Collins’ Crypt: Drawn And Quartered 2014 Part 1
The problem with not releasing any horror movies for a lengthy period of time (the last three months of 2013 produced exactly one wide release genre film: the woeful Carrie remake) is that fans sort of get used to not going. VOD and the like have already cut into the theatrical takes for niche films, so if you've spent the past three months getting used to scrolling around your computer or cable box for the newest fright fare, it makes sense that you won't find the energy to head to the theater when something actually comes along. Plus, horror film trailers don't get shown as much in front of bigger budget studio fare, so there's less of a chance for fans to even see advertisements for them - I go to the movies two or three times a week and never once saw an in-theater trailer for some of the films below. So I'm not surprised that it's been pretty grim for 2014's first batch of horror offerings; a few of them technically turned a profit, but the grosses are still disappointing - especially when they were looking to tap into the same supernatural audience that propelled The Conjuring, Insidious 2 and Mama to huge grosses last year. Only one fright film since last July has topped $35 million at the domestic box office - that's a pretty long cold streak.
As almost always, the first weekend of the year gave us a new genre flick. Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones was an attempt to move away from the increasingly convoluted main series, and also attract a new audience with its younger, Latino heavy cast and Oxnard setting (as opposed to the predominantly white, middle/upper class neighborhoods of the other films) - but the experiment didn't really work. Even with the subtitle, it was hard to see this as anything but "Paranormal Activity 5" (which is still coming), and after the horrible last entry, it seems only the series' hard-core fans turned out - the movie only managed to gross a mere $32 million. That's actually good enough to be the year's top horror grosser so far - but barely more than the total earnings of PA4 (which itself was seen as a financial disappointment compared to PA3), so it hardly counts as a home run, though creatively it was an improvement over the last entry (which should be all that matters, but alas). It's too early to tell if the series is done for, but if the proper PA5 continues the downward trend, we can expect Paranormal 6 to be the last (which would be kind of funny, since the series killed Saw, which also only got to seven total films).
Two weeks later we rejected found footage movies once again with Devil's Due, which never rose above the "Rosemary's Baby but with video cameras" concept that already seemed kind of weak. I would have loved to have been surprised, or even see some spark from the filmmaking team (collectively known as Radio Silence, who produced one of the better segments in the V/H/S films), but it plods along from start to finish, steadfastly refusing to explore its more exciting ideas in favor of tired POV gimmicks - when the bad guys set up twenty or so cameras around the house, I gave up all hope. Worse, it had a wraparound that crippled any real chance of suspense, making it even more of a chore since we knew who'd live and who'd die. Of the four wide releases that came out that weekend (the others were Jack Ryan, The Nut Job and Ride Along) it was by far the lowest grosser, with a pitiful $15m take that puts it dead last on the charts for wide release found footage films (yup, even Apollo 18 sold more tickets).
The following week, audiences shrugged yet again, but at least this one was shot in a traditional manner. I, Frankenstein had been in development for quite some time, which is probably why the resulting film is a total mess - at no point will you understand how it attracted some solid actors (Aaron Eckhart, Miranda Otto, etc) or why they tied it into Frankenstein in the first place, since it's just a generic Underworld wannabe with demons and Gargoyles replacing the vampires and werewolves. I also doubt Lionsgate would sink $65 million (at least) into a movie that barely ran over 80 minutes, so I suspect it was re-edited on top of being endlessly rewritten (when announced it was a detective, noir-ish thing with monsters - there's nothing like that in the movie). A franchise starter it was not; its $19m total puts it as one of the year's biggest duds here, though it did better overseas (as did The Marked Ones), which can help it save some face.
With the January dumping ground in the past, things should have improved, but sadly it just got worse. Vampire Academy also failed to catch on, though in this case I'm surprised - teen girls should have flocked to it given the PG-13 rating and the popularity of the YA series it was inspired by, but alas it has to suffer the indignity of earning the 10th worst opening weekend OF ALL TIME for a film playing on over 2,500 screens. A shame, it's actually a fairly fun little movie (and I'm certainly not the target audience), and proves that Zoey Deutch is just as charming and lovely as her mother (Lea Thompson) - hopefully her career will survive this setback.
That was the last wide release for a while; us hardcore cinemagoers had to dig a little deeper for something to see on the big screen (assuming you wouldn't settle for their VOD counterpart). Of them all, the vampire found footage film Afflicted was one of the more successful entries, grossing $121k despite no advertising and only playing on a few dozen screens. Ditto for the horror comedy Knights of Badassdom, which made about the same despite only playing on 13 screens - the film's lengthy delay and well publicized post-production troubles (with an investor recutting the film against the wishes of director Joe Lynch) likely inspired some curiosity. The rest only played on a few screens: Troma's Return to Nuke Em High Volume 1, IFC's Almost Human, Magnet's thriller Grand Piano, and a couple of others were all released on VOD at the same time or even beforehand, so their audiences had no reason to head out and pay a premium for something that was a button click away (I will never understand this release strategy, by the way - I get VOD's appeal even if it isn't for me - but why do they get movies BEFORE theatrical releases? What is the incentive?).
The nadir of the lot was Jinn, a pathetic and overly convoluted (yet deathly dull) movie about an evil Jinn and the exposition spouting warriors tasked with defeating him. It's also a commercial for the "Firebreather", a luxury car designed by its director/producer/writer/etc that gets its own section in the end credits (including a list of its owners!), which is the only memorable thing about it. The filmmakers also managed to get it released on 200 screens (more than the number of screens for all of the films in the previous paragraph combined), helping to propel it to a $200k gross that is hopefully too small a number to get financing for the sequel, which was threatened during the end credits. To date, it is one of the worst genre films I've ever seen theatrically, and that includes The Ganzfeld Haunting, another woeful chore that I saw during its one week run at the Laemmle theater in North Hollywood. Grosses aren't available for that one, but they couldn't have been much - ditto for Nurse 3D, which I actually quite enjoyed (as a bad movie) but Lionsgate gave it a Repo/Midnight Meat Train style dump. Did you see it theatrically? Was anyone in the theater with you?
Finally, things picked up a bit in April thanks to Oculus, starring Doctor Who's Karen Gillan (likely drawing in some of its ticket buyers). Its $25m (and counting) take isn't setting the world on fire, but for an independent pickup it's fairly impressive (it's more than the gross for the far more publicized and commercial You're Next, which was also a festival acquisition), and will come within spitting distance of The Marked Ones' take. If I were to bet a few months ago which of these movies would be the #2 horror grosser for the year at the end of April, this is not the one I'd pick, so kudos to them for offering a sliver of good news.
Alas, this "comeback" didn't last - the spoof Haunted House 2 only earned about half of what the original did, hopefully killing this budding series before it becomes another lengthy Scary Movie-level franchise. And at the very end of April, The Quiet Ones didn't just disappoint - it completely TANKED, earning one of the worst opening weekends for a supernatural horror film. In fact, it will likely fail to even hit 10m by the end of its run; a shame as it was the latest attempt for a comeback for Hammer Films, which so far has only produced one true hit (The Woman In Black, which has a sequel on the way) since their return in 2010. I didn't love the film (or Oculus), but then again I'm harder to please with haunted house/possession type movies, and so I'm surprised that neither of them were able to even come close to hitting the heights of Mama or whatever. It's easy to say "Well they weren't great so no one went", but come on - no one listens to critics for horror movies, so where the hell were the horror fans on opening night, before they knew better?
Plus, even a universally hated movie can open big and sink later - just ask The Devil Inside. Opinions on every horror movie ever vary, so you can't just point the finger at the quality and call it a day. Starting around August last year (after World War Z and The Conjuring blew up), audiences have just more or less stayed away from everything (except for Insidious 2), resulting in no true smash hits and a number of huge disappointments. Studios can't be happy with just breaking even, and if they're not happy fans won't be happy either, as it just means fewer films down the road - at least, in the multiplexes. As time goes on I suspect the VOD/limited release sections of these articles will continue to expand, with fewer and fewer studio entries to discuss. That said, we at least have a few on the way - The Purge sequel looks to be a huge improvement over the original (as it takes place outside during the damn Purge, instead of inside a house where the concept didn't even apply), and Sony is gambling big on Deliver Us From Evil, which offers TWO intriguing rarities: a genre film from Jerry Bruckheimer, and an R rated film for the July 4th weekend. And of course, Godzilla should, if nothing else, make up for Pacific Rim's underwhelming take, sparing us from the studio having to save face by clinging to its overseas numbers. If even two of those movies live up to expectations, we should be OK. If not.... well, at least I don't have to find something to watch every day anymore!
