As the end of the year draws near, many websites and publications have been looking back on the best and worst movies of the 2013, as well as the biggest moneymakers and disasters of the year at the box office. Whatever’s been going on in mainstream Hollywood, in genre cinema one thing is clear: Horror is still going strong.
As the Wrap reports, horror movies were “among the year’s most consistent box office performers,” and whatever time of the year they were released, movies like The Conjuring, Mama, and Insidious: Chapter 2, all did very well. (Horror’s not just for October release dates anymore.)
And of course, what’s always music to Hollywood’s ears are the profit margins for the genre. It’s still very inexpensive to make a horror film, and a major studio can be in the black with a scare flick opening weekend. The Conjuring cost $20 million and made back over $300 million, clearly the biggest scare success story this year.
For fans of metal and horror, and they are often interrelated, it turns out Kirk Hammett from Metallica is also going to launch his own horror convention, Fear FestEvil, which will take place on February 6-8 2014 at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco.
Although it’s currently only booked for Northern California, we’re hoping Kirk will one day take this on the road, because there’s already some really fun guests including Kane Hodder (Jason), Greg Nicotero of KNB special effects (Walking Dead), John Russo (writer of Night of the Living Dead), OG gore master Tom Savini (Dawn of the Dead), metal bands like Carcass and Death Angel performing, and more.
So as a long time fan of the genre, it’s great to see that horror is still doing well. We still haven’t had a big screen classic in a long time, but Walking Dead may be picking up the slack for that, and there’s still hope a gem like Cabin the Woods can come along again and reach a wider audience next time.
