Jim Carrey’s Dumb & Dumber horror movie idea was inspired by Paranormal Activity
Dumb and Dumber almost became a found-footage horror movie
Jim Carrey had a spooky idea for a Dumb and Dumber sequel and approached the directing duo known as Daniels to try and get it made.
The first Dumb and Dumber film is one of Carrey's '90s classics. The 1994 film stars Carrey and Jeff Daniels as Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne, two dim-witted best friends who go on a roadtrip to return a suitcase filled with money to its rightful owner.
In 2014 the long-gestating sequel, Dumb and Dumber To, debuted in cinemas however fans and some critics believed it failed to live up to the original film.
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Some scenes for the first film were filmed at the Stanley Hotel in Colorado which famously inspired the Overlook Hotel in Stephen King's 1977 novel The Shining and its film adaptation.
The cast and crew experienced paranormal activity during production of Dumb and Dumber and this gave Carrey the idea for a scary sequel when filming Dumb and Dumber To.
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert recalled Carrey's spine-chilling pitch in a roundtable with The Hollywood Reporter and it honestly sounds a lot better than the film we got in the end.
"Very early in our careers, Jim Carrey reached out," Kwan shared. "He had just seen Paranormal Activity and was like, 'Guys, it's found footage and it's horror — have you seen it?' And we were like, 'Uh-huh, we've heard of it. Where is this going?'
"And he was like, 'I haven't seen anyone do that — but with comedy. And I have this great idea.'"
The director then goes into detail about the film and honestly we're quite disappointed we'll never get a chance to watch it.
"Basically, the set of Dumb and Dumber was famously a haunted set. He's like, 'The whole time we were shooting, things were breaking, people were getting hurt, doors were swinging, and it felt haunted. We're going to shoot Dumb and Dumber To, and I want you guys to do a found-footage horror comedy on the set. While we're filming, you guys are going to make a feature-length, behind-the-scenes video that slowly becomes a horror film.'
"We're like, 'OK, we're in. This is amazing.'
"We wrote a whole outline and were really excited. Then we sat down with the producer, we pitched the idea, and they're like, 'We're not actually going to make this. I'm sorry, Jim got really excited, but there's no way the studio is going to let us do a movie while they're shooting Dumb and Dumber To."
Although the horror-inspired Dumb and Dumber offshoot never happened, Kwan and Scheinert went on to direct this year’s acclaimed comedy-drama film Everything Everywhere All at Once. The film stars Michelle Yeoh as an overwhelmed laundromat owner who is being audited by the IRS when she discovers she must connect with parallel universe versions of herself to prevent the destruction of the multiverse.
Topics: Film and TV, Jim Carrey
Gregory Robinson