Horror hooks movie-goers, injecting cinemas with fresh energy

Yahoo

06-07-2025

STORY: Move over Superman, there's a new hero at the box office.
Horror movies.
Murderous toys, vampires and zombies are killing it in movie theaters, at a time when saviors, sequels and reboots have grown stale among audiences – entertainment industry veterans say.
Jason Blum is a producer.
'What you can't do at home is sit in a dark room with a hundred other people, not on your phone, and jump. I think horror movies have really become an experience that can only be really felt outside the home in a movie theater.'
This year, 17 percent of tickets bought in North America have been for scary movies.
That figure was 11 percent in 2024, and 4 percent a decade ago, Comscore data compiled exclusively for Reuters shows.
Cinema owners have plenty of reasons to celebrate with box office performances like 'Sinners' and 'Final Destination: Bloodlines'.
And there are new instalments of popular horror franchises coming soon like 'The Conjuring: Last Rites.'
'One of the knocks on Hollywood and movies that we rely upon is that they just lack creativity. People are just trying the same old formulas that maybe worked five years ago but not necessarily working now. And I feel like today it's these horror directors that are really some of the most creative minds out there and they're taking chances that others aren't.'
Brandt Gully owns a cinema in Sandy Springs, Georgia.
'The horror customers, at least ours, tend to go to the movies more often than others. And I think it's because they're not as dependent on word of mouth or they don't need to know it's an Academy Award-winning potential hit before they commit to, you know, dropping money to go see it, they just are excited that there's a new, creative horror movie out there and they wanna come see it.'
Producers, studio execs and theater owners say horror has historically provided a safe outlet for people to cope with contemporary anxieties.
And let's face it - there is no lack of material to choose from: the aftershocks of a global pandemic, paranoia over AI and resurgent racism.
The productions are often low-budget, and allow greater risk-taking than higher-cost, higher-stakes films.
That creative freedom has attracted big name directors like Guillermo del Toro and Danny Boyle.
And audiences are responding. Ryan Coogler's 'Sinners' is this year's third highest-grossing movie in the U.S. and Canada, Comscore says.
Horror has been a cinematic staple from its earliest days, when Thomas Edison filmed 'Frankenstein' on his motion picture camera in 1910.
But it didn't always get Hollywood's respect.
Perceptions began to change with the critical and commercial success of films like 'Psycho,' 'The Exorcist' and 'The Shining.'
The genre broke the $1 billion box office barrier in the U.S. and Canada for the first time in 2017.
The film adaptation of Stephen King's novel, 'It,' and Jordan Peele's 'Get Out' were big contributors.
Fast forward to 2024 – and the number of U.S. horror films that went into production was up 21 percent from the year before, researcher Ampere Analysis found.
And scary movies have been scooping up statues at the biggest awards ceremonies recently.
Movie theaters are still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, which sped up a shift towards watching at home over going out to the movies.
But many industry professionals say horror is a genre that manages to get people off their couch and into a theater where the environment heightens the experience.
'Now I think more than ever, to get people here in theaters, people want a good story. They love, you know, things like 'Barbie', where they know what's gonna happen. But for the most part, people want really good stories that engage them. And it feels like that's the genre where we're getting the most of that from.'