The black sheep of movie genres: horrors such as Terrifier 3, starring David Howard Thornton, now dominate the box office - Jesse Korman/Cineverse Entertainment
A monster exists that never stops and seldom sleeps. Like Freddy, it stalks our nightmares. Like Jason, it defies all natural order. Its bloody axe has been swinging for longer than Jack Torrance's through the halls of the Overlook, and last week the world was put on ominous notice that this beast has grown arguably more powerful than ever before, ensuring much more chaos to come. The monster in question? Horror movies, of course – a genre of cinema whose latest triumph at the box office, Terrifier 3, surprised even the most ardent of fear aficionados.
Directed by Damien Leone, the festive-themed slasher – about a maniacal clown hellbent on making it a fright Christmas for one and all – managed to outgross Todd Phillips' Joker: Folie à Deux on its second week of release. The DC movie was one of the year's most anticipated releases, and expected to do major business for movie theatres. How could it not? 2019's Joker grossed over $1 billion, won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice International Film Festival and divided the discourse like a meat cleaver through flesh. Wherever you stood on the debate about whether the film encouraged real-life incel culture or merely reflected its ugliness back to us, one thing was beyond argument – Joker was a smash, an d stood to repeat that success or perhaps even outstrip it with Lady Gaga along for the ride in the sequel.
Instead, a different clown emerged triumphant – one whose movie was made for a paltry $2 million, compared to Joker's reported $200 million budget. How Terrifier 3, without a single big name actor, managed to beat one of the most globally recognisable icons in pop culture history, played by an Oscar-winning A-lister opposite one of the biggest recording artists of the century, is one question.
How this keeps happening is another. This year's Longlegs grossed $109 million at the box office on a $10 million budget. Talk To Me, released in 2023, made $92m against $4.45m. Then there was 2022's Barbarian ($45 million against $4.5 million). Get Out, It Follows, The Babadook and beyond. Every year, little-hyped horror movies seem to leap from the shadows like serial killers, penetrating the zeitgeist in ways that few analysts see coming. And they do so to the tune of chiming multiplex cash registers, while the rest of Hollywood flails around, struggling to entice moviegoers away from streaming and social media.
"Other genres come and go in popularity," says Mike Muncer, host of the Evolution of Horror podcast. "Romcoms, superhero movies and so on all have their peaks and troughs but horror consistently brings in audiences." Those genres, he points out, "tend to rely on big names to sell them. With horror, the genre is the sell." It's an observation that, with one glance at Terrifier 3 and Longlegs' IMDB cast listings, proves correct.
The latter may feature a supporting turn from Nicolas Cage, but it's otherwise occupied by genre actors like It Follows star Maika Monroe, with the Terrifier franchise cast made up of relative unknowns. Compare that to a film like Jon Watts' Wolfs – a recent crime caper starring two of the world's biggest actors, George Clooney and Brad Pitt, as a pair of criminal fixers. Or perhaps Fly Me To the Moon – a romcom starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum that grossed just $42 million. It's possible y ou've never even heard of those films.
The horror hit Talk To Me
Horror movies, meanwhile, continue to move the needle culturally, recording huge profits in the process. There's something unique about horror that draws audiences out to multiplexes, Muncer adds, as a major reason for its over-performance. "Watching a horror film is a communal experience. We sit together in a cinema and gasp and scream and laugh. It's a cathartic experience, in which people can see their biggest fears played out on screen, but in a safe space. Doing that with other people can enhance the experience, and we love to discuss our reactions to the movie together afterwards," he says. But its appeal goes deeper than that, the broadcaster also notes. Today's horror movies are simply of a more consistent quality, making going out t o see a slasher movie a surefire bet on variety and originality.
"Great [horror] movies give you a high. It's a shot of adrenaline in the arm that feels like a rollercoaster," agree JD Lifshitz and Raphael Margules, the duo known for their production company BoulderLight Pictures, pointing to the "primal" thrill the genre offers as the main reason for its box office pull. "It's funny – as kids we'd notice, that every once in a while, you'd have a couple of horror movies bomb and journalists would declare that horror is dead."
Zach Creggar's gloriously unhinged Barbarian (2022) grossed $45m against a $4.5m budget - Disney
Instead, the genre isn't just still standing – it's thriving, with a wide range of chills to chase for frightseekers. BoulderLight's filmography – from Zach Creggar's gloriously unhinged Barbarian, to the new slow-burn serial killer tale Woman Of the Hour – hints at the broad range of horror that exists in 2024. Terrifier 3 is a killer clown movie – a horror offshoot that in 2017, spawned the biggest-grossing horror of all time, It Chapter One. Look elsewhere in the 2024 film calendar, however, and you'll find extraterrestrial terror (A Quiet Place: Day One, Alien: Romulus); serial killer thrillers (Longlegs, MaXXXine); Catholic creepiness (Immaculate, The First Omen); the list goes on.
Another factor in horror's success in 2024 might be that it's considered a refuge from the endless "IP" (intellectual property) products found elsewhere in Hollywood. As multiplex attendances have fallen across the last decade, studio executives have begun to approach original ideas with extreme caution, commissioning more bankable remakes, reboots and sequels instead. In horror, meanwhile, "some of the highest-grossing [films] of the last few years have been original properties. This doesn't happen with action films, dramas, superhero movies or comedies," says Muncer.
Muncer lists 2022's supernatural spooker Smile and Joe Hill adaptation The Black Phone as examples, but it's his reference to Jordan Peele's Nope and Get Out – two debate-stirring smashes that made $420 million between them against a combined budget of just over $70m – that brings us onto another reason why horror may currently be the most attractive genre with filmgoers.
It's no coincidence that some of the most exciting film-makers to have emerged over the last decade – from Peele and Hereditary director Ari Aster to The Witch's Robert Eggers and Raw's Julia Ducournau – have started out in the horror space. For one, in a purse-string-tightening Hollywood, horrors are easier to get greenlit than dramas or action movies, because they can be made on shoestring budgets. "Some of the most successful horror films in cinema history – The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity – have been films with microbudgets, so they're often low-risk and high-reward for studios," adds Muncer.
There's always been a huge community of horror fans who bond around their love for the genre. "Making the podcast has made me realise people don't just like horror – they love it," says Muncer, adding that it brings "weirdos and outsiders" together, often in unexpectedly romantic ways. "I'm attending a wedding this month of two people who met through listening to my podcast," he laughs.
The Blair Witch Project, still one of the most profitable films ever made - Chris Helcermanas-Benge
But it's not that tight-knit community alone powering the horror surge at the box office. Once the "black sheep of movie genres – the cult weirdo that lurks in the shadows," as Muncer puts it, now it's responsible for a significant amount of cinemas' foot traffic each year, in a filmgoing landscape increasingly desperate for those ticket sales. Horror is no longer a niche concern on the fringes of the film industry – it's the difference between its survival and annihilation.
Which brings Lifshitz and Margules to an intriguing question. Will the Oscars and other industry award-givers start to recognise the historically-overlooked genre more now that it's propping up the movie business? "We do think the Academy will recognise it more. Toni Collette would be nominated for Hereditary if it were this year. Get Out winning Best Screenplay [at the Oscars in 2018] was certainly a tide turner. Jordan Peele has talked about M. Night Shyamalan as an influence, and we do think M. Night's first few movies set the gold standard for the type of movie the Academy can and should recognise, perhaps more today than ever."
Were that to happen, it'd be only right. Horror isn't just 2024's most bankable genre – it's also the most creatively rich right now.
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