Horror goes mainstream again and triumphs at Box Office

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

How do we describe this past October? How can we? What was assumed to be the biggest month for Horror ended up being a flop/smash hit. It felt like waiting for an awesome tide at the beach. It doesn’t show up so you turn around and walk away only to be sucker-punched in the back of your head by some behemoth of a wave. You just chugged saltwater, your head’s feeling kind of broken and seaweed and foamy sh*t is draped over your drifting body. Did you get what you wanted? Yeah, but it didn’t feel so hot.

That’s how I’d describe it. We had four horror flicks to kick off October (CASE 39, HATCHET II, LET ME IN and CHAIN LETTER) and they all bombed (relatively) at the Box Office. Eric Walkuski made various points on the how’s and why’s of that BO fail but if you want my two cents then I’d say it was a matter of bad strategy. Four big monsters? One weekend? You might as well chop up those earnings into four segments because not one flick is going to come out a champ.

Fortunately that didn’t last too long as PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 exploded the charts with a $40 million opening last weekend. Regardless of what audiences had to say (including our very own Arrow who shoved a Mossberg 500 into the flick’s ass and pulled the trigger) that puppy made money and lots of it. I don’t blame the studios for at least considering a PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 for next Halloween’s lineup. I hate to join the bandwagon but when money talks it’s hard not to listen. 

So what happened this past weekend? Was it a continuing wave of disaster or did our genre boogie on along with PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2’s triumph? I’d say a little bit of both. This weekend we had the final installment to the SAW franchise and if you aren’t computer illiterate then you’ve seen how much force the marketing team of SAW 3D has had during the entire third quarter of 2010. Well that clearly worked due to this weekend’s performance which not only affected SAW 3D’s appearance but PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2’s as well.

SAW 3D opened up with $22.5 million over 3,500 screens. It looks like Jake Dee’s estimations were spot on. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 brought in a wimpy $16.5 million and dropped 59% from last week. I’m guessing Arrow’s review was more than a drop in a bucket. However it’s fair to say PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 had a strong first weekend. The ghost flick totaled up to $65.7 million in just ten days. So does it look good for mainstream horror? Most likely. If SAW doesn’t get another sequel, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY will and I don’t think it’s going to have the same effect. In fact I’m looking at another case of SAW(s) right now. After the first SAW grossed $55 million, SAW II reeled in $87. At this point folks either got tired of the franchise or found its lackluster storyline really… lacking. So yeah, it dropped…bad. We’ll see how well SAW 3D does in the coming weeks to find out if all this 3D marketing hooplah had any effect.

Other films that are still on the screen include DEVIL which has thus far grossed $33 million, MY SOUL TO TAKE with $14.6 million, CASE 39 with $13 million, LET ME IN with $11.8, and BURIED which hasn’t even broken the million mark ($962,000). Now granted that certain films (Ahem- SAW 3D- ahem) had the upper edge, it’s clear that things will change in the coming future. Will ticket prices finally go down? Will we get a solid horror flick this time? Who the f*ck knows. If we play by these numbers then we’ll probably be smashing the same cold fish next year and it doesn’t look like we’re up for a change.

I miss Shawnee Smith