Hollywood Trends Change Faster Than a Werewolf at Midnight

Friday the 13th Jason with Money About a year ago I declared that horror was dead and predicted doom for upcoming horror films currently in the production pipeline. I based my proclamations on the current wisdom touted in the movie trades and floating around Hollywood. Hostel II had tanked the year previous, starting the decline, and Midnight Meat Train received a scaled back release, completing it. Perhaps because of the Iraq War, blood and guts suddenly seemed passé. Bring on the comic book movies and romcoms!

To cover my ass, I also wrote that horror would creep back from the grave. But I’ll admit I was shocked to see Friday the 13th grab 42 million (that’s a lot) on opening weekend. For a genre that was supposed to be dead, a heck of a lot of people wanted to see a man chopping up teenagers with a machete all of a sudden.

What changed in sixth months? How did a genre that was supposed to be lying in the grave and crawling with maggots suddenly rise from the earth and start shredding teenagers again? Or did it?

The Marketing?

The Economy?

The Franchise?

Twilight?

Or were all those bloggers just full of beans?

I’ll be spineless and suggest it was a bit of all the above, coupled with William Goldman’s famous assertion that “nobody knows anything.” I’ll also suggest that the opening weekend success of Friday the 13th Redux is more of a fluke than any true rebirth of the genre. Following its great debut, the film dropped 80% in the box office its second week, which tends to mean word of mouth wasn’t great. More than a true yearning for horror, audiences likely turned out to see the latest recalibration of the franchise. The “retell the story from the beginning” formula has proven itself effective with other 80s horror franchises, so for the producers this must have been a big fish swimming around in shallow waters.