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How Can the Horror Genre Regain Its Box Office Mojo?

Lately, we've seen a lot on this te about how horror movies, by and large, are fizzling out on the big screen, even while the genre is more alive and well than ever on televion. Should we just accept that as the new status quo or is there something that can be done to revive the genre at the box office? Call me an optimist, but I lean toward the latter. Remember, the horror genre was thought dead in the theater before. That is, until the first "Scream" film nglehandedly brought it roaring back to life. With that example, we know that when horror movies hit, they hit hard, and they have staying power that spills over onto any film that seems remotely milar. The trick is to find out WHY people aren't going to see horror movies as much, and then to figure out how to remedy those issues. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do have a few theories to put out there:- IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID. The country and the world are still dealing with the implications of the worst economic downturn nce the Great Depreson. While people often do still go see movies during economic hardship, and sometimes even go to see MORE movies than usual just to escape their own worries for a bit, it's the "feel good" movies that people most often turn to for those reasons. Someone stressed out about their financial tuation might not want to risk being freaked out by a horror movie and potentially adding the stress of movie-induced nightmares to the problems they're already dealing with. During times like these, a lot of the folks going to the theater are parents who can no longer afford to take their small children on trips to Disneyworld, so they're taking them to a lot of movies instead as something of a consolation prize. If they have any conderation for their fellow filmgoers, they'll probably choose to take their little brats to a Pixar production rather than a slasher flick or a haunted house story. There's no easy fix for a bad economy, but lowering ticket prices even a little bit would do a lot to ease bad box office revenues. -PEOPLE HAVE HAD ENOUGH REMAKES. The remake of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" did okay at the box office, but garnered mostly mediocre reviews. Rob Zombie's first effort at re-imagining "Halloween" did indeed give us a somewhat fresh take on the Michael Myers mythology and it too did well at the box office, but it too was savaged by critics (although many actual horror fans really enjoyed it). Then came remakes of "Friday the 13th" and "A Nightmare On Elm Street", respectively, both of which did big buness in theaters but garnered some of the worst reviews from critics of any of the films discussed here. We also got a remake of "The Hills Have Eyes" which did okay at the box office but only received slightly better reviews than the films listed above. The only remake to achieve both financial and critical success was, believe it or not, "Piranha 3D". What most of these movies have in common is that, by and large, people spent their money to see them, but they didn't LIKE them. You mply can't keep a genre afloat by making people feel like they were swindled out of their money, and the lackluster performance of the remake of "The Thing" that is currently in theaters might be beginning to prove that truth. Right or wrong, people don't expect horror remakes to be good anymore. They expect them to suck, and it's spilling over onto the genre as a whole. Perhaps "Scream 4" would have performed better had it not been billed as something of a "reboot". After all, it got better reviews than all of the movies above with the exception of "Piranha". The solution is not necessarily to give up on remakes altogether, but it wouldn't hurt for them to be a bit fewer and farther between for a while. When they are made, they shouldn't be rush jobs made on the fly, with all of the depth of their originals sucked out and discarded. Seriously, both the "Friday the 13th" and "A Nightmare On Elm Street" remakes have the cynical fingerprints of studio hacks with dollar gns in their eyes all over them. They mply had no depth, and even the kill scenes weren't as good as the ones in the original films. The "Paranormal Activity" films are the diamonds in the rough here, providing a new take on a good old fashioned story of haunted houses and haunted people, doing more with less, and achieving both financial and critical success. That should be taken as a cue. Give us new concepts, new killers, new monsters and new plots. And stop trying to package sequels that do indeed fit in with the continuity of their predecessors as if they were some sort of remakes. You're just confung and disappointing people, and it's not really surpring when that doesn't result in making a ton of dough.

- BLAME "TWILIGHT". It used to be that the teenage and young adult demographic was the most bankable group that we could count on to turn out for a good slasher flick. Sure, they may not even be old enough to see an "R" rated horror movie alone, but that just means they have to bring an adult with them, resulting in even more ticket sales. Nowadays, teenage girls are dragging their poor, hapless boyfriends to see "Twilight" instead. We have been inundated with images of creatures of the night as gentle, sad, sympathetic, muscular pin-up models who are really just misunderstood and don't really want to hurt anybody. No, no, in fact, most of them want to PROTECT the teenage girl in their ghts, rather than tear her asunder. This is diluting the horror genre, and making people think that scary movies are supposed to be soap operas. When teenage girls see a preview for a "real" horror film now, they likely think that looks too gross for them, or too scary, or it mply doesn't have enough cute, shirtless boys in it. And the monsters in "real" horror movies look MEAN! "Twilight" has set the bar so low as far as how much violence is acceptable, or even realistic, in a movie about supernatural killing machines that even the tamest true slasher flick likely cannot be stomached by the average teenage girl in the generation of wusses that Stephanie Meyers abstinent, glittery vampires have helped raise. The solution here? Teenage boys need to grow backbones and stop going to see "Twilight" movies just to hopefully get a little nookie afterwards. Fair is fair. They should tell their girlfriends that if they absolutely have to t through the next "Twilight" movie, then their girlfriends owe them a date to go see an actual scary movie. Also, horror writers of every stripe need to do everything in their power to dismantle this new, watered down veron of vampires and werewolves that Meyers has popularized. Neither Jacob or Edward seem like they could even beat my dog in a fight, and my dog is a pomeranion.

To detail all my theories on this subject here would result in a manuscript-length post, and I won't subject you guys to that. But these are 3 of the current trends in horror that are on my mind the most right now, and 3 potential avenues of attack that could help the horror genre slash its way through the competition once more.

What do you guys think? What, in your mind, is contributing the most to the lackluster performance of horror movies in theaters, and what the heck should be done about it?

It's not just horror that's lost it's "mojo". If you look at the trend, very few titles are making what's expected. Box office sales are just down across the board this year. Look at The Thing. Despite being decent(and a prequel, not a remake, just throwing that out there), it performed poorly. Even so, it came in at Number 3 at the box office.... That's telling

Hi, Shawn. You make some good points. When people were raing a big stink because "Scream 4" opened at number 2 rather than number 1, I couldn't help noticing that the number 1 film that weekend ("Rio") barely made more money than "Scream 4" did. Ticket prices mply need to be lowered and films need to be marketed in smarter ways. And while "The Thing" might technically be a "prequel", I don't think most people know that, nce they went with the EXACT SAME TITLE as the original film, without a "part 2" or a subtitle such as "The Beginning" or anything at all, title-wise, to help clarify it. Also, I haven't seen the new film myself, but I've talked to people who have and they say that certain scenes in the current installment are near exact recreations of things that occurred in the original film, making it even more confung just what the heck the movie is actually supposed to be. Maybe the creators never actually decided. Which underlines one of my points. If the creative forces behind these films don't bother figuring out what they actually want their films to be, how are audiences supposed to know what to make of them?

For one thing, the economy definitely has played a role in this trend, for films of all genres. Though in my opinion one of the biggest contributing factors to the fall of big screen horror has been the fact that companies have been pumping out hastily thrown toghether crap, stupid remakes and in some cases (particularly the weinstein's) they have been ignoring their fans, making movies to please themselves because they think they can make money, instead of catering to their core audience. Really how can companies expect people to spend 12 bucks to see shitty movies. The last movie I went to in theatres was SCREAM 4 which was great, the last big screen horror movie I watched was the fright night remake, which I only watched because a friend had a bootleg. When quality returns to the theater, so will I.

It's not just horror that's lost it's "mojo". If you look at the trend, very few titles are making what's expected. Box office sales are just down across the board this year. Look at The Thing. Despite being decent(and a prequel, not a remake, just throwing that out there), it performed poorly. Even so, it came in at Number 3 at the box office.... That's telling

Well a lot of it has to do with ticket prices being raised at the theater, pirated movies, the fact that most movies nowadays come out on DVD less than 2 months later and not to mention the parents that bring their damn kids into horror films and they cry, throw up and talk. It's a lot eaer to watch a film at home and not have to worry about other people talking, texting and letting their kids run wild stomping popcorn etc. With dvd's you can also hit pause, watch the special features and watch it numerous times for almost the same price as watching the film once in theater. It makes sense that people are now waiting for the dvd, or redbox to watch it at home.

Theater's need to realize this and lower their prices, film production companies need to realize this and not rush the DVD out so quick and it wouldn't hurt to have more original films out that don't rely on 3D.

People pirating movies is definitely another enormous factor contributing to loss of ticket sales. You would think fans of horror would be willing to fork over some money to support movies they love. After all, if horror films continue to tank, there will be less and less of them. Anyway, you can never guarantee what quality of viewing experience you will get with an illegal download, bootleg, or streaming feed, whereas in the theater you are more or less guaranteed good picture and sound. However, it's true that ticket prices being so high helps encourage people to watch movies illegally at home.

Scream 4 got praised by critics and fans but suffered at the box office its quite sad another thing what about the 3D craze or movies with extenve/crappy CGI maybe that's is one of the reasons why Hatchet & Laid to rest has been praised by fans or maybe the future lies in Straight to DVD.

I do think timing has a lot to do with box office performance.

Scream 4, released in April, would quite likely have garnered more interest (and group viewings) had it been released shortly before Halloween.

DVD sales would likely increase if the films were released to video within two months - while the buzz remained fresh and right in time for Christmas.

Just like in the 80's all they need to do is let the flag ship icon's , michael myers, freddy krueger , jason voorhees

carry them for this decade and when you throw in pinhead and chucky it will make an allready great formula that much better. There already on the right track with Michae Myers and leatherface making there returns this upcoming year.Now it's up to Newline to ressurect Freddy and Jason for more sequels.Let's just hope that there will be more sequels to those great franchises than there was back then because as great as the original films and there sequels were i feel there should have been more sequels back then.

Just like in the 80's all they need to do is let the flag ship icon's , michael myers, freddy krueger , jason voorhees

carry them for this decade and when you throw in pinhead and chucky it will make an allready great formula that much better. There already on the right track with Michae Myers and leatherface making there returns this upcoming year.Now it's up to Newline to ressurect Freddy and Jason for more sequels.Let's just hope that there will be more sequels to those great franchises than there was back then because as great as the original films and there sequels were i feel there should have been more sequels back then.

Very interesting theory man, I think there were plenty of sequels for these franchises but very few good sequels although even the bad films are kinda fun to watch with some beers and friends for laughs. I just hate that films are relying on so much CGI that it is seriously hindering the new films. Freddy coming out of the wall in the original was badass! Freddy coming out of the wall in the remake was CGI Barf!