We’ve got an unusually crowded weekend for horror at the box office, with four genre movies either opening or expanding […]
We’ve got an unusually crowded weekend for horror at the box office, with four genre movies either opening or expanding into theaters at the same time.
Insidious: Out of the Further is obviously the big one, but Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma continues its fascinating expansion, while It Ends begins its platform rollout and Noomi Rapace enters the fray with Hot Spot.
And I think there could be a surprise hiding in here.
Let’s start with Insidious: Out of the Further, which Daniel Kurland says in his review “is an impressive return to form that features some of the series’ best scares and a solid emotional core.”
The sixth Insidious movie arrives three years after The Red Door somehow became the franchise’s biggest global hit, despite being one of its weakest entries. The new film moves away from the Lambert family and introduces Amelia Eve as Gemma, a mother who discovers she can enter The Further and, more importantly, bring things back with her. Sony notes that the franchise has now earned more than $740 million worldwide.
Early previews brought in around $3 million, and I’m expecting an opening somewhere around $23 million.
That would be well below the $33 million domestic opening of The Red Door, but let’s put this into perspective: we’re talking about the sixth movie in a supernatural horror franchise that started 15 years ago.
If Out of the Further opens north of $20 million, this thing has incredible legs. Every time feels like it should be running out of gas, audiences show up again.
Insidious
But the movie I’m really watching this weekend is Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which Ashliene raved about, calling it “a funny, sexy, and wildly subversive take on the slasher subgenre that understands why we keep coming back to horror in the first place.”
Jane Schoenbrun’s slasher has been quietly killing it during its platform release. After an enormous opening from just five theaters, it expanded to 54 locations last weekend and pulled in roughly $907,000.
Now it’s jumping to around 500+ theaters.
Conventional projections have it somewhere around $1.5 million this weekend.
I think that’s low.
I went to see Camp Miasma last night in the Chicago suburbs. The first screening filled up, so the theater opened another auditorium. That was a much larger room seating a few hundred people.
That one nearly sold out too.
Obviously, one suburban Chicago theater isn’t national box office data, but combined with the numbers we’re already seeing, it’s another interesting signal that this movie is finding its audience.
The marketing has been incredibly well targeted, word of mouth is strong, and there’s something exciting happening here. I wouldn’t be shocked to see Camp Miasma flirt with $2 million or even higher this weekend, particularly if exhibitors begin adding screens to meet demand.
And if that happens, next weekend becomes even more interesting.
This is a very niche movie finding a real theatrical audience organically. That’s fucking cool. And the better it performs, the more opportunities Schoenbrun gets to make weird, ambitious genre movies.
They’ve also made no secret of their love for A Nightmare on Elm Street, and you can feel that affection for the genre all over this thing.
Then there’s It Ends.
NEON begins releasing Alexander Ullom’s existential road horror movie this weekend before its broader nationwide expansion on August 28. The film follows four friends who become trapped on a seemingly endless highway, with something waiting for them whenever they stop.
NEON has been trying to build some grassroots buzz around it, including a wonderfully ridiculous 36-hour looping screening stunt in New York.
I didn’t particularly connect with the movie, and I’m still curious how something this small and strange plays theatrically. But it’s a relatively low-risk release. If NEON can connect with younger audiences and turn the strong critical response into word of mouth, a few million dollars over the next couple of weeks would be a win.
Finally, there’s Hot Spot.
This one stars Noomi Rapace in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller that pulls from everything from Blade Runner to Mad Max.
Unfortunately, I don’t see much happening here theatrically.
It’s opening in only around 400 theaters, and projections have it hovering around $500,000. That feels about right.
Much like Matt Konopka explained in his review, I found the movie drab, long, and strangely overbuilt for what is ultimately a pretty small idea. There are some nice bursts of gore, and Rapace is always interesting to watch, but she’s not in the movie nearly enough.
This feels destined to disappear quickly and find whatever audience it has later on streaming.
So Insidious is going to do what Insidious does. It Ends is playing the long game. Hot Spot probably comes and goes.
But keep your eyes on Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.
A weird, niche slasher expanding from five theaters to 54 and now roughly 500 while continuing to find an audience is exactly the kind of box office story I love watching unfold.
