Editor’s note

Boo! We got you good, didn’t we? While you recover from that scare, prepare for several more: Today’s special edition is all about the business of horror movies. We’ll get into how they became such a reliable moneymaker, why Hollywood is mining the internet for new talent and story ideas, the debate surrounding “elevated” horror, and much more. Lock the doors and grab your blankie—it’s time to put on Horror Movie Brew.

roll tape

A still from ‘Barbarians.’ 20th Century Studios

Are we in a golden age of horror? Even if the Terrifier franchise is still kickin’? A flood of low-budget horror movies like Barbarian and Obsession have dominated your friends’ Letterboxd reviews over the last few years and brought viewers back to theaters in droves. With the genre scaring up success at the box office, it’s a great time to have a sick and twisted little script.

How did we get to such a scary place? Horror movies have historically been one of the most profitable genres in film. That’s in part because it’s relatively cheap to churn out a decent scary movie. Based on data from 1996 to 2016, the horror genre had the highest likelihood of profit of any genre, according to the American Film Market, with over half of all horror movies making at least $1.

• The horror genre is also full of shoestring-budget films that went on to dominate the box office. Take 2007’s Paranormal Activity, which made $193 million on a $15,000 budget and spawned an entire franchise (and now a Broadway play).
• More recently, 2022’s Barbarian grossed ten times its $4.5 million budget. That same year, Smile snagged $217 million at the box office on a $17 million budget, and execs subsequently green-lit two sequels. This year’s favorite indie, Obsession, made with just a $750,000 budget, became the first wide-release horror film to make more money in its second weekend in theaters than its first.
• Horror fans seem to show up no matter the broader film environment. The genre was the most consistent driver of box-office sales during the pandemic, even if it meant fans had to go to the drive-in. Their success is sometimes even considered a recession indicator.

Can the genre survive the horror that is AI? Despite horror films starting to dip their toes into AI (and receiving pretty immediate pushback), recent horror movies have been embracing good old-fashioned practical effects—so, maybe Hollywood won’t screw this up. The 2000s loved CGI, but more recent films like The Substance, Evil Dead: Burn, and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma relied on painstakingly built, painted, and bloodied up sets.—MM

      

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charted territory

Rated R for ROI: A list of wildly profitable horror films

Horror flicks tend to be cheaper to make than films in other genres, so when they hit it big, their returns on investment can be exceptional. That makes horror a perfect choice for studio execs because, for them, the real scary movies are the ones that lose money.—BC

bootube

A still from ‘Backrooms.’ A24

The film industry has learned something that you discovered as a preteen: YouTube is awesome <3. Hollywood is dredging the platform for the next great horror movie after a couple of internet-generation filmmakers made two of the year’s most successful flicks.

ICYMI: Globally, Kane Parsons’s Backrooms grossed $400 million on a ~$10 million budget, four years after he posted a short film inspired by an eerie image of an empty room that had been circulating in the online world of “creepypasta,” aka user-generated horror fiction posted on sites like Reddit and 4chan. Similarly, fellow longtime YouTube filmmaker Curry Barker’s sub-$1-million budgeted Obsession was the first original movie of the 2020s to gross over $500 million, according to The Wrap.

Now, major studios want their ideas and talent:

• Less than two months after Backrooms came out, Puck reported that A24 offered Parsons a three-year $65 million deal for whatever he comes up with next, which would represent the studio’s largest deal ever.
• Weeks after Obsession hit theaters, Barker signed an eight-figure deal with Universal Film Group and Blumhouse Atomic Monster, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Since those two 20-somethings showed that the box office’s answer to franchise and remake fatigue could lie in the depths of the internet, filmmakers with similar backgrounds are fielding calls from studios:

• Following fierce bidding wars, at least five horror movies based on YouTube short films and creepypasta content are currently in development.
• Steven Spielberg, Jordan Peele, Warner Bros., and Lionsgate are among major names attached to the projects.

It pays to be popular: Some of these creators have built-in fandoms. Earlier this year, a low-budget horror movie from Mark Fischbach, who has 39 million YouTube subscribers, grossed more than $50 million after fans petitioned their local theaters to carry the movie.—ML

      

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IT’S ABOUT THE SUBSTANCE

Michael B. Jordan (left) and Ryan Coogler (right) at 98th Annual Oscars. Jordan won the Oscar for best actor in a leading role and Coogler for best screenplay for ‘Sinners.’ Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic via Getty Images

Your insufferable film-buff friend who knows how to pronounce Cannes no longer rolls their eyes whenever someone suggests watching a horror film. The spooky genre has shaken off its low-brow reputation in recent years, thanks to several critically acclaimed hits that explore serious themes and spawned the label “elevated horror.”

A prime example is Ryan Coogler’s Southern Gothic horror Sinners, which received a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations and won in four categories last year. But before Sinners, several movies paved the way for the genre to be taken seriously by Hollywood tastemakers:

• One of the first films graced with the elevated horror label was Robert Eggers’s gothic folk horror The Witch, which hit theaters in 2016. The movie is set in 1630s New England and marked Anya Taylor-Joy’s feature film debut.
• The term was then widely applied to Jordan Peele’s Academy Award-winning Get Out (2017), a body-snatching movie exploring the pervasive legacy of racism in the US, and Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018), a psychological horror film about intergenerational trauma and motherhood.
• The filmmakers’ status as auteurs was solidified by Peele’s social commentary-infused Us (2019), Aster’s artsy Nordic folk horror Midsommar (2019), and Eggers’s black-and-white psychological horror The Lighthouse (2019).

We’d like to thank the Academy: Of the eight horror films nominated for best picture in the history of the Oscars, three came out in the last decade.

What if horror doesn’t want to be “elevated?”

Many horror lovers criticize the term as vague and pretentious—while the filmmakers themselves reject the designation wholesale. Peele told The Verge that the description is inaccurate because it implies he’s chasing prestige instead of making wacky-but-nuanced films. Aster routinely says in interviews it belittles horror as a genre.

But…some argue the “E” word helps describe horror movies that prioritize artistry and thematic complexity over making audiences scream, while giving directors a way to pitch headier movies to studios. One horror enthusiast says the descriptor can be helpful when recommending unorthodox horror movies to someone who doesn’t typically enjoy the genre—SK

      

wait, what?

Celebs in horror movies before they were famous

Jennifer Aniston in ‘Leprechaun.’ Lionsgate

Everyone has to get their start somewhere, so why not in a movie where you are killed or someone is trying to kill you? Here are seven well-known actors who appeared in horror movies before you knew their names:

• Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween): Some of these may be surprising, but one of the original “final girls” is not.
• Johnny Depp (A Nightmare on Elm Street): Before he was Jack Sparrow, he fell asleep with Freddy Krueger around.
• Jennifer Aniston (Leprechaun): No one told her life was going to be this way (being chased by a leprechaun).
• Tom Hanks (He Knows You’re Alone): When brides on Staten Island were being murdered, Hanks’s character found a way to survive.
• George Clooney (Return to Horror High): You’ve never heard of it, but it made a million dollars in 1987.
• Matthew McConaughey (Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation): It can’t be shocking that he did an early movie involving Texas.
• Ben Affleck (Buffy the Vampire Slayer): He was involved in the movie, not the television follow-up, but it didn’t quite work out as planned for the actor.

Honorable mention: This one goes in the opposite direction. After appearing in nothing but comedies, the already-famous Winnie-the-Pooh made his horror movie debut in Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood & Honey in 2023.—DL

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debate club

A still from ‘The Strangers.’ Rogue Pictures

To help get you in the mood for spooky season, we’re debating the best horror movies (or franchises).

Saw (2004): The franchise includes 10 movies (and an 11th planned) about people’s biggest fear at a party—being asked to play a game. Name something more terrifying: time limits, rules that aren’t clear, and, if you win, you have to play another game. No ghosts, hockey masks, or nightmares can compare with the scariness of Jigsaw’s machinations.—DL

Paranormal Activity (2007): If you’re a fan of the paranormal and/or activities, you’ll get a kick out of this movie and its sequels. While many horror films double down on special effects, gore, and Rube Goldberg-machine deaths, Paranormal Activity is a throwback, building scenes so suspenseful that you root for a jump scare to relieve the tension.—BC

The Strangers (2008): This flick is so frightening that I can’t in good conscience recommend that anyone watch it. It’s a jump-scare-heavy, home invasion movie in which a masked trio infiltrates a house and terrorizes the young couple staying there. Every time they try to flee, the attackers somehow materialize right around the corner. When the couple asks them why they’re doing this, they chillingly say, “Because you were home.”—ML

Midsommar (2019): There is something very unsettling about a horror movie that takes place almost entirely in the daytime. In Midsommar, a group of annoying American grad students travels to rural Sweden for a festival that starts out kinda like a Nordic Burning Man (terrifying in its own right) before getting much darker. But not literally dark, because most scenes take place in the middle of the day, the sun beating down on the horrors below like a spotlight. You won’t be able to shake some of the images in this film—especially its disturbingly cathartic ending.—AE

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ICYMI, use your Sunday morning to get caught up on some of our most-clicked recent recs:

• You’re going to want to see the finalists in this comedy wildlife photography contest.
• Check whether your company made this annual ranking of the world’s best employers.
• Plan a road trip based on each state’s signature ice cream flavor.
• Discover the most popular Halloween candy from the year you were born.
• The perfect dress for work that pairs with a cardigan for slightly chillier days.**

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