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| Could this be the savior of the horror box office in 2014? |
Horror on television has never been more popular, and what horror fan isn't happy about that?
The Walking Dead,
American Horror Story,
Bates Motel, and scores of other genre shows are consuming cable and broadcast like creeping dread. Horror shows are everywhere, and even more are coming. In addition to the shows already airing, the coming year will most likely see new ones based upon the
Friday The 13th and
Scream franchises, as well. I recall a day a couple of years ago when I read online that new episodes of
The Walking Dead and
American Horror Story were the two highest rated shows on cable the preceding week. I never imagined I'd see the day that horror was the most popular thing on television. I actually got a little verklempt about it.
You see, I grew up at a time when horror shows on television were watered down and doomed to cancellation. Unfortunately, even the handful of horror themed shows that stuck -
Tales From The Crypt,
Monsters,
Tales From The Darkside - were of little interest to me. They were either crippled by poor production values and censorship or, in the case of
Tales From The Crypt, just too hokey and simplistic to actually be scary.
Crypt, in particular, always irked me. Most episodes of that long running anthology were built on the same hoary framework utilized in the old EC comics the series was based upon. It was a labored set up for a horrific punchline telegraphed far too early in the proceedings to actually be scary or surprising. Why bother?
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| Why, Shane? Why!?! |
At least now the anthology format has largely been abandoned in favor of ongoing stories with recurring characters and complex narratives. That sturdier dramatic framework makes it a lot easier to actually care enough about what's happening each week to return for the next. Both
The Walking Dead and
American Horror Story whiff the ball almost as often as they knock it out of the park, but I'm sufficiently engaged by both to keep coming back for more. I was actually incensed when
The Walking Dead killed off Shane at the end of season two, and I was little bit tickled when Lori bit the dust in season three. I'm not always happy with the narrative choices the show makes, but I'm not indifferent, either.
Why, then, when horror is so healthy on television, has it been failing so miserably at the box office? Granted most wide release horror aims for the lowest common denominator, but even a slow year generally yields at least a couple of flicks that somehow manage to be financially successful and
not blow monkey nuts. So far this year,
Oculus is as close as we've gotten, and even that ended its domestic run with a relatively modest $27 million. That's a great return on a $5 million dollar budget, but it's chicken scratch compared to the $137 million
The Conjuring scared up last year. What's even more disheartening is that I don't see anything on the horizon likely to turn the tide.
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| Why, Dracula? Why!?! |
The Purge: Anarchy (releasing July 18th) seems like a sequel no-one really asked for to an original that, though financially successful, left many viewers underwhelmed.
Annabelle (October 3rd) seems promising, but am I the only member of the audience getting a little burnt out on all the ghost stories? That's precisely why I couldn't care less about
Jessabelle (August 29th) or
Paranormal Activity 5 (October 24th). I'm not very enthusiastic about yet another retelling of the Dracula tale, either, so
Dracula Untold (October 17th) is also a pass. I'm more interested in Eli Roth's cannibal movie
The Green Inferno (September 5th) than anything else scheduled for release in the back half of 2014, and that's mostly just because I haven't seen anyone take a stab at a cannibal movie for a while.
If it turns out I'm wrong about any of these upcoming releases I'll gladly eat crow, but things are looking pretty grim to me. I know better than to fret prematurely about the death of the
horror genre, because that particular passing has been predicted - and then failed to materialize - too many times in the past. We will
always be scared of something, and some enterprising young filmmaker will
always be willing to exploit our fear in hopes of making a splash with an
inexpensive first feature. Horror does go in cycles, though, and I'm convinced we're heading for a fallow season. What do you think?