Trojans and horror filmmaking make up one of the longest (and profitable) partnerships in Hollywood history. Early alum and faculty member Ray Harryhausen pioneered and perfected the stop motion creature feature early in the genre’s life. USC alumni in horror include John Carpenter (Halloween), Dan O’Bannon (Alien), Robert Zemeckis (What Lies Beneath), Scott Derickson (Sinister), Matt Reeves (Cloverfield), Clara Aranovich (Tentacles), Jeff Wadlow (Truth or Dare), Tracey Oliver (The Blackening), Rebekhah McKendry (The Elevator Game), Luis Iga Garza (Murder in the Woods), and Akela Cooper (M3gan) which only scratches the surface of the long love affair between SCA and the genre. Trojans have been part of horror through the genre’s entire evolution.

Production Division alum Adam B. Stein (MFA, 2005) joins a long line of Trojan alumni working in the fright game. Early in his career, Stein directed the indie hit Freaks which was one of the biggest sales at the 2018 Toronto Film Festival. He was nominated for an Emmy award for his directing work on the TV series MECH X-4 and has written and directed projects for Disney, Universal, Apple, TNT, and ABC.

Stein’s upcoming horror gig is directing the next installment in the beloved horror franchise Final Destination: Bloodlines. Stein sat down with In Motion magazine to tell us which 5 horror films would be on the syllabus if he was teaching horror filmmaking to the next generation of horror makers.