Q 24Who directed The Cabin in the Woods (2011), co-writing it with Joss Whedon in his own directorial debut?
Drew Goddard
Drew Goddard. Filmed in 2009, his debut then sat on a shelf for almost three years while MGM sorted out its finances, until another studio bought it and released it in 2012.
Q 25In Talk to Me (2022), what object do the teenagers use to contact spirits?
An embalmed severed hand
An embalmed severed hand. A player grips it and says 'talk to me', then 'I let you in' to be possessed, and friends must break the hold within 90 seconds or the spirit may stay.
Q 26Which Get Out star plays Gemma, the roboticist who builds the killer doll in M3GAN?
Allison Williams
Allison Williams. The doll took two performers: Amie Donald, a young competitive dancer from New Zealand, played the body and co-choreographed the viral dance, while Jenna Davis gave the voice.
Q 27Smile (2022) was promoted with a stunt that planted unblinking, grinning actors in the crowd at what kind of events?
Major League Baseball games
Major League Baseball games. Actors holding the film's fixed grin sat behind home plate, in view of the TV cameras, at Yankees, Mets and Dodgers games the weekend before release.
Q 28In Barbarian (2022), Tess discovers a dark secret in a Detroit house she booked through which service?
Airbnb
Airbnb. Zach Cregger began with a writing exercise, not a film: one scene packed with the small red flags a self-help book warns women about, which led him to a double-booked rental at night.
Q 29The directing team Radio Silence made which 2019 horror-comedy about a bride hunted by her wealthy new in-laws?
Ready or Not
Ready or Not. The bride draws the hide-and-seek card, and her in-laws believe they must sacrifice her before dawn or die themselves, the price of a pact behind the family fortune.
Q 30What is the name of the silent killer in Terrifier 2 (2022)?
Art the Clown
Art the Clown. Fans paid to see more of him: director Damien Leone asked for $50,000 online to stage one practical-effects scene, doubled it in a day and finished with several times the goal.