Saying that horror is bigger than ever is like saying that skyscraper will do well because action movies are bigger than ever. The action blockbusters are comic book or sci-fi movies. Look at the slasher list on BOM; the biggest movies remain the first 3 scream films. The list isn’t exactly producing hits lately. Supernatural list is. The growth of horror can be argued to simply be a shift in the genre to a more successful style. Plus, the special effects are now good enough not to detract from a scene as much.

The reason for that is they simply haven't have a chance to thrive in this new environment. Since Scream 4 disappointed, there's been little to no high profile slasher films released. The big exception is Happy Death Day (admittedly that did have a supernatural bent to it, but was still primarily a slasher), and that opened to $26M or about the same as the biggest opening for a Halloween film.

Early Previews have it at $10M. Yuge.

Libs is rolling over in her grave at the phrase “Early Previews” though. My b B.

$10m+ is outstanding, but it could still miss $30m OD with it. Still, $70m seems likely if accurate.

I hope it doesn't go below the 10 Million now that that number was thrown out there.

The Ring and the Grudge were doing respectable numbers by today’s standards in an era where traditional generic horror movies were much less successful. The sixth sense and what lies beneath as well, if you count them as horror. It’s sort of like how Batman and Superman had huge numbers long before the comic book trend began.

Also a note on Friday the 13th: it was down 77% Saturday to Saturday, so it was much more than just the date.

The Grudge fed directly from the success of The Ring, and that success was so unstable that the proper sequel couldn't even outopen The Grudge. The Sixth Sense and What Lies Beneath both had starpower and then strong WOM to drive them.

Meanwhile, The Conjuring films have continued to thrive even when Annabelle 1 was poorly received. The last two alone have produced Split, Get Out, IT, Hereditary (a big success by A24's standards), Annabelle 2, The Nun, A Quiet Place, and now Halloween is projected to have a $33M opening day. That's a variety of films that span a wide range of subgenres of horror.


It's first Saturday was also Valentine's Day, and it had a holiday on Monday. Friday the 13th had basically the most frontloaded release date imaginable.

Star power or not a Bruce Willis movie could end up with very different results depending on the film. And sure it had great WOM the same is true on your second list.

WOM killed the ring two even if I loved it. You may consider this a subjective measure, but I think if a horror is to have wider appeal I’m much less likely to dislike it. Those types of horror movies have not had success lately, they have mostly died off. The wrong turns, 28 days later, cabin in the woods, hills have eyes; I’ll even add Texas chainsaw massacre. You can argue chicken or egg, but if they consistently had success there would be more of them. Like Star Wars, this weekend was apparently built on the past. There is a diversity of horror movies doing well, but that’s kind of the point, they are using different models.

I’ll put it this way: the biggest thing holding down horror movies for so log was divisive WOM. Horror fans might have liked them, but CinemaScores and other rankings showed that audiences didn’t. That’s the main thing that’s changed.

You said Annabelle had poor WOM, but it had a better CinemaScore than the ring(which was good for horror at the time). I know you’re going to argue that audiences now like horror movies more, but I’m certain it’s largely related to the way they make them based on the ones I’ve seen. Get Out, Split, A Quiet Place, The Conjuring, Insidious, It. These movies would have been well received in any era. Of course CinemaScore strongly correlates with BO.

Also you didn’t even mention MEG, probably because it is more similar to a disaster movie. There were plenty of huge movies that would classify as horror strictly speaking, but they were blockbusters in ambition, style, tone, visuals, and rating. Jurassic Park, The Mummy, Van Helsing, King Kong, I Am Legend, World War Z, and half the alien apocalypse movies. Add s few jokes, better lighting and special effects, and a quiet place is pretty much the same thing. There’s no clear line, would you say, the nun is more similar to saw than a summer movie?

Disaster movies are similar and have always done well, the difference between Zombies and hurricanes matters less at the BO than other factors.