Ashleigh Golden didn’t always like horror movies. Growing up she was terrified of the scary films her dad loved, turning away from the gruesome images onscreen. After a while, Golden decided she was done being fearful. “As I got older I kind of was like, I don’t want to be a ridiculous baby,” she said. “So, I would force myself to watch horror movies until I enjoyed horror movies.” Now, a sophomore at Salve Regina University, and an avid watcher of horror flicks, Golden is glad to see these movies becoming more popular, especially as the world continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. In the past few years, particularly due to COVID, movie theatre attendance has reached historical lows. Theatres were closed for the majority of 2020, and even when they reopened many were uncomfortable with the idea of sitting in a cinema, especially since at-home streaming has become so accessible. The Motion Picture Association’s 2021 THEME Report, which analyzes theatrical and home entertainment data to determine performance each year, states that theatrical attendance was down 81% between 2019 and 2020. However, the industry made a comeback, with a 100% increase in attendance between 2020 and 2021. Still, as the effects of the pandemic seem to be lightening, general theatre audiences are substantially smaller than levels reported prior to the pandemic. Horror films, it seems, are not as affected by this, however, as their popularity at the theater continues to grow. The Numbers, a website that primarily compiles box office data, reports that between 2010 and 2021 there has been a 7.42% increase in horror’s box office market share. In other words, horror movies are making more money in theatres than they have in the past. This trend is not just reflected in 2021 and 2022, though, as it seems the growth in popularity first became significant in 2017. There was a spike in popularity, which fell slightly through 2018 and 2019 but has since continued to grow, with recent reports showing that horror shared 12.87% of the box office market. This makes horror the third most popular genre by market share. Some specific examples include recent horror theatrical releases The Menu, X and Smile, which all came out in 2022. Collectively, these three films grossed about $143 million domestically. Even though theatrical attendance is low in response to COVID-19, fans still seem to be turning up for horror. Golden says that it has less to do with the films themselves, but rather the community, saying that “an in-movie experience is wildly more interesting than just streaming it at home because you get to see other people react to the film while you are reacting to the film.” Moreover, since the pandemic’s height, various subscription services report a huge spike in interest in horror. Shudder, a subscription service founded in 2015 that exclusively hosts horror titles, reported in September 2020 that it had surpassed 1 million subscribers to their service. In a 2020 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Shudder’s general manager, Craig Engler, described a huge jump in subscriptions and viewership. He said that many viewers even wished for more pandemic-themed programming to be added to Shudder’s collection. Caetlin Benson-Allott, professor of English, film, and media studies at Georgetown University, theorizes that this increased interest could be related to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who argued that audiences experience and work through their emotions by identifying with fictional stories, a concept often referred to as catharsis. While Aristotle was referring to Greek theatre rather than modern horror cinema, for Benson-Allott the idea translates. “The comfort of catharsis still applies for a lot of horror movie viewers,” she says. “Most horror movies are under ninety minutes, and virtually all of them under two hours. And so, in that time, we can see a monster introduced and a monster vanquished, which is not, sadly, the timeline that we’re operating on for most of the problems that we face in the real world. So, I think that’s some of the appeal.” Additionally, there is a huge variety of subgenres in horror including slashers, psychological, demonic and monsters to name a few. Benson-Allott argues that the increasing popularity of horror films can fluctuate depending on these subgenres. Over time, different subgenres have been popular, with slashers like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) being well-loved in the ’70s and early ’80s, whereas comedy horrors like Bodies, Bodies, Bodies (2022) are popping up more often in recent years. It seems that the recent increase in horror’s popularity may be because filmmakers have figured out what kind of horror films audiences today will love. Golden has her own theories as to why horror movies have grown in popularity. She claims that the age of the Internet has a lot to do with why consumers are more likely to enjoy horror. She believes that “a lot of people are becoming desensitized to frightening events, especially with everything that goes on in the real world.” She goes on to note, too, that Internet culture has made scary situations much more accessible, meaning “that people can handle horror more so it’s being advertised more, and people are enjoying it because it’s not reality. It’s not something that’s actually scary happening in real life. So, they can digest that easier and they’re less afraid of it and they just find it interesting.” Today is also a unique time in terms of cinema. The COVID-19 pandemic had a massive, detrimental impact on the film industry, as it delayed releases, created the need for new preventive measures to be put in place on sets, and caused many viewers to turn to streaming services rather than the now expensive, and inconvenient process of attending a movie at the theatre. While streaming has made a steady impact on the film industry even before COVID-19’s outbreak, the pandemic certainly expedited streaming’s takeover of film and television. Streaming services, such as Shudder, give people cheaper, quicker and easier access to the films they love. This accessibility is another reason horror films have become so popular, as the genre particularly lends itself to being watched at home, a lucrative market post-COVID. The genre includes many stories that are set in a home, a famous example being the Halloween series. These movies follow Mike Meyers, who invades the homes of his victims. To watch these films in the same space that the characters are targeted, adds to the realism and the horror, making the films themselves just as effective as if they were to be viewed in a cinema. Lisa Neidenthal, executive producer at Blumhouse, a horror production company, suggests that financial motivations may also be a part of horror’s increase. It is widely recognized in films that horror is one of the cheapest genres to produce. One of the main reasons for this is that stars are not necessarily needed to sell a horror film. A production company does not have to pay millions of dollars to secure Hollywood’s most popular heartthrob for their horror film to do well because the horror audience is often more willing to take a chance on first-time actors and directors. Additionally, horror films typically are geared towards cheap production, as many fantastic and beloved horror films intentionally play into the cheapness, making the film itself grittier. As Neidenthal states: “There’s also been a lot more people who’ve gotten into the business of producing horror because it’s been very lucrative to the early pioneers, like Blumhouse, and I think people see that and they think, ‘Oh, I want to get in that game as well.’” Horror’s current popularity is clear, with the production of new films and the continuing love for the classics. While interest in the genre has waxed and waned over time, over the course of the past five years many people have become more and more interested in these films. As for the future of horror, it depends on whom you ask. Golden particularly hopes for an increase in popularity, although she was not confident in the security of the genre. “It’s all about trends,” Golden notes. “It’s all about what’s cool with people who are more famous. What’s cool with people who are mildly famous? What’s being talked about? What’s not being talked about? So, it’s hard to say. I want to say that it will continue to grow in popularity and the genre of will continue to expand into all sorts of new, different horror. But it’s, again, hard to say.” Neidenthal approaches the concept from a more optimistic perspective. Both Golden and Neidenthal believe that the popularity of upcoming horror films will depend on their content, as filmmakers’ knowledge of what subgenres are popular will be essential to their ability to produce a wildly popular horror film. Even so, Neidenthal theorized that the future of horror is pretty secure. “There is an audience out there for it, and there are people who want to make those movies,” Neidenthal observes. “So, as long as we can keep the quality of them and the storytelling good, I think they’ll always find a home.” PHOTO BY ERIK MCLEAN/UNSPLASH