I’m on the defensive, especially now that horror is once again going to be on trial.
It’s completely unfair that every time a horror movie flops Hollywood is so quick to bag the genre, call it washed up and declare it dead. Summit’s P2 made a despicable $2.2 million and opened at the #7 spot. This is a pretty bad flop considering how many theaters it opened in and how big of a marketing push it had. They probably spent anywhere from $10-15 million just in advertising alone, then add on the budget. This is a disaster for Summit. What drives me crazy is that no one will take note of what is sitting at #6… SAW IV. Lionsgate’s sequel is still puling in the cash and has made nearly $60 million to date. But still the Hollywood Reporter and Variety will call the genre dead. And look at #9, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT is nearing $40 million!
Our genre is alive and kicking. There’s just something to be said about these numbers. We need to reflect.
Now here’s the kicker. It may look as if the AFTER DARK HORRORFEST did worse than P2, but in fact it didn’t. The HORRORFEST pulled in $500,000 on only 323 screens, so if my calculations are right the festival
would have made $3.5 million in 2,100 screens. But the real shame they have to endure is the fact that they had EIGHT movies open up and it only made that much money.
So who is to blame for this disastrous horror weekend?
Everyone will blame the horror fans, claiming we don’t leave the house and steal everything online. No no no no no no no no no. Then why did 30 DAYS OF NIGHT, SAW IV, 1408 and HALLOWEEN perform so well? And why will THE MIST do extremely well? GOOD MARKETING or quite simply making a good movie helps.
The horror fan has a stigma – everyone in Hollywood thinks we’ll watch any piece of sh-t and like it… that we’re grateful for any scrape of gore put on our plate. This might have been true in the past, but not now, not anymore. I’m so grateful for films like WRONG TURN 2 coming to video because it brings a high standard for home video. Nearly everything you find at a video store is a piece of crap on the highest level. The movies are made just to make a quick million by getting it into Blockbuster or Wal-Mart with a shiny cover. It reminds me of comic books back in the ‘90s – nice cover, sh-t inside. The same goes for theaters, only there’s some weird disillusionment from the producers. Every producer and director can’t recognize that their sh-t don’t stink, they think their movie is theatrical worthy when it’s barely even DVD worthy. P2 and HORRORFEST are both examples. Nine movies that don’t belong in theaters and yet ended up there. TIMBER FALLS is the next to help seal our fate.
We’re getting smarter as horror fans are starting to realize what’s good and what’s crap. It’s insane to me that these companies will pump all this money into advertising in the hopes that their movie will make tens of millions of dollars.
So who is to blame for these flops? It’s the studios for thinking we’re dumb enough to pay to see a crappy movie… and for marketing them like crap.
I don’t think Summit did a very good job in promoting P2, but I want to focus all my energy on After Dark Films. Let’s review shall we? First let’s bring to attention the “Miss Horrorfest” competition. The amount of time, energy and money that went into this promotion is laughable. What horror fans correlates this competition with the 8 Films to Die For and CARES? So what if they got top placement on YouTube, the YouTube regulars aren’t watching these auditions and videos from the girls because they want to know more about Horrorfest, they want boobs and hot chicks. In the end all they did was create awareness for Miss Horrorfest, which to most people is just the hottest of Goth chicks. Weeee.
To make matters worse they didn’t learn a thing from last year. The company was out promoting “After Dark Horrorfest” and NOT the individual movies. You might see the After Dark poster in theaters but it says nothing about the festival and nothing about the movie in it. What are the eight movies? What are the eight films about? Where can I buy tickets? Are they good movies? Have I heard of them? Where’s the trailer? Where’s the poster? What do they look like? These are only a few questions I would ask as a horror fan when I saw the poster… and that’s all too many questions. There should be ZERO questions after looking at the poster. No person on this planet is going to see the After Dark Horrorfest ad and stop, pull out a pen and start writing stuff down to research. If youre one of the lucky individuals who read Bloody-Disgusting then you were well informed, and you realized all the movies were crap anyways. So in the end it wouldn’t have mattered anyways.
To make matters worse, the company made posters and trailers for all eight films, but only released them online and released most of them the week of release. What’s the point? If they’re not in theaters then only people who want to know more about TOOTH & NAIL will see them. At this point youre pitching the people who are already interested and not GAINING awareness.
Furthering the problem is that Horrorfest wasn’t in a lot of theaters and if it was, the event was in a crappy theater. It almost makes you say, “You know what, Ill wait for DVD.”
It’s insane to me that so much energy and money goes into these films but blindly. You can throw money around and alert people to your presence, but if you don’t do it right you’re just throwing money away.
Just a note to anyone else planning on doing the same thing (TIMBER FALLS): throw the money here instead, because in the end I’ll have a better use for it.
Horror is not dead; it’s just waiting for a quality film to hit theaters. We have I AM LEGEND and SWEENEY TODD coming in December and if those movies flop, then you can start asking questions. It’s incredibly frustrating how much weight is put behind films like SKINWALKERS and CAPTIVITY. At this point I wish After Dark would either learn from their mistakes and clean up their act or go away. They’re hurting our genre by dumping garbage into theaters.
No wonder no one goes to the movies anymore. Who likes being ripped off?
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