New Book Goes Behind the Scenes of ‘The Purge’ and Other Blumhouse Favorites (Exclusive)

Blumhouse is chronicling its history in horror and the genre’s promising future.

The legendary horror studio has culminated the best moments from the production and execution of its iconic films — including The Purge, Halloween, Paranormal Activity and more — in Horror’s New Wave, set to debut Sept. 30. In honor of the book’s release, the studio’s namesake and co-founder Jason Blum reflects on the studio and what it’s grown into.

Blum tells PEOPLE Horror’s New Wave is “like a 15-year yearbook for horror,” filled with tales and glimpses of fan-favorite films that have never before seen the light of day. For example, Blum said one of the filming locations for The Craft: Legacy appeared legitimately haunted and had to undergo a “cleaning” for the project to proceed.

“Doors opening and closing, shadows in front of lights, phones taking photos — it turns out that the place, built in 1877, had been a hospice in the late 1800s,” Blum shares.

Blumhouse has forged an unforgettable legacy, Blum says, and notes some of the films have become a sort of dark inspiration for viewers. The producer has often heard viewers express a desire for The Purge to be a real-world event, he said.

“To me, The Purge always carried with it a sense of ‘it could happen here.’ That’s part of what makes it so disturbing. It’s not anything I’d like to see in real life, and I hope I don’t.” Blum says. “That movie was always meant as a warning — not a suggestion.”

In an exclusive excerpt of Horror’s New Wave, Blumhouse unpacks the legacy of The Purge in cinema and worldwide culture.

The Purge imagines a future America (2022, which was still technically the future when the movie came out) where crime has been virtually eradicated, thanks to the implementation of “the Purge,” a single night every year when all crime is legal. You can kill, maim, torture, rob and terrorize to your heart’s content for 12 hours. The neighbor you share idle chit-chat with on a regular morning might be holding a gun to your head on Purge night. 

As horror movie premises go, it’s as bleak as it gets. Countless horror films scare audiences with the simplicity of a foreign entity trying to defile the sanctity of the home. Michael Myers roams the streets of Haddonfield in Halloween, stabbing people to death inside their own houses. Freddy Krueger debases the suburban American ideal through the dreams of teenagers in Nightmare on Elm Street. The Alien in Alien literally invades your body like a parasite. [But] the monster in The Purge isn’t an alien or an unknowable slasher entity. The monster is your friends, your family, and even yourself. 

The invading parasite is a culture of hate and paranoia and sadism — mass hysteria as sanctioned by the government that is supposed to protect you. Writer/director James DeMonaco created a nightmare for our times — one that, in hindsight, feels frighteningly prescient. 

As America’s cultural divide has widened, the Purge films have been there to offer some respite. As many artistic endeavors aim to do, the Purge series makes provocative statements while offering the comfort of entertainment and the release of real-world anxiety through fiction.

Other dystopian genre films like The Omega Man, starring Charlton Heston, or World War Z, starring Brad Pitt, imagine the anarchy coming from a virus that breaks society and turns neighbors into literal zombies. In films like that, the cultural commentary comes more from metaphor than with the bluntness and directness of The Purge. The “zombie” figure is a perfect stand-in for the other — the person you don’t trust, the external enemy force. In The Purge, the enemy comes from within.

Writer/director James DeMonaco on his inspiration for The Purge

My dad was a Star Trek fanatic, and he would tell me, “You’re sitting down, and you’re watching Star Trek with me.” So, that created this love of sci-fi and specifically of Star Trek. “Return of the Archons” was an episode that stayed in my head. I can’t say it was a direct inspiration; I think it was one of those inspirations that came almost after I came up with the idea. It was an indirect coupling with something my wife said in a road rage incident that inspired the initial idea. Also, I despise guns and what I feel is the lack of gun-control laws in America.

I think these three elements — Star Trek, my wife in the road rage incident, and my hatred of guns — led me to The Purge. My wife and I were cut off by a drunk driver, and I got into an actual fistfight with the driver. He was out of his mind before the cops came. My wife said, “I wish we all had one free one a year.” She’s a nice woman. She’s not a terrible person, but I knew what she meant, because it was such an egregiously grotesque moment of human behavior by this man. That stayed with me, this idea of a “free one.”

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And then, the Star Trek episode where a seemingly peaceful alien civilization engages in a yearly orgy of violence called “Festival.” There was also an Elio Petri film called The 10th Victim about a yearly event called “The Big Hunt,” during which people fight to the death to avoid global warfare. I love Elio Petri films. I’m into Italian cinema. I think this combination led to the idea of this holiday that legalizes murder.

The Purge franchise is fundamentally not about a single character, though characters do reappear, like Leo Barnes. It’s not even really about the world. It’s about an idea. I think ideas, by definition, are supple and adaptable. The soil of the Purge idea is so rich. There are a million scenarios where the idea of all crime being legal would distort humanity. That’s why there’s an infinite supply of scenarios.

Excerpted from ‘Horror’s New Wave: 15 Years of Blumhouse’. Copyright © 2025 Blumhouse Productions, LLC. Reproduced by permission of Simon Element, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved.

Horror’s New Wave: 15 Years of Blumhouse goes on sale Sept. 30 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.