Today, Explained - Why horror kills at the box office

Episode Date: September 14, 2025

Hollywood has always made money from vampires and brain-eating zombies. But this year's a record-breaker thanks to sequels, hilariously unlikely creators, and pure thrills. This episode was produced by Denise Guerra and Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Adriene Lilly and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill.  A detail from The Conjuring Museum Of The Occult based on "The Conjuring" films. Photo by David Benito/Getty Images.  If you have a question, give us a call on 1-800-618-8545 or send us a note here. Listen to Explain It to Me ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This is explained it to me from Vox. Okay, you guys, I'm not big on truly scary stuff. I'm a little bit of a scaredy cat. Once my friend convinced me to go see it with her in theaters, I do not know why I did that. I'm Pennywise, dancing cloud. And when I got home, I turned on all the lights and lights. my apartment and watched old episodes of SpongeBob as a pallet cleanser before I could go to sleep.

I wish I lived there. Really? No. But recently, I've been dabbling. And a lot of you more than dabble. At a very young age, all of my brothers and sisters, we were watching all of the horror movies that you should not watch. I'm a lover of all things monstrous, always have been. I love the aesthetic of the scary.

teeth, the claws, just think it's cool. So, like, we always have, like, the really gory, gruesome Halloween costumes. I have always been, like, a scary cat, but about five years ago, started watching horror movies during Halloween with my roommate. And I think it's because horror movies today are, like, kind of the last vestige of that kind of mid-budget movie. It's not, like, a huge Marvel blockbuster that feels all the same. And I feel really great when I get a sense of exhilaration from the danger of

presented in a horror movie, but I'm actually safe in the audience. It seems we're in a kind of scary movie renaissance. At a time when the box office is kind of in a slump, fears keeping it alive. That's according to Paul DeGarabedian. He's head of Marketplace Trends for ComScore, which keeps track of box office trends. And he is biased towards horror films. So I have a long-standing relationship to horror movie. Having grown up with three older sisters,

they love movies, and yet I was too young to go see The Exorcist, and they snuck me in to see it. Oh, please, father, make it stop! It's burning! That's burning! I'm traumatized to this day in a good way because I absolutely was blown away by the movie. What that movie proved to me is that seeing a horror movie in a movie theater,

the only way I could hide from the scariness on screen as a kid was to cover my eyes, you know, and I was embarrassed to do so. but you're in that darkened room, so it really is in that communal environment. You can feel the electricity, the energy of people. That was really cool when you're in a theater and everybody kind of collectively jumps. Horror movies create that sense of dread, that fear factor. You talk about this sense of, you know, dread. Is that the definition of a horror movies?

How have the definition of horror movies changed in recent years? Has it? I don't think it has. I think that's what's so pure and cool about horror movies. is that they really haven't changed. If you go back to Nosferatu, starring Max Shrek, way back, I believe it was the early 20s. You know, the horror movie genre has been a staple of cinema

since the beginning, since the dawn of cinema. And I think it is just always been the same and that collectively as human beings, we, you know, it's baked into our DNA to be afraid of certain tropes, situations, you know, the cues, the music cues that make you go, oh, wow. something scary is about to happen, that all plays in there, but I think the basic idea of what horror is,

is that sense of dread. When you go see the conjuring and that music swells at the beginning with the ominous music and the Warner Brothers logo, New Line logos come up, and you're just braced and ready to go. People are giggling. It's kind of that nervous laughter. And so it's about the communal experience,

also what's going on in your head. Horror really can separate different personality types. Yeah. If you're like, I love horror movies. I want the most R-rated, scary, gross. You know, some people are into like, you know, bodies being dismembered. Torture porn, as they used to unfortunately call it, those kind of movies. But to each his own, whatever you should.

Look at terrifier. Now, for a guy who doesn't speak, he sure makes a lot of... noise please welcome art the clown i almost can't even watch that like first of all don't eat while you're watching art the clown good to know and then there's the more cerebral uh films you know get out us jordan peels films conjuring i would say especially the first conjuring back in 2013 just a great movie and as relevant today as we saw recently with uh that massive 84 million domestic opening for The Conjuring Last Rites, which blew the doors off and surprised a lot of people. And horror movies have already surpassed a billion dollars in domestic box office according to our comscore data.

Horror movies continue to thrill audiences. Have scary movies always been such a big moneymaker? They generally have. They're actually very profitable. So even like back in the day, you would have a movie like the original Halloween to the very modest budget. and then just became this box office juggernaut. But generally, I always say until now or until in the last maybe decade or so,

I would always call horror the Rodney Danger Field of genres that can't get no respect. Well, that's a story of my life, no respect. Because a lot of times it would happen as a money grab, there's no better genre than horror, at least traditionally. With horror, it's so much in your head And the situations don't necessarily require CGI,

although of course that happens. But if you look at a movie like weapons... At 2.17 in the morning, every kid woke up, got out of bed, walk downstairs, and into the dark. From Zach Crager, who also directed Barbarian, Barbarian is a very lo-fi movie. I mean, there's these small, intimate situations that are scary because they are just that.

They're more confined. and that really works. But as a general rule, to make a very effective horror movie, you don't have to spend a fortune so they can be bloody profitable at the end of the day. Can you tell us who's leading the way in horror right now in 2025? If you just look at Sinners, Sinners for me is one of the best movies of the past five years, maybe more. It goes beyond the horror genre. And to have Ryan Coogler directing Michael B. Jordan, that great cast,

the entire premise, the music. There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true. It can pierce the veil between life and death, conjuring spirits from the past and the future. It almost doesn't do it justice just to say that that sinners is a horror movie because it's so much more. And then to be followed up by Final Destination Bloodlines, another older horror franchise for the 1,500th time. No one gives a shit about your stupid little death curse, okay?

So take a hint and leave us alone because death's not coming for our family. Again, overperforming at the box office, and then at the end of the summer to have weapons dominating the month of August, and let's not forget last year, Nosferatu, that movie opened on Christmas Day. And Nosferatu is an example of an Academy Award-level horror film. And again, they used to not get any respect, but you go back to The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, considered some of the greatest movies of all time, full stop.

You don't have to even qualify as horror movie. They're just great. So it's just really cool to have a genre like this really bolstering the box office. I mean, when you talk about a billion dollars in box office, the first time we ever hit that in domestic, meaning U.S. and Canada box office was way back in 2017. The horror movie box office before then had never hit a billion dollars. But again, when you have it and get out and split that year, all great movies, 1.16 billion.

Again, not worldwide, but U.S. and Canada domestic gross. But right now in 2025, through the weekend of the Conchering Last Rites, we're already at a billion, over a billion dollars. and more to come. So these movies are big money, but why do we like them so much? And what other genre scratches that same itch? That's next.

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So I asked Allison Wilmore, a film. at Vulture and New York Magazine to explain the connection between what frightens us and what makes us laugh. For me, the best horror comedies are both scary and funny. I also will say, I think that one of the great qualities of horror, as much as we associate it with being this, you know, it's a spooky genre. It's filled with a lot of dark things. It can be like really upsetting sometimes. I think that comedies always paired really naturally with horror. Even in movies that are pretty straightforwardly horror. I think there's usually some room for intentional comedy, or sometimes if the movie's not going well, unintentional comedy. The one I always think about just in terms of like an early

horror comedy is like there's Abbott and Costello meets Frankenstein. The nation's top comics, Abbott and Costello, petrified, but hilariously. Like that was like back in the 1940s. So like even back then, you've got classic comedy duo meeting classic movie monster. In the spookiest laugh fest on record. Movies that are horror comedies, but that are also sort of about the kind of like tropes of horror, right? Like, Sean of the Dead is a zombie movie

that is clearly made for and by people who actually, you know, have seen zombie movies, including the characters within it. Uh, get higher, baby. Uh, get higher, girl. Ah! We've all at this point become so familiar with a lot of the basic ideas about how horror movies work, right? The scream movies are all just a riff on, like, what you should do or not do if you realize you are a character in a horror movie.

Never, ever, ever, under any circumstances say, I'll be right back, because you won't be back. I'm getting another beer, you want one? Yeah, sure. I'll be right back. Why do horror and comedy go so well together? You know, it feels like such an odd combination on its face. I know, they do feel like they should be the opposite. But I think, one, I think they're both genres that have been considered a little disreputable.

It's entertaining and it's something that goes back to like the earliest days of kind of telling stories for entertainment. But at the same time, we don't treat it as seriously as drama. You know, a lot of the same elements. that go into making like a bit work or joke work also are what makes a scare work, right? It's a question of like timing. It's a question of craft. It's a question of like landing that punchline or landing that jump scare, you know, and kind of elaborate setups. And I think that that speaks to a certain kind of like shared spirit in both of those genres. And that's one of the reasons I think they fit so well together and people move back and forth between them.

Yeah, it's interesting you say that. I guess they both do. sort of thrive on the unexpected. There's a sense of surprise with both comedy and with horror. Absolutely. And I think, you know, we think a lot about jump scares as trademark experiences of of watching a horror movie. But I think that they also, right, what do you do when you get like a really good jump scare? I think you also like you laugh a bit, right? Like you build up tension and then there's a release. And I think that same thing happens with a joke as well. You know, I think of some of our most, you know, buzzy horror creators right now.

I think of Jordan Peel of Get Out and Zach Craiger of weapons. They're comedians, you know? And I'm curious what you think about that crossover. Like why they are so good at getting those scares? I think that it goes back to that kind of shared DNA of how you set up a scare and how you set up a joke being very similar, even if your aims are different in terms of like the response you wants from an audience.

And yeah, you know, I mean, you mentioned those two. I was also just like looking around the director of Heart Eyes, you know, which is a movie that is both a riff on like slasher movies and romantic comedies. He's like Cupid with a kink. It was directed by Josh Rubin who worked at college humor. There's a pair of Australian brothers, the Philibault brothers, who did that movie, talked to me about the kind of, like, hand that could let you see ghosts.

Guys, the reception for the movie has been fucking crazy. All these directors that we've grown up loving are, like, reaching out to us personally. Jordan Pill, Ariasta, Stephen Spielberg, Stephen King, what's the fucking movie? And they got started on YouTube, making, like, these kind of goofy sketches and videos for YouTube. So there is definitely a real trend there in terms of the kind of comedy to horror pathway. Something can be really frightening and also very kind of profound in its commentary and also funny. And I love actually that mix. It's one of my favorite things about horror is that it can accommodate so many mixes of tones,

I think maybe more so than any other genre. It's just this like incredible container for things that can be really weirdly touching, you know, exploring grief. And then on the other side, like, just kind of outrageous and funny and shocking and grotesque. Yeah, it almost seems like it's the tofu of movie genres. Absolutely. It picks up the flavors of whatever it's cooked with. So the main focus of practically every horror movie is escaping death. And, you know, we got a few calls from listeners where people say, I've always been kind of an ancient person. And for me,

Engaging with horror gives me the chance to feel scared and still anxious in a safe way. I'm in control. I can choose to turn off a movie and I can just walk away. It's like a safe environment to challenge myself without any real consequences of doing something in real life that I'm scared of. I wonder what that says about us. Like the fact that this can be funny, the fact that this can be cathartic. in a way. Yeah, I think it's something that very much appeals to an aspect of human nature. You know, we want to be able to sample, you know, the darkness to sample the danger.

But like, as you said, having it be in such a controlled environment, having it come in a way where you know that the credits are going to roll and then you get to go home, you know. I'm of the age where Blockbuster videos are still around. And I would absolutely go and just like look at the covers. of all of the horror movies, and some of them would get lodged in my brain and also still give me nightmares. But there's a reason that I think kids are also fascinated by, even if they're not ready for. And I think it's because we really like the ability to kind of touch on these experiences to kind of delve into them without putting ourselves in actual

danger. Coming up on Explain It to Me, how did we even get scary movies in the first place? You can get protein at home or a protein latte at Tim's. No powders, no blenders, no shakers. Starting at 17 grams per medium latte, Tim's new protein lattes, protein without all the work, at participating restaurants in Canada. During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design

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I call him a film nerd, specifically a horror film nerd. so I had to know what his favorite is. So, you know, what is the first movie that scared the shit out of you? I think that's always the best way to approach talking about horror movies. But for me, it would have to be George Romero's Night of the Living Dead from 1968. That movie traumatized me. It damaged me. It did permanent damage to my psyche.

The opening images, that stark black and white where they're in the graveyard. and way off in the distance in the background, you see this form shuffling closer and closer to the camera. Like, that is one of, I think, the best opening introductions of horror in any film. How did we get the scary movie in America as we know it? It's a story that actually starts in another country over a century ago. Definitely right after World War I up to the early 1930s. For me, the German expressionists really gave birth to what we, I think, today, understand a horror film to be.

German expressionism is often marked visually by this, you know, very dark, very, you know, foreboding kind of lighting scheme, lots of, like, high, contrast shadows. You know, shadows are this kind of sublime delineation between, like, good and evil, you know, terror and safety and that sort of thing. But really, the first major, like, codification of the horror genre is born in Universal's Dracula. You are too late. My blood now flows through her veins.

Is that when we saw Hitchcock emerge? Well, Hitchcock has a long career. You know, Hitchcock starts in the silent era, and as a matter of fact, Hitchcock had an internship as a young film worker in Germany with the German expressionists. But it's really, I think, 1960, with the release of Psycho that Hitchcock, you know,

once and for all, like, pushes. film into an entirely new era. Here we have a quiet little motel, perfectly harmless-looking, when in fact it has now become known as the scene of the crime. Psycho is a very important film. It's really, I think, one of the first major death nails for something like, like the Hollywood Production Code. For those who don't know in the 1930s,

Hollywood implemented the Hays Code, as it's sometimes known, the Production Code Administration. And this was a very restrictive, very conservative form of censorship that removed a lot of the explicit content that people started to panic about in the early 1930s.

And this limited things that you could show on, violence, sex, but I think really Hitchcock in Psycho more or less was, you know, instrumental in bringing about its eventual demise. And so from like 1968 on, it's really just this parade of films and directors trying to outdo the next in terms of shocking the audiences. The power of Christ compels you. The power of Christ compels you. The Exorcist, one could argue.

And that movie, I mean, that shocked the hell out of audiences. No pun intended, right? Because it is about a satanic possession. But right after the Exorcist, you then get the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And like, oh my God. Help! I mean, no one had ever seen anything like that before. It's just, again, a whole different level in terms of its depravity,

in terms of its cruelty, its monstrousness. So I want to move on to the 1980s, and that's when we get classic slasher films. You know, I'm thinking Freddie Kruger and Jason Voorhees, these iconic villains with all these movie sequels. What was it about that era that made slasher films so popular? The slasher subgenre in Hollywood was really trick. by John Carpenter's Halloween. And I think the reason that Halloween was so terrifying

and somewhat different from even, you could say, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, is, you know, because in this case, the horror is happening right here in our little quaint suburban subdivision. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven, trying to keep him locked up because I realized that what was living behind that, that boy's eyes was purely and simply evil.

The three line of Hollywood is, if something is successful, get ready, you're going to see 25 more versions of that. Hi, I'm Chuckie. Wanna play. And, you know, I think, too, really, if you look at the 80s, there's this kind of almost reactionary, conservative tone that's embedded with, within a lot of that horror, you know, after the permissible sort of decades, really, of the

60s and early 70s, there's this kind of swing backwards in culture. And if you look at a lot of those slasher films, like, it's always the promiscuous kids. It's always the kids spoken pot who are, you know, doing something bad, who get their throat cut. Like, don't be that person, you know, and you've got to be the virginal, saintly one to survive in the 1980s. Yeah, it's just like, if you go to summer camp and have sex, you're going to get your head chopped off by a machete. So be good, kids.

So how would you describe big picture where we are with the genre today? You know, how is today's slate of movies changing the way we tell scary stories on screen? We're in this sort of cycle where, you know, a lot of people are taking, horror seriously. We now have swung back into a phase of, I think, people really respecting horror, respecting its traditions, and, you know, you see that in some of the most, like, popular and well-respected directors of today. Jordan Peel with Get Out, Ari Aster with Hereditary, Mid-Summer, of course, Robert Eggers,

you know, and Zach Kregger. But really, you know, one thing that all those directors have in common, if you go and you listen to interviews with them, they're talking about older horror films. Look, I'm a Kubrick guy when it comes to the Shining, you know. I definitely, like, worship that movie. Carpenter tailored this monster in all the choices, the mask, the way he moves.

Polansky is just somebody that I've been studying for a long time. They're talking about the lineage that we've been describing and, you know, how much they've learned from these past films and filmmakers, you know, the greats who've come before them, and they very much have placed themselves within that tradition and sort of, like, reclaimed, I think, the mantle of, you know,

like, no, horror is a very important part of film history, not just a place for cheap thrills, but a space to grapple with deep fears and questions of, you know, what it means to be a human. Like, we find that in these films. This episode was produced by Denise Guerra and Hadi-Mawakdi. It was edited by our executive producer Miranda Kennedy with fact-checking by Melissa Hirsch.

Engineering by Adrian Lilly. I'm your host, John Glenn Hill. Soon, we're going to talk about self-help books. Whether it's the secret or the 48 laws of power or something else, these books are everywhere. Tell us about your experiences with the genre. Give us a call at 1-800-6-18-8-5545. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. Bye!

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