For a genre that is sometimes looked at as the rotten stepchild of filmmaking, horror movies have proven to be the biggest box office surprises of a movie going season that saw summer movies hitting a low that hasn’t been seen in 20 years.
The release of It was highly anticipated, sure, but few could have predicted it would score the biggest horror movie opening ever, taking $123 million domestically in its opening weekend. In fact, if you look at net profit of 2017 movies, because IT was made with a tiny budget of just $35 million, it’s already the 8th most profitable movie of this year. But IT isn’t the first horror film this year to set this trend. 2017 overall has seen a big surge in the popularity of low budget horror/ thriller movies. Get Out , written, co-produced and directed by Jordan Peele in his directorial debut, was released in February. The cast were all relative unknowns, and the whole movie was made on a budget of just $4.5 million. Because of its tiny budget, and also because of its phenomenal success, Get Out is easily the most profitable movie of 2017, and it’s hard to see that changing.
In January, M.Night Shyamalan released Split , a psychological thriller-horror, starring James McAvoy as a man with 23 different personalities. The movie is a sequel to his 2000 movie, Unbreakable, but Split was never marketed as such, and its connections were not spoken about by Shyamalan until after the film’s release. Word quickly spread about Split being a great thriller, though somehow its connection to Unbreakable remained mostly under wraps. Audiences flocked to theaters, reviews were good, and Split performed extremely well. Once again it had a relatively small budget; just $9 million, meaning that against its box office takings, Split has the third biggest net profit of any movie of 2017 (with Beauty and the Beast in 1, and Get Out in 2).
Our appetite for low-budget horror doesn’t stop there, though. 47 Meters Down , and Annabelle: Creation, both make the list of most profitable movies of 2017. Other entries include the aforementioned IT, Despicable Me 3, and Beauty and the Beast. By stark contrast, The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise, was supposed to herald the launch of Universal’s Monster universe, and the movie was released amid much fanfare back in June. The budget was $125 million, as one would expect for a movie starring such an A-lister, but The Mummy tanked , making a loss of $95 million. This, despite the movie scoring Tom Cruise the biggest opening of his career worldwide. It seems as though, in 2017, the smaller your budget, the bigger the hit. Are movies with a cast of unknowns the way to go in the future? And where has this surge in horror movies come from?
The contrast between this year and 2016 is noticeable. Animation and blockbuster franchises reigned supreme in 2016, with Secret Life of Pets, Zootopia, and Captain America: Civil War being among the highest grossing movies. There were no horror entries in the top 10. Of the horror movies that were released in 2016, the highest grossing was The Conjuring 2, which took $102 million domestically- less than IT has already taken in its opening weekend, and far short of the $175.5 million that Get Out pulled in.
We can analyze and theorize, but if pushed to give a defining reason why these movies are so successful, it has to come down to the script, direction, and casting. Get Out, IT, Split, Annabelle: The Creation, and 47 Meters Down, work on a small budget because the direction is tight, and the acting is top rate. The director credits the audience with enough intelligence that not everything is spelled out. We are left to our own devices to imagine more, and the imagination is a very powerful tool indeed.
