Horror movies made a killing in 2022 and 2023, but 2024 hasn’t been too kind to the genre, which begs the question of what hurt horror’s trajectory.
Horror is one of the oldest genres in cinema, and it’s also one of the most lucrative in terms of box office potential. Typically produced on lower budgets compared to other movie genres, it’s seen considerable success in the 2020s. Unfortunately, this seemingly invulnerable reputation has taken a major slaying in 2024.
The year hasn’t been kind to horror movies, which are largely underperforming at the box office in 2024. This is happening amid a lack of creativity and new themes within the genre, let alone negative reviews. Now suffering from the same fatigue that supposedly plagued other types of movies, the scariest part of horror movies has become how little money they’re making.
Horror Movies Scared Up Major Money In 2022 and 2023
In 2022, movies were beginning to truly recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, with several films making major bank at the box office. At the same time, trends were beginning where much-hyped blockbusters and similar films were seeing noticeably lower box office hauls. Perhaps the biggest example of this was The Rock vehicle Black Adam, which was pitched as a sort of savior to the moribund DC Extended Universe. In the end, its box office disappointment was likely the biggest catalyst for the announcement of James Gunn’s upcoming DC Universe reboot. Amid this underwhelming reception, however, were major successes, namely in the horror genre.
Movies such as Smile offered up original scares like never before, with the viral popularity of the movie seeing it make $200 million USD more than its production budget worldwide. X was a dirty slasher movie that did more than a clean killing, carving up $15 million on a $1 million USD budget. Even the franchise horror movie Halloween Ends, which was widely regarded as a disappointment, made over $100 million on a $33 million USD production budget. These trends continued into 2023, where the superhero genre and major blockbusters were struggling left and right. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse were the only successes in the genre, with The Flash and especially Marvel Studios films Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels being major money misfires.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Fast X and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny also didn’t rake in much money, despite the former being largely acclaimed. Amid these disappointing box office performances were the many successes of horror movies, with both original and franchise horror yielding several hits. Most notable among these was M3GAN, which started the year off with money-making memes. Evil Dead Arise was another great entry in that series, while The Nun 2 continued the box office success of James Wan’s Conjuring Universe.
Even the survival horror video game adaptation Five Nights at Freddy’s, — which received fairly negative reviews and was seen by most as not being remotely scary — served up a lot of money at the box office. Despite a few misses here and there, it seemed as if horror was the go-to genre to make an easy killing for a studio. Sadly, it seems that said ghost story is no longer scaring up many customers.
Horror Is Drowning at the Box Office in 2024
The 2024 box office isn’t exactly great for most movies, though there are some notable hits. Dune: Part Two has been a major success, and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is right behind it. Even the politicized Civil War is on track to potentially become profitable, while action films such as The Beekeeper and Monkey Man have also gone on to make money. At the same time, the once venerable horror genre that seemed primed to always trot out a hit has largely been struggling to make an impact. The year began with Night Swim, which made over $50 million on a $15 million USD budget. This was a decent success given the movie’s rather negative reviews, but said reviews seemed to slow it down at the box office.
Imaginary had just as poor reviews, and it roughly made double its $10-13 million USD budget. On the other hand, Immaculate had a more positive reception than those two, though it only managed to birth $22 million USD relative to its $9 million budget. Since then, things have only spiraled downward for the genre. The First Omen received positive reviews, which actually shocked many, but so far, it’s not even doubled its $30 million USD budget. The latest such box office run of this caliber is the vampire film Abigail, which is only now getting back its production budget amid fairly weak competition. It’s night and day compared to how invincible the genre was in the past two years.
Even the horror comedy/horror action hybrids Lisa Frankenstein and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire didn’t fare too well, despite the latter being part of the classic Ghostbusters franchise. The fairly low budgets for most of the movies make this even more puzzling, as these should be the kinds of movies that easily make at least a modicum of profit. The lack of viewer turnout speaks to a growing boredom with horror, however, which makes perfect sense given the consistent themes seen in the past few years.
Religious Horror and Vampire Movies are Box Office Dead Ends
Religious horror and supernatural movies involving demons, possession and similar Judeo-Christian concepts have been around for decades. The subgenre has spawned classics of Biblical proportions, but the chances of something similar happening in 2024 have gone up in hellfire. Both The First Omen and Immaculate failed to provide the box office with much in the way of salvation, and they both had the same basic religious horror concept. This was also seen the year before with both The Nun II and arguably even the type of demonic creatures seen in the terrifying Evil Dead Rise and Smile. It’s made recent horror films seem too similar, and the movies being released so close together gives less of an incentive for audiences to see them in theaters.
Another horror subgenre that’s become particularly long in the tooth is vampire horror. The past two years have seen numerous vampire-based movies hemorrhaging at the box office, with the infamous Sony Spider-Man spinoff Morbius being just one example. Renfield was a major box office bloodbath, with The Last Voyage of the Demeter sinking at the sea. A similar fate is now befalling Abigail, which is a loose remake of Dracula’s Daughter. It is worth noting that none of these movies mentioned Dracula in the title, and doing so might have helped them attract more viewers. As things stand, however, it seems that audiences simply aren’t interested in vampire movies, especially when so many disappointing ones come out so close to each other. Abigail is so far the only one to receive good reviews, but even this hasn’t allowed it to sink its teeth into the box office.
Horror Needs Something New to Succeed At the Box Office
Religious horror and vampire movies barely making a stab at the box office are just a few examples of how horror movies have begun to bore audiences. Given its status as a somewhat “shlocky” genre, it’s easy to see horror as low-effort movies with even lower budgets. That being said, there’s a lot of potential for horror movies, and simply regurgitating the same ideas only works for so long. For example, many saw Imaginary as being far too similar to M3GAN from a year before, albeit not nearly as interesting, quirky or timely. Likewise, so many of the most recent examples of the genre do in fact match up with its more unflattering connotations.
It very much feels in line with the criticisms of “superhero fatigue” that were thrown toward the superhero movie genre in 2023, albeit with even less of an excuse due to the wider potential for experimentation. Perhaps more than any genre, horror needs to shake things up in order to actually attract viewers back to the cinema. This includes wild “outside the box” ideas that made M3GAN into a hit, viral horror in the vein of Smile or nasty slasher throwbacks such as X. Likewise, bringing back fan-favorite franchises might work, especially since horror aficionados have been clamoring for a Nightmare on Elm Street revival for years.
Of course, care needs to be taken to not merely rely on established intellectual properties or simply emulate the exact formulas of previously successful movies. There needs to be some sort of unique hook to keep people from simply waiting until the movie hits streaming a few months down the line. This sort of thing is easier said than done, but directors and studios no longer resting on their proverbial laurels and providing something truly fresh is the best ambition to strive for in order to pump new blood into the horror genre.
