'Witches' rule the roost: Stree, The Nun attracting audiences in hordes. Is horror the new hero?

While fear sells, not many filmmakers were tapping into this emotion. However, when they did and did it with something fresh, cinema-goers appreciated their effort, translating into good business for films.

Both Hollywood and Bollywood have witnessed this in the recent years. While the latter tried a blend of horror and comedy, the former went the conventional way to scare the audience.

Releasing in succession, Rajkumar Rao-starrer Stree and the fifth instalment from the Conjuring universe, The Nun, are dominating the box office and attracting movie-goers in hordes worldwide.

According to a Box Office India report, a Bollywood news portal, Stree has crossed the Rs 100-crore mark worldwide and gone past Satyameve Jayate with business of Rs 117 crore in the overseas market 10 days of release.

Meanwhile, Hollywood offering The Nun had a good weekend in India and raked in around Rs 28 crore during the first weekend. In comparison to other films from the Conjuring series, collections of The Nun are by far the biggest for the franchise. It will surpass the revenue of The Conjuring 2, which had grossed Rs 35.50 crore in the first week and is considered as the best film in terms of business for the franchise.

At the Indian box office, amid holdovers and new releases, only two films —Stree and Taissa Farmiga’s The Nun — are making a mark. With both the movies raking in moolah, ‘witches’ are ruling the roost.

The Nun also made a global debut with a massive revenue of $131 million and minted $77.5 million from 60 overseas markets. Building on its domestic dominance, this is the highest grossing international opening among films in the Conjuring universe.

The success of the two films calls for an analysis on why horror is the new hero.

In Danse Macabre, Stephen King described “terror as the finest emotion, and so I will try to terrorize the reader”. And probably this is what the filmmakers are up to. Provide the audiences their dose of entertainment but with an element of fear.

However, what is interesting to note is that a new breed of artful horror is making its way back to the celluloid along with prestige horror.

With films like Get Out and A Quiet Place, cinema’s most commercially viable genre is also its most acclaimed.

And that brings to the fore another factor that makes horror a go-to genre.

It is the low budget of horror films that generally make them profitable. They are cheap because they are mostly shot in a single location with a few, if any, major stars.

Also, horror’s low cost has made them more accessible to first-time directors looking to break through the noise.

And at a time when online video consumption is increasing and over the top (OTT) players like Netflix and Amazon are aggressively getting more content to attract viewers, Hollywood is looking at more risk-averse ways to reach audiences. Hence, horror is becoming even more important to studios’ bottom lines.

What’s in it for the actors?

Although horror films are made on low budgets and actors are paid a smaller fee, when the film reaps higher financial rewards on account of big box office success, the actors get a bigger piece of back-end gross.

The international business of spooky movies is another plus point for the studios as scares transcend language and culture. Andrés Muschietti’s IT, that became the most profitable film of all time, grossed $700 million worldwide last year and made more money abroad than domestically. And that is one reason why studios can’t resist horror films.

And horror comedies too have become a staple of this genre.

While some findings suggest that distress and delight are correlated — the stronger the negative emotions (fear, worry, anxiety...) a person reports experiencing during horror films, the more likely he or she is to enjoy it. And that is enough encouragement for filmmakers to experiment more with this genre.