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Horror is perhaps the oldest genre of cinema and the most reliable. Yes, I know we have had periods of drought, but there are various reasons behind these periods of drought, most of them being the conventional wisdom potentially blocking great horror movies.
The problem has never been horror, it is that they want good horror. New concepts, new ideas, new characters, new methods of cinema, really something really new and decently marketed, are almost always likely to attract hordes of people to horror movies. In the genre, it often happens that the general public is jaded and quite fast.
To be clear, there are at least two audiences to which the horror filmmaker must consider pushing his film
. public in progress. The second, it is the horror fans. Horror fans, often enough, love a horror movie for the exact reason that viewers hate a movie.
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Casual moviegoers can be extinguished by an excessive gore, horror fans often want more and more. The average viewer may complain that role play in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood was bad, while the veteran of horror may like acting theater … and the scene of the sleeping bag. Seriously, everyone loves the sleeping bag scene in Part Seven. And yes, it's on YouTube.
The dilemma, of course, is that if a horror film addresses too much to the general public, it may be generic, safe and … well, not scary. Absolutely no one wants to see a banal horror movie. Even non-horror fans should probably admit that there is no point in watching a horror film when there is nothing horrifying about it.
Conversely, if the movie addresses too much to horror fans, the general public can go away either shaking their head to miss the "atmospheric tonal" quality of the movie as with movies as It Follows, where they can emerge emotionally traumatized, as was the case with hereditary . To be fair, however, I am a seasoned horror fan, and I moved away from hereditary traumatized, and I do not mind admitting it.
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Generally speaking, the film At Quiet Place seemed to land rather well, just on the border of 39; universal appeasement. Horror fans have especially enjoyed it, viewers have loved it, and it's a box office success. Full disclosure, I thought it was good, but was a little disappointed.
Another recent example would be Stephen King It .
He was getting a little closer in the -Fandom horror, at least on the surface, but that's because it could. On the one hand, he had a serious name recognition and on the other hand, he capitalized on the recent success of Stanger Things for more than one reason, attracting a ton of viewers who might otherwise be rejected by the film. More disclosure, I had no problem with the filmmakers, I thought it was quite clever, actually. Also, I really enjoyed the movie.
Then you have A24 Movies.
A24 is a daring and fantastic film company that has produced some of the best horror titles in years. That said, their films tend to be more appreciated by devoted fans of the horror genre than by the general public. What differentiates A24 from independent horror film studios that target horror fans, is that A24 does not act as an independent film studio. A24 treats their films as a blockbuster 21st Century Fox and seeks to attract intelligent audiences who do not need to hold hands.
A24 brings obscure, extreme and art nouveau horror to the general public and it's beautiful
They're not the only ones to make big moves, I'll have more to say about Shudder later, but for the moment, A24 is the example that I use.
Conventional wisdom would say that their films will only alienate general audiences, and to its credit, conventional wisdom has not been entirely false. Hereditary only has an audience score of 59% on Rotten Tomatoes while the general consensus in the community of horror is that Hereditary is fantastic. In addition, critics liked it because it currently stands at 89% critics among critics
Ten years ago, the general public would probably have never seen anything like The Witch in multiplex cinemas. Today the audience is getting confused and even angry, but having always seen the movie.
I remember seeing The Witch in a crowded theater. I liked it. Solid 9/10, but at the time, I could not understand why he had a wide version. Most people leaving the theater were confused and angry by the movie and while I disagreed, I understood.
And Online, The Witch has a similar story to Hereditary . A not very good audience score, good critical reviews, horror audiences generally liked it. Fans of casual movies do not like artistic and atmospheric horror films,
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But guess what? A24 does not care.
They are less interested in what the average viewer thinks and more interested in producing new and innovative films. They are not only horror, A24 has produced films across all kinds of genres, including the Oscar-nominated Bird . A24 produces and promotes the kind of movies that they want to do, public opinion in general.
Why do not they care about public opinion? I can not speak for geniuses behind A24, but I bet it's because they do not have to do it.
Returning to Hereditary and The Witch they may have baffled and upset a number of members of the public, but they have also made huge profits. The Witch had a production budget of about $ 4 million and made $ 25 million at the national box office. Hereditary would have a production budget of about $ 10 million and a total of over $ 43 million in Canadian box office revenue.
These films do not shoot more than 325 million dollars, but they do not represent the financial risk for production either. Word of mouth also does a lot of promotional work for A24, which means that promotional costs are lower. In addition, when you make the original horror, you do not have to worry about acquiring distribution rights on the properties.
At the end of the day, they make massive profits, and they do it by making relevant horror films. In addition, if box office success is still an important factor in the success of a movie, A24, Netflix, Showtime, Shudder, and many other companies take more experimental risks, and showing to world that the financial success of a movie is determined by far more than a weekend opening at the box office. The money can be made after the Sunday following the release of a movie. Expect the horror to continue to flourish in various forms for the foreseeable future.
But then there is another possibility. One where I wonder, "Is it possible that A24 is slowly turning the movie's general audiences into hardened and dedicated horror fans?"
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