Horror Economics

Horror films are cheap and can make huge profit. This is proven by the fact that the found footage horror movie Paranormal Activity only had a budget of $15,000, yet it generated $190 million at the global box office. Another prime example is The Blair Witch Project, with a budget of $35,000, it made a whopping $245 million at the global box office.


This causes us to think: Why do people spend so much money on mainstream films when they can simply make a horror film?


Pirates of the Caribbean: On  Stranger Tides officially holds the record for highest budget with a budget of $378.5 million. It is number 20 in the list of highest grossing films of all time and grossed $1,045,713,802.


What's more - the film wasn't received very well critically. Rotten Tomatoes only gave it a 32% rating, which can be compared to Rotten Tomatoes' much more elevated ratings of 86% for The Blair Witch Project and 83% for Paranormal Activity.


However, some things can hold back a horror movie from being economically successful. These may include:
  • a limited appeal
  • no family audience
  • not considered 'artistic'

Daren Mooney proposes that scary movies tend to succeed in a recession - because they reflect the horrors of the time period and the mood of the nation. Mooney pointed out how the most iconic monster horror movies were all produced during the Great Depression; Dracula, Frankenstein, and King Kong were films that emerged as things were getting bad for the economy. In particular, in the 1930s, Dracula was a fitting allegory for the perceived fear of the public, that the aristocrat was sucking the blood of the common people. The next string of horror movies came along in the 70s, with the emergence of The Texas Chainsaw franchise in 1974, funnily enough smack band in the middle of the 1973-75 recession. In the 1970s, horror was perpetrated by zombies eating every living person in sight - this was a fitting allegory for the new horror of the day - voracious government and the welfare state - and the pressures that most people felt as a result. The nature of the 1970s warfare ultimately reflected the mass-devouring vision, with the destruction of internal populations in Cambodia and China.

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