Why New Horror Movies Have Been Abysmal

By Michael Pascual 

I recently decided to watch the new Blumhouse horror movie Imaginary, and it was boring. The plot was stale and predictable, the monster was a joke, and the characters were especially generic. This made me realize that this has been the case with several movies that Blumhouse has released over the past few years. Insidious: The Red Door received a very low 38% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, but with a budget of 16 million and a Box Office of 189 million, the movie made more than 11 times its budget. For reference, a movie is considered a success when it makes 2 to 2.5 times its budget, so the profit margins of this movie are absurd. Other Blumhouse horror movies have also seen similar profit margins, such as Halloween Kills, which received 6 times its budget, and Night Swim, (the movie about a haunted swimming pool) which received 3 times its budget.

I believe that these huge profits are making it so Blumhouse doesn’t feel the need to put out quality movies when they know they will make tons of money off of the crap they’ve been putting out. The problem with this is it over-saturates the horror genre with incredibly stale and boring movies. This makes it harder for people to get into the genre and removes the incentive for production companies like Blumhouse to fund movies that are genuinely creative and entertaining. 

Another issue with Blumhouse is its complete lack of competitors. They are one of the only production companies devoted to horror movies, meaning the movies they fund are a large percentage of the ones that are in circulation right now, which only lessens their desire to produce quality movies (Like 2012’s Sinister or 2009’s Paranormal Activity). 

The easiest fix for this is to just stop watching these bad movies because if they stop getting huge profits from these films, they stop creating them. Boycotting has historically been a successful way of protesting, and there is no reason it wouldn’t work in this instance. Another is supporting films made by independent filmmakers, so we don’t have to rely so much on companies like Blumhouse. One fantastic independent movie I recommend is the horror-comedy Benny Loves You, which was created almost entirely by one person. Another is Mad God, which is a stop-motion masterpiece created by Phil Tibbet that took a whopping 30 years to make, finally being completed in 2021. 

Blumhouse has continued to pump out uninspired and obnoxiously dull movies because of the huge profits they get from their low-budget films. This is an issue because it pushes people away from the genre and means less content for horror fans to enjoy in the future.