Is There Such a Thing as Too Many Horror Movies?
Thanks to production delays throughout 2020, this year is set to see a huge number of horror movies premiere. Is the viewing public ready to be scared again?
This summer, expect to see a lot more horror movies hit theaters than usual: 10 movies, to be exact, starting with Spiral, the Saw reboot that premiered earlier in May. Just like with every other genre, horror films were pushed back and delayed throughout 2020 by the COVID pandemic, creating the current surplus of new scary movies. But is it possible that, after such a terrifying year, a traumatized viewing public may have a smaller appetite for fright than they had in previous summers?
Photo: MPI Media Group
Alok Mishra doesn’t think so. Mishra is the producer of the horror hit 1BR, which starred Nicole Brydon Bloom, Giles Matthey, and Taylor Nichols, and sat in Netflix's Top 5 in the U.S. for over a week during the summer of 2020. And as someone who works in the horror movie business, he’s not worried about the genre’s stock dropping in a post-COVID summer.
“I think there are so many [horror movies coming out] because the pandemic pushed a lot of their release dates back,” says Mishra. “Horror movies are certainly the types of films that really play with a packed audience — people’s reactions to on-screen deaths or jump scares are something truly best experienced with a live, in-person audience.” Mishra definitely counts himself among those who have been longing for a return to the theater. “I'm really looking forward to A Quiet Place 2, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Don't Breathe 2, and Candyman. But don't get me wrong, I'll be seeing ALL ten that are coming out. I really, really miss going to theaters, and I got an AMC Stubs Pass, so believe me when I say I will be making full use of that!”
Clearly, Mishra is a hardcore horror fan. Unlike the average moviegoer, there’s virtually no chance that horror fanatics going to the theaters will be squeamish about seeing scary movies in 2021. It’s safe to assume that aficionados have been fiending for more films from their favorite genre after a year when precious few of them were released — if they’re going to the theaters at all, they’re not going to let last year’s real-life horrors prevent them from watching scary movies.
But what about the general movie-viewing public? How excited are they about the horrors that await them at the box office this year? What movies specifically are grabbing their interest the most? And how do the tastes of these more general movie audiences compare to those of horror fanatics like Mishra with a special place in their heart for this genre? These are all questions that Ranker can help answer!
How Highly Anticipated Is Horror in 2021?
A Quiet Place Part II is the #11 most anticipated movie of 2021 on Ranker. Photo: Paramount
We can get a sense of just how excited moviegoers are about horror movies hitting theaters this summer and beyond by taking a look at how they’re voting on our list of the The Most Anticipated Movies of 2021. As of the writing of this blog post, none of the movies in the Top 10 are horror movies. There are, however, three horror movies in the list’s Top 20: A Quiet Place Part II, the long-awaited Candyman reboot, and The Conjuring III: The Devil Made Me Do It. In the list’s Top 25 there are six horror movies, thanks to Army of the Dead, Halloween Kills, and Nightmare Alley. And the Top 50 features 11 horror movies, including Fear Street: 1994, Last Night in Soho, The Forever Purge, Don’t Breathe 2, and the latest reboot of Resident Evil.
Top 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2021: 0% Horror
Top 20 Most Anticipated Movies of 2021: 15% Horror
Top 25 Most Anticipated Movies of 2021: 24% Horror
Top 50 Most Anticipated Movies of 2021: 20% Horror
How Highly Anticipated Was Horror in 2020?
The Invisible Man was 2020’s most highly anticipated horror movie, and the #7 most anticipated movie of the year overall. Photo: Universal Pictures
How does anticipation for horror movies this year compare that of previous years? Horror makes far fewer appearances on The Most Anticipated Movies of 2020. The list features a lot of the same films that are now on the 2021 list, thanks to all the postponements brought on by the COVID pandemic. The Top 50 Most Anticipated Movies of 2020 features just four horror flicks: The Invisible Man, Candyman, Fear Street: 1994, and Run. Looking at these numbers, it seems that film fans were more reticent about seeing scary movies back when the actual horrors of the pandemic were in full swing — now that things are beginning to calm down, people seem more comfortable seeking out anxiety-inducing entertainment.
Top 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2020: 10% Horror
Top 20 Most Anticipated Movies of 2020: 15% Horror
Top 25 Most Anticipated Movies of 2020: 12% Horror
Top 50 Most Anticipated Movies of 2020: 8% Horror
How Highly Anticipated Was Horror in 2019?
At #3, It: Chapter II was the only horror movie to make it into the Top 5 of the Most Anticipated list for its respective year. Photo: Warner Bros.
Horror movies had their best performance on these lists in 2019, before most people had a clue what the novel coronavirus was. Still, while our list of The Most Anticipated Movies of 2019 has more horror films in its Top 50 than any of the other lists we’ve covered, it had a lot of help from very buzzy sequels like It: Chapter 2 and Zombieland: Double Tap. Joining those movies in 2019’s Top 50 are that year’s Pet Semetery remake, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the rebooted Child’s Play, The Curse of La Llorona, Jordan Peele’s highly anticipated Get Out follow-up Us, belated The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep, Escape Room, Happy Death Day 2U, Rob Zombie flick The 3 From Hell, Annabelle Comes Home, and The Girl on the Third Floor.
Top 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2019: 20% Horror
Top 20 Most Anticipated Movies of 2019: 20% Horror
Top 25 Most Anticipated Movies of 2019: 24% Horror
Top 50 Most Anticipated Movies of 2019: 26% Horror
Which Films Have Horror Fanatics Most Excited?
There’s a major difference between the tastes of the greater viewing public and those of people within the horror fandom. Though horror fanatics are a much smaller group, they’re also big tastemakers that can affect the way the rest of the country thinks about movies in the genre.
One of the great things about Ranker lists is that our readers are drawn to the lists that represent their specific tastes — if you’re not a big fan of horror movies, you’re far less likely to vote on our list of The Most Anticipated Horror Movies of 2021. That explains the major differences between the results of that list and those of the more general Most Anticipated Movies of 2021 list: horror fans have tastes that differ from those of movie fans writ large. By taking a look at these differing results, we can determine which movies are appealing to all audiences and which movies are more likely to become horror movie cult classics.
We took all the horror movies from our list of the Most Anticipated Movies of 2021 and ordered them according to their rank on the list, then compared that to the results of our Most Anticipated Horror Movies of 2021. This is what we found:
Horror Fans’ tastes are mostly in line with those of the rest of the country — with some major exceptions.
The scatterplot to the right demonstrates exactly where the horror community differs from the rest of the movie-viewing public. The bottom-left quadrant features movies anticipated by both groups; the top-right quadrant has movies neither group is excited about; the bottom-right quadrant has movies only anticipated by horror fans; and the top-left quadrant has movies only anticipated by movie fans in general.
As you can see, both groups are excited for blockbusters like A Quiet Place Pt. II and Candyman — not so much for new additions to the Resident Evil and The Purge franchises. But there are also some notable discrepancies between the results of these two lists.
2016’s Don’t Breathe got favorable reviews from critics and was a sleeper box office hit, thanks in large part to its relatively small budget. Of course, the problem with sleeper hits is that many people don’t actually remember they were hits. That explains why horror fans are more excited about the sequel: they’re the ones who don’t need massive marketing campaigns to remind them of just how good the first film was.
Antlers is the biggest outlier here: the #2 most anticipated movie among horror fans and the #15 most anticipated movie for everybody else. The movie had built a good deal of buzz for itself in 2020, only to be forced to push the release date back from April of that year to October 2021. Again, horror fans appear to have longer memories in this case.
Guillermo Del Toro’s upcoming Nightmare Alley, a psychological thriller about a manipulative con artist who teams up with a dangerous psychologist, is far more anticipated by movie fans in general than by fans of horror films specifically. It could be that horror fans don’t really consider Del Toro’s fantastical, sometimes campy films part of the genre. Or maybe they just thought The Shape of Water was overrated.
The Purge franchise has been a reliable box office success, but The Forever Purge seems to be drumming up little enthusiasm among either group. That could mean that Purge fatigue is finally setting in — of course, the fact that people complain about excessive sequels and reboots in movie theaters doesn’t necessarily stop them from buying tickets when those sequels premiere.
A Quiet Place Pt. II is pretty highly anticipated by both groups, but as the #6 pick for horror fans and the #1 pick for everyone else, the disparity is still significant. Despite the fact that the first movie was a surprise hit among horror fans, it looks like it’s officially crossed the line from “cult favorite” to “blockbuster behemoth.”
