In horror, we often talk about the final girl, the trope of that virginal teenager who is paying attention to her surroundings while all of her friends are distracted having sex and doing drugs. She’s usually timid, but in the third act, she summons the strength to take down her attacker. We don’t talk about final boys as often. That’s mostly because there haven’t been as many. When you look at the heyday of ’80s slashers and horror, the three iterations of Tommy Jarvis in the Friday the 13th franchise, or Bruce Campbell’s Ash in the Evil Dead movies are the major final “boys” that come to mind for most. We see more of them now, though not boys but men, and not a character, but actors who have made a career out of being called scream kings. Ethan Hawke is one thanks to Sinister, The Purge, and The Black Phone. Throw in Kevin Bacon as well with films like Friday the 13th, Tremors, and You Should Have Left. Patrick Wilson is the man of the moment thanks to the latest Insidious movie, on top of his work in the Conjuring universe.
There’s another scream king out there, one who isn’t a household name like Hawke, Bacon, or Wilson yet, but one whose face you know even if you haven’t memorized the name. Kyle Gallner is well on his way to becoming modern horror’s great scream king. The past few years have seen him take on multiple layered roles in horror, and that continues in 2024 with the much talked about, critically acclaimed indie film Strange Darling and his return later this fall for Smile 2.
Kyle Gallner’s Career Started Off With Decent Horror Movies
As a teenager, Kyle Gallner broke out with recurring roles on shows like CSI: NY and small feature film parts, such as appearing in Wes Craven‘s Red Eye in 2005. Though that part in the latter was small, working with a horror icon like Craven hinted at where Gallner’s career was soon going. It was in 2009 and 2010 when Gallner appeared in a trifecta of horror movies, and his fate as burgeoning a scream king was sealed. Though he was in his early 20s, his babyface looks made him the ideal vulnerable teenager. In 2009, Gallner landed the lead, alongside Virginia Madsen of Candyman fame as his mother, in The Haunting in Connecticut. Gallner played Matt Campbell, a teenager with cancer. He got to show a side that made you feel sympathetic for him, and then the haunting starts. Matt is the focus, fighting against the supernatural, and we get to feel his horror. If we don’t buy how scared he is, we’re not scared. But audiences did buy into his performance, with The Haunting in Connecticutmaking a very impressive $77 million worldwide.
That same year he would appear in another film, one where he wasn’t the lead, and where the box office haul wasn’t as high, but yet where it seemed to have more eyes on it. Jennifer’s Body was written by and starred two of Hollywood’s “It Girls,” with writer Diablo Cody coming off the success of Juno in 2007, for which she won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Meanwhile, its lead, Megan Fox, had spent the summer of 2009 all over multiplexes thanks to Transformers. In Jennifer’s Body, Fox plays Jennifer, the popular girl at school who becomes possessed by a demon. Gallner plays Colin. He’s the emo kid, dressed all in black, wearing eyeliner, his hair big, his lip pierced. You look at him and think he’ll be the stereotypical douchey villain, yet Colin is kind, happy, and innocent. He falls for Jennifer and asks her on a date, only to be lured to his doom. You can’t help but feel so sorry for him when you look into Gallner’s sad eyes as his character realizes his fate.
Gallner got to flirt with death again in the controversial 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. The film was ripped apart by critics and audiences, sadly having no chance to recapture the magic of such a classic, but it’s better than the grief it got. Jackie Earle Haley is a chilling Freddy Krueger and the script takes risks, trying to be different from the original. Get rid of some wretched CGI and tighten things up, and you don’t have that bad of a movie. Part of what does work is Gallner’s performance. He plays one of the main leads, Quentin, a friend at the side of Rooney Mara‘s Nancy for most of the film. He lives this time, the brave final boy fighting against supernatural evil. While the main battle is between Nancy and Freddy, Quentin is the connecting tissue between them, as he fights Freddy alongside Nancy. That doesn’t work without an actor like Gallner who can deftly step between the background and the forefront seamlessly.
‘Smile’ and 2022’s ‘Scream’ Cemented Kyle Gallner’s Status as a Horror Expert
For the next dozen years, Gallner had a successful career. He became a solid and dependable supporting actor, seen in movies like Red State and American Sniper. He did a few small horror films as well. In 2022, his status as a horror scream king took off in a big way with the back-to-back hits of Scream and Smile. In January 2022, he took on another horror icon, moving on from Freddy to Ghostface The final boy had grown up since his time on Elm Street. The babyface was gone, replaced by an older, thinner-faced man. He didn’t look like an innocent teenager anymore. It made him perfect for the role of Vinnie Schneider. If there was ever a guy who looked like a sociopath, it was him, with his long hair, muscle car, and violent attitude. The sweet kid who battled Freddy could now believably play an adult asshole. His slight drawl only adds to the menace when he flashes a knife at Mason Gooding‘s Chad. He’s so obviously a heel that you know he’s going to die. In fact, we’re glad he dies. We used to root for this kid. Now, he’d become such a great actor that we could easily cheer for his demise too.
Gallner’s ability to switch from villain to hero seamlessly is what made him so effective in the surprise horror hit of 2022, Smile.Scream was a big, iconic franchise making its grand return, yet Smile, a film few knew was even coming, made $24 million more than Scream. It’s there that he plays a police detective named Joel. You’d be forgiven for seeing him and for a minute wondering if he was miscast. He’s a great actor, sure, but the stoic, serious detective… I don’t know. However, with Gallner’s chameleon ways of slipping into any character, you quickly forget your doubts. Smile is almost a bigger, much better version of the A Nightmare on Elm Street reboot. In the film, Sosie Bacon‘s Rose is haunted by a supernatural presence, just like Nancy, and it’s Joel who must fight with her like Quentin did. Quentin saw Freddy though, but Joel hasn’t seen the entity Rose sees. He has to believe her and trust her, and he can’t exactly fight alongside her because she’s always running away. Smile as a movie could have run away if it wasn’t careful, with smiling demons and a woman going mad, but Gallner’s Joel is there as the outsider looking in and keeping everything grounded. He is a true scream king in the way he fights for the scream queen, losing his life in the end because he isn’t able to turn his back on her.
2023 Gave Us Two Great Films from Kyle Gallner
Kyle Gallner’s status as a scream king has continued into this year with two more films. No, they’re not big blockbusters like Scream and Smile were, but they’re still very effective. First was Mother, May I. Gallner is the hero again, a man named Emmett fighting to rescue his fiancée (Holland Roden) from the clutches of possession. The twist is that she’s taken over by Emmett’s mother, who is still alive. Talk about a relationship killer! The film is dark, weird and funny in a messed-up way. It’s a small film, with Gallner and Roden alone for a lot of it, almost like they’re in a play. Gallner nails it, showing that he can transform and become whatever he’s given, no matter how strange the premise is.
In one of Gallner’s latest movies, The Passenger, he shows once more how he can go from a hero to a villain so effortlessly. In this tense thriller, Gallner plays Benson, a man who snaps and goes on a murderous rampage. He brings a frightened co-worker named Randolph (Johnny Berchtold) along during the mayhem. In The Passenger, Gallner doesn’t just have to act evil but almost become it. This isn’t just a few scenes of being the scary bad guy like in Scream, but a whole film. Put out by Blumhouse, it’s out on-demand now. It won’t get the attention Scream and Smile got, but for what he does in it, The Passenger might be the one that pushes Gallner into a series of roles that make him not an underrated scream king but the scream king of the 2020s.
2024 Continues To Show Kyle Gallner’s Hold on the Genre
In 2023, Kyle Gallner completed his transformation from an often supporting actor to a leading man. In 2024, that continues, although there is also a stop with Parker Finn‘s Smile 2, which releases on October 18. The sequel this time follows Naomi Scott as a pop star named Skye Riley, stricken by the same curse that was after our poor heroes in the first film. Gallner returns for this movie, but don’t expect him to be around long, as it wasn’t looking too good for him at the end of Smile. It’s another Kyle Gallner film that really deserves your attention in 2024. Written and directed by JT Mollner, and co-starring Willa Fritzgerald, Strange Darling has Gallner in the lead role as a character simply named the Demon. That might be an odd name, but for Gallner, that somehow fits without questioning it or knowing the plot. Strange Darling is a horror-adjacent film set in small-town Oregon about a serial killer, but also so much more, with twists you won’t see coming.
Strange Darling was sadly not a wide release, with it only being put out in just over a thousand theaters and making $1.1 million worldwide since its August 23 release. The lack of wide releases for most of his films is the only thing stopping Gallner from becoming a household name. Strange Darling has become a critical darling, with an astonishing 96% on Rotten Tomatoes from over 100 reviews. Collider’s own Taylor Gates gave it a 9 out of 10, calling it “a spectacular survival horror.” Gates raved about Gallner’s performance, writing that “Gallner is excellent as The Demon, playing him with a chilling groundedness. Even so, he oozes a down-to-earth charisma and smooth-talking charm.”
That blurb is the most accurate way to describe Kyle Gallner as an actor. He’s a good-looking man with movie star looks, yet as a character, there’s something we often don’t quite trust about him. It could be the rugged good looks, with the angular lines of his face, or his facial hair, or just the simple way that he can completely alter his facial expression with a simple sneer that’s terrifying. You can buy him as the hero cop in Smile, you can believe his victims in his earlier roles, and now it’s so easy to see him as the villain. He has that charm that pulls you in and makes him impossible to ignore, just like what Randolph felt with Benson in The Passenger. Benson had just been on a mass murder spree in front of him and then abducted the guy, yet Benson, while deeply afraid of him, is also drawn to this man who notices his existence. That’s because Kyle Gallner is so captivating, no matter if his character’s motivations are good or bad. Let’s just hope that he gets the chance to captivate casual fans more often very soon. Kyle Gallner is not just a scream king, but one of our best actors.
Strange Darling is in theaters now.
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