No, Horror Icon John Carpenter Did Not Join Letterboxd

Earlier this month, horror fans noticed that a user joined micro-blogging platform Letterboxd with the username “John Carpenter,” with the account contributing reviews of a large portion of Carpenter-directed movies with seemingly personal anecdotes. Despite every Carpenter fan knowing how uninterested he is in not only watching his own movies, but also talking about them, the account gained traction and various Reddit threads and social media posts reported that the “Master of Horror” had joined the service. Carpenter himself, however, took to Twitter to refute those claims with the exact type of reaction you would expect from a filmmaker who has no interest in Letterboxd.

“What the hell is a Letterboxd!??” Carpenter simply shared on Twitter.

Starting with the release of 1976’s Assault on Precinct 13, Carpenter had a tremendous run of seminal genre movies, which includes Halloween, The Fog, Escape from New York, The Thing, Christine, the Academy Award-nominated Starman, Big Trouble in Little China, and Prince of Darkness, up to 1988’s They Live. Carpenter’s last feature film was 2010’s The Ward, as the filmmaker has instead been focusing on creating music in the last decade.

While there are a number of parody accounts on social media platforms, Letterboxd features a large collection of cinephiles who typically offer their thoughts on films in earnest, regardless of how brief or extensive those thoughts might be. The service’s lack of satire is one reason why users thought this could really have been Carpenter, as well as the fact that the reviews posted weren’t trying to be especially funny and often included specific anecdotes about Carpenter’s experiences with Hollywood collaborators. 

Carpenter, who typically only uses social media platforms to talk about video games, the NBA, or to promote his upcoming musical projects, didn’t quite seem like the type who would opt into another social media platform, especially to talk about movies. Fans were immediately wary of the account, but since the filmmaker has had no problem speaking bluntly about his own works and the films of others, the candid tone of these reviews seemed possible. The account’s review for Halloween III: Season of the Witch, however, noted that the score he co-composed with Alan Howarth felt eerily similar to the score “he” crafted for 1982’s The Thing, despite Ennioe Morricone having crafted the music for the sci-fi adventure. Even though it has been 40 years, Carpenter likely wouldn’t have forgotten such a detail.

As of this writing, the parody account has been deactivated. 

Did you think Carpenter had actually joined the platform? Contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or on Instagram to talk all things Star Wars and horror!