Did Deliver Us from Evil Deliver Us from the Horror Box Office Slump?
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To say the horror genre on the big screen is currently in a slump would be an understatement. Did the first wide release fright flick in two months, Deliver Us from Evil, finally put an end to that downward trend this Fourth of July weekend?
The first question that needs to be asked is whether Independence Day weekend is the wrong time to open a horror movie or if audiences are tiring of the endless stream of ghost and possession films that seem to make up about 90% of what constitutes theatrically released horror movies these days.
Last year four horror movies managed to gross more than $70 million; this year none of the big screen horror wide releases (almost all falling into the supernatural subgenres previously mentioned) has made more than $33 million. Unfortunately, Deliver Us from Evil will not be the film to end that slump.
Depending on what website you’re reading, Deliver Us from Evil is either a total flop or performed respectably, if unremarkably. It earned $9.5 million over the three-day holiday weekend, nearly $15 million in the five days since opening Wednesday; that’s still considerably less than the $18 million Scott Derrickson’s Sinister opened to in its first three days and certainly less than Derrickson’s adaptation of Marvel’s Dr. Strange will open to in the future. A spike in Saturday viewership pushed Conjuring Cop into a neck-and-neck tie for third/fourth place with meta sequel (22 Jump Street) but still proved no match this Fourth of July weekend for the unstoppable junk pile that is Transformers: Age of Extinction or Melissa McCarthy’s full-fledged descent into Adam Sandler-dom Tammy.
Deliver Us from Evil received a B- Cinemascore, indicating that audiences were very mixed and word-of-mouth will not be good enough to bolster the film in the coming week. Yes, in the bizarre world of Cinemascore anything less than a B+ is considered bad. Why does anyone take this rating seriously again?
Meanwhile, Snowpiercer grossed a million dollars despite playing on only 250 screens. Hey, here’s a wacky idea, Weinsteins – release it wider!
In two weeks the survival horror sequel The Purge: Anarchy gets its shot at ending the horror slump by grossing enough money to become an actual annual (movie) tradition. But first we’ll see the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes on July 11th.
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Categorized:News
