An image of Mickey Mouse holding a match and looking at a ghoulish figure on the wall in 1929's The Haunted House. The right said of the image has text saying "Screams in the Vault: Public Domain Horror in the Age of IP".
As many iconic works have entered into the public domain since 2019, there has been a surge of horror film adaptations. These horror adaptations have received strong critiques for their deviation from or failure to say something unique about their source material. Ultimately, this criticism has spilled over into color correction about the public domain itself, framing it as a creative dead-end. This critique, however, overlooks the underlying benefit of the public domain: the ability for anyone, not just corporations, to create their own version/adaptation of the same work. Despite consistent criticism surrounding public domain horror adaptations, a further study of these works reveals underlying contemporary industry conditions that lead to their creation, and demonstrates the enduring importance of the public domain in enabling creative freedom beyond pure corporate control.
These adaptations exist within the current characteristics of contemporary filmmaking; a type of filmmaking largely driven by financial risk-aversion that relies on Intellectual Property (IP) adaptations rather than original stories to guarantee audience attendance and big money earnings. Look no further than April 2025’s A Minecraft Movie that relied on the Minecraft IP to pull in over $150 million in a single weekend in the United States and Canada, as well as over $900 million worldwide across its theatrical run. As studios continue to embrace IP and risk-aversion as rules of the game, creators must either find ways to craft original stories within these confines, or find another way to keep the cost down, such as working in a historically proven low-cost genre: Horror.
Horror films are a popular selection for filmmakers as they can be made more economically compared to other genres by utilizing fewer elements such as limited locations, small casts, and visual ambiguity to enact the horror/unease. There is a long lineage of economical horror films that set off careers including John Carpenter’s Halloween, Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, and Mike Flanagan’s Absentia. Each film was made for less than $500,000, unadjusted for inflation, and launched careers of well known and successful filmmakers. While each film is hugely varied and different from one another, they are all connected by one common element: being original stories. But when IP is heavily guarded and protected by risk-averse studios, it makes sense to turn to the public domain for creative freedom as an independent filmmaker working with budgetary constrictions.
Though shaped by the same constraints and standards, the resulting films vary wildly. Some horror films adapted from public domain works lean heavily on shock value while others take a more reflexive approach, using the tools of horror to comment on copyright itself. In 2022, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey utilized the shock elements to draw an audience, while 2025’s Screamboat embedded a metatextual critique of copyright lengths.