Horror films scare up success at box office
It has been a year of bigbudget busts at the multiplex as gigantanormous pics such as “Ghostbusters,” “Ben-Hur,” and Steven Spielberg’s “The BFG” barely broke even — if that. The epic disaster “Ben-Hur” cost $100 million to make and has returned an embarrassing $26 million.
Let studio execs, Wall Street investors and superstar directors fret and feel the angst. Serves ’ em right, say we few, we proud, we horror geeks.
Things are different on the side of the demons.
“Don’t Breathe,” the brilliant sophomore effort by Fede Alvarez (“Evil Dead”) cost a mere $9.9 million and returned $75 million in domestic receipts to become the year’s 25th best-grossing film.
Two other horror films are in the Top 25 for the year — “The Purge: Election Year” (No. 23, grossing $79 million) and “The Conjuring 2” (No. 19, bringing in $102 million).
With Halloween just around the corner, I think 2016’s best-performing bloodcurdlers are still to come, including two eagerly awaited sequels: “Rings” (Feb. 3), the latest entry in the mother of all Japanese-horror-inspired franchises; and the more old-fashioned seance sequel “Ouija: Origin of Evil” (Oct. 21), from one of horror’s top new auteurs, Mike Flanagan (“Hush,” “Before I Wake”).
This year, even a horror flick that underperforms can tank better than a star-studded romantic comedy, as the found-footage-sequel “Blair Witch” proved last week, besting one of the year’s most-anticipated rom-coms, “Bridget Jones’s Baby.”
Director Adam Wingard’s $5 million witchy sequel made $10 million on its opening weekend to land at No. 2 on the box office charts, and the $35 million comedy featuring Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth and Patrick Dempsey opened with an anemic $8.6 million.
It’s just the latest sign that horror — the much-derided, scruffy cousin of drama, the ill-bred sibling of comedy — owns the year.
Creatively, it’s been a banner year for the genre, with entries that are more sophisticated, smarter and more beautiful (as it were) than ever.
In addition to the immensely inventive “Don’t Breathe,” 2016’s horror highlights include Robert Eggers’ remarkable, literate, historic chiller “The Witch,” the claustrophobic paranoia poem “10 Cloverfield Lane” and the unbelievably raw social satire “The Invitation.”
There’s also filmmaker Danny Perez’s seriously gross freakout, “Antibirth.” It’s one of my favorites, with a stunning turn by Natasha Lyonne as a stoner who becomes pregnant with an alien baby.
What’s driving the hordes toward the blood and the dread, and away from the chariot racers and misunderstood diarists? This year’s best screamfests have captured viewers’ imagination by going back to basics.
Both the cautionary homeinvasion tale “Don’t Breathe” and the supernatural thriller “Lights Out” plunge the viewer into that most elemental, visceral cause of fear: darkness.
“Don’t Breathe” traps three young burglars inside the home of a vicious, blind war veteran (Stephen Lang). It’s set almost entirely in the vet’s claustrophobic, labyrinthine — and pitch-black — house.
The impressively cast “Lights Out,” which stars Maria Bello and Teresa Palmer, is about a murderous female creature — she has long, dark hair, claws and eyes that burn like fire — that exists in darkness, feeding on darkness itself.
Psychologically, it doesn’t get more basic than “10 Cloverfield Lane,” which generates intense anxiety and paranoia by staging a confrontation among three people locked in an underground bunker.
That thriller boasts terrific performances from Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman and John Gallagher Jr., proving horror is no longer the exclusive domain of no-name teenage thespians.
But with success comes danger: Wide distribution and box office success leads to the proliferation of sequels and franchises, of bloated films that have lost their edge.