Paranormal box office activity…

Updated on October 12, 2009 By Ken Begg 25 Comments

A tip of the hat the makers and distributors of the micro-budget, well reviewed horror flick Paranormal Activity.  Showing that there’s a hunger for more on the horror front than slashers and pseudo-slashers, the formerly art house film went a tiny bit wider this weekend, and astoundingly got on the top five box office list this week despite being featured on only 159 screens nationwide.

Admittedly, that’s because this is a slow time of year at the movies.  Still, PA made seven million dollars this weekend from those 159 screens, netting a gobsmacking $44,000 per screen.  That means in three days, each screen made four times as much as the film’s reported $11,000 (!!!) production budget.  (Obviously prints and advertising drove that figure way up, but still.)

Chances are this will represent but a Blair Witch-like anomaly, but it’s nice we still get those.  Congrats again to the folks who pulled this off.

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  • Tork_110

    Holy crap. 11k? I had to check, but Manos was made for more than that, and that was 1960s money.

  • Blackadder

    I’m waiting for this is open in WV next week.

    I bet the post production costs pushed the price tag to around fifty grand, not counting advertising. Still a bargain price for a movie these days.

  • Man, this site does so much hatin’ on the poor slashers. The old slasher genre has been pretty much dead for almost two decades. Not every film featuring a non-supernatural killer is a “slasher”. I know y;all know this, but I just want to say so straightforwardly.

    Look at some of the recent horror flicks

    B.T.K. – well, okay. this is basically a slasher movie. I admit it. It’s one of the inexplicable new genre of slashers supposed based on real life. I am not sure why these appeal. But anyway …

    DARK SECRETS – not a slasher
    ELSEWHERE – not a slasher
    GHOSTS OF GOLDFIELD – not a slasher
    HAUNTING OF MOLLY HARTLEY – not a slasher
    THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT – not a slasher
    SAM’S LAKE – not a slasher
    THE UNBORN – not a slasher

    so there.

  • My mind’s made up. Next time Ken visits my place, I’m going to make him watch like 6 bad 9old slasher movies ina row. Let’s see …

    Mother’s Day
    Luther the Geek
    The Burning
    Maniac
    Deranged

    Oh yeah, we’re bringing on the PAIN for you, Mr. Begg sir.

  • Hmm. my post about slashers came across as a little mean spirited and bitter. It was nt intended that way and I apologize. I just meant that slashers are a moribund genre, but they still can’t get any love. Boo hoo I guess.

    I agree there are few good slasher movies, but I maintain strongly that the number of good slashers is greater than one (1), which is usually the number begrudgingly admitted by horror fans (everyone loves Halloween).

  • Note that I didn’t say there wasn’t room for slashers; but instead that there is room–and an audience appetite–for more than JUST slashers. I actually find a lot more active intolerance of non-slasher (or at least gorefest flicks) from goreheads than vice versa. Lot of sites grumble whenever a PG-13 horror movie comes out–which is dumb, because the rating has nothing to do with how scary it is–whereas I’ve never seen fans of PG-13 horror complain about the R rated movies on the market.

    I keep up on horror flicks to some extent, and of your list, I recognize three titles. I’m not saying those films don’t exist, but that they don’t exactly counterbalance all the Black Christmases and My Bloody Valentines and Saws whatever, etc.

    On the other hand, the superlative old school non-slasher Drag Me to Hell completely bombed, so again, Paranormal Activity might just be a blip.

  • Well, Sandy, let’s admit it; if we had a ‘describe Sandy Petersen in one word contest,’ mean would certainly get lots of votes.

    Halloween set up the template for slashers, but I myself can’t include a film that has literally no blood spilled in it–rather less than 1960’s Psycho, in fact–a slasher. I think a legitimate slasher almost has to have an R rating, although they do make lots of pseudo-slasher psycho-killer movies, too.

    I do like Alone in the Dark, which I’d call a slasher. (Is Nightmare On Elm Street a slasher? That strikes me as a pretty reductive definition for that film.) Past that, not a lot springs directly to mind. I’m not knocking fans of the genre–Liz Kingsley likes ’em–but they ain’t my bag. They get plenty of love elsewhere, though.

  • fish eye no miko

    ken said: “Lot of sites grumble whenever a PG-13 horror movie comes out–which is dumb, because the rating has nothing to do with how scary it is.”

    I might have done this rant before, but: Yeah, that pisses me off, too. I’ve seen plenty of great horror films that were PG-13, or where from before the rating existed–or any ratings existed, for that matter–that, if submitted to the ratings board today, would be PG-13 (or, hell, PG). Yes, there are some types of films that shouldn’t be PG-13; for example, I can understand the Alien and Predator fans who disliked the first AvP movie being PG-13, since neither franchise had ever had a PG-13 film before. And I can understand the argument that slasher films don’t really work well if you’re not willing to go into R-territory (though I’m not sure I necessarily agree). But there are a lot more types of horror films than slashers, and plenty of those types work very well with little to no violence or gore.

  • ProfessorKettlewell

    Miko: I think we need to distinguish between films that are ‘scary’ and ‘bloody’. I know people who, to this day, insist that the original “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” had tons of gore scenes, and if I’ve never seen the bit where the ‘disabled guy gets his guts ripped out with the chainsaw’, then I must have seen a cut version. Suggestion > presentation. A friend of mine (who is, I should mention, a lecturer in Womens’ Studies) insists that that what *men* find upsetting and ‘offensive’ about “Alien” is that it puts a definitely female sexual predator up on screen, and casts men in the traditional feminine/victim role. A really good ghost story with nary a drop of blood will stay with me a *lot* longer than a guts-out slasher film, which is why I’m REALLY looking forward to “Paranormal Activity”. I have an idea that’s going to get me where I live, and in a GOOD way……

  • I agree with the distinction between “slasher” and “scary” and therein lies the main issue, in my opinion. The original classic slashers like “Elm Street”, “Texas Chainsaw”, etc. were actually quite scary when they came out. The same formulas, today, don’t elicit that type of terror since moviegoers are far more jaded, these days. However, the Japanese continue to present horror that is not only frightening\creepy – but violent, as well. The only problem is that a lot of it is too insane and over-the-top for typical American audiences.
    BTW – while I found “Drag Me to Hell” to be an extremely well done modern day slasher, it was so predictable that a lot of the impact was lost.

  • D

    @Henry

    Calling Drag Me To Hell a slasher movie shows that nobody should pay any attention to your horror film opinions.

  • ProfessorKettlewell

    @henry: here’s an idea:: up until ‘Friday the 13th’, the purpose of ‘scary movies’ was primarily to be scary. Take ‘Elm Street’ 1 or ‘TCM’ or ‘Halloween’, which are essentially rooted in the older suspense-movie tradition, and they work by racking up the tension, until the violence is actually cathartic – perhaps the influence of Peckinpah (‘TCM’ isn’t too many steps away from ‘Straw Dogs’ – fish-out-of-water suburban folks terrorized by redneck savages). The Final Girls in those movies survive by being smart and ingenious, even if they do have moments of jeans-wetting hysteria, which actually gets you on their side. Now fast-forward to a film like ‘Hostel’, which goes far, far out of its way to present its putative ‘heroes’ as outright loathsome characters (I’d go so far as to say racist stereotypes) who you can’t wait to see the sadists go to work on. Is that the difference?

  • fish eye no miko

    @ProfessorKettlewell: There were at least a few pre-F13 films whose main purpose was gore; Blood Feast is a good example of this. And while it’s not really a gore film, Carrie definitely falls into the “jerks getting what they deserve” camp. So do I Spit on Your Grave and Cannibal Holocaust, for that matter.

  • UM… Looking at my post – I don’t see where I called “Drag Me to Hell” a “slasher film” – I just included the title in my post as a response to Ken’s comment on how it tanked at the box office. Please read all the posts before you comment on one’s ability to express an opinion, please…

  • UM… Looking at my post – I just included the title in my post as a response to Ken’s comment on how it tanked at the box office. Please read all the posts before you comment on one’s ability to express an opinion, please…

  • Warsaw

    This movie is setting a more interesting precedent. Is (as far as I know) the first relatively popular movie that has managed to completely avoid being pirated in the Internet. There are no copies of it in emule, torrent, of places of the kind.
    I get it’s not highly popular, but is popular enough for people to search it and want it, yet the owners have protectec the movie flawlessly in that aspect.

  • Rock Baker

    While I’m no fan of slashers (amd I’m not sure the Nightmare on Elm Street films, at least the first few, qualify as such), I must say I liked the recent My Bloddy Valentine 3-D. I’ve come to expect that modern films, “horror” ones in particular, completely lack good writing and any sort of showmanship. I was happily surprised by the 3-D flick on both counts. On the other end of the spectrum, I was taken aback by the revamp of Friday the 13th. Wow, and I thought the victims back in the 80s were unappealing!

  • ProfessorKettlewell

    @Henry: ignore the troll (slight return.) If he had a point to make, he would have cited your alleged mistake.

    @miko. Yup…you got me again. “Blood Feast” definitely sets out to give the gore and not the tension. But I think that ‘Spit’ fits more into the ‘Civillised person must unleash their inner savage in order to survive’, ‘Deliverance’ model. A big point is that Jennifer is a romantic novelist who becomes a vengeful castratrix.

  • Jimmy

    Actually, it does look like Henry did call it a slasher. In the last line-

    “BTW – while I found “Drag Me to Hell” to be an extremely well done modern day slasher, it was so predictable that a lot of the impact was lost.”

  • Slashers get a lot of hate. And like many genres they are actually kind of hard to define. Certainly the same audience that watches Nightmare on Elm Street watch Friday the 13th, but labeling the former a slasher is, as Ken points out, doubtful at best. Some Giallos move into slasher territory, so they at least overlap.

    But I often see the word “slasher” used by people to label horror movies they don’t like.

  • fish eye no miko

    Since I few people have mentioned it: How is Nightmare on Elm Street not a slasher film? I mean, it’s about a guy who goes around killing teens with razor claws! Frankly, as a sort of corollary to Sandy Peterson’s comment that, “I often see the word ‘slasher’ used by people to label horror movies they don’t like”, I can’t help but think that people are avoiding calling NoES a slasher film because they DO like it.

  • A slasher film, to my mind (and I don’t think this is far off from the way many would define it) is a movie whose primary appeal is a series of often extremely graphic deaths, what a friend of mine used to refer to as ‘quality kills.’ NoES would not qualify because although it features some notable death scenes, they in themselves are not the focus of the proceedings in the same way as they are in the Friday the 13th movies, The Burning, Terror Train, etc.

    The fact that gruesome f/x are paramount in these pictures explains why Tom Savini became such a big name in the ’80s…indeed, his importance generally topped that of anyone else’s on the films he worked on. It also explains why so many of the ones most beloved by the slasher fan community are otherwise simply dreadful films.

    And indeed, there is a pretty vocal hardcore base of slasher fans, although they tend to be blunt about the appeal of the films and call themselves gorehounds. These are the folks who write with extreme ire about the MPAA cutting out ten seconds of gore in this flick or another. (Which is valid, although conversely I find their oft expressed anger over the sheer existence of PG-13 horror films sort of juvenile.)

    I should note that I’m not judging these films–although the modern run of torture flicks, with their emphasis on audience-pleasing prolonged suffering, definitely sets off my own moral radar–but just stating that they are not my bag. Aside from the fact that I am quite easy to queeze, the ‘somebody gets killed every five minutes’ format generally bores me stiff.

  • Just saw this today. Wow! I am still creeped out. It’s that good. If you want to see an actual scary movie, I highly recommend going to see the film. (I do have the feeling this is the type of film that works better in the theater with an audience than it will at home.)

  • Blackadder

    If a movie has significant supernatural elements – like NOES – I don’t consider it a “slasher film.”

    Paranormal Activity finally opened here and it’s pretty good. If you liked Blair Witch, you will love it. If you hated Blair Witch… well, a lot more happens onscreen in PA, so you may still like it. Give it a try!

  • Tork_110

    Paranormal Activity beat Saw VI!

    Take that, Jigsaw killer!