A place to discuss your favorite films, games, books and everything else horror related eh.
Please be kind to each other.
I didn't know that the Conjuring series is the highest grossing horror film franchise in history:
The franchise has been commercially successful, having grossed a combined $2.4 billion against a combined budget of $263 million, becoming the highest-grossing horror franchise to date. The franchise has received mixed reviews.
I've seen two or three of the series. Solid, entertaining horror movies (if a bit bland); that being said I would have never guessed they''ve grossed over $2 billion.
Highest grossing horror franchise.
My bad, I meant horror specifically. I would have thought it would be Scream, Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Those franchises seem to have better name recognition among the public (and more fans?).
I wonder if the Alien franchise is counted more in the sci-fi/thriller genre, it would make sense.
Edited my OP for clarity.
The entirety of the Conjuring series was released in recent years when ticket prices were much higher than they were back in the 70s/80s and the population is bigger compared to most other horror series. Plus they were released a lot closer together to keep the momentum going and maintained a similar level of quality as they were not cheap trash after a couple of films, except for maybe one or two. Don't know for sure, only watched the first two Conjuring movies myself.
Agreed on most points. Although I am not sure about quality.
The films I watched were OK, but not that much better than say Jason X or A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, both productions generally considered to be weak releases in their respective series.
Conjuring seems to have a more serious tone, but IMO that's not always a sign of quality in horror productions. There is a lot of low budget/b-movie stuff that worked out pretty well and was innovative (Host being one example).
But you are right, with nominal dollars, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street don't stand a chance since their heyday was in the 80s.
It just feels that A Nightmare on Elm Street has exponentially higher name recognition than Conjuring. I bet if I asked my grandma, she would vaguely know about Freddy Kruger. With younger generations, I would also argue Conjuring would have lower brand recognition. This is in Eastern Europe.
But I guess name recognition is not the same thing as cinema revenues in nominal dollars (especially with no recent theatrical releases for series from the 80s).
I would say the first two Conjuring movies that I saw had solid writing, acting, lighting, sound design, cenemography, and other features that are used to describe movie quality. They spent more and it shows.
Those things are not all necessary for a movie to be entertaining or even top tier movies, but they are lacking in the Friday the 14th and Nightmare movies.
Still surprising. So many others to choose from, like Frankenstein, Dracula, Freddy, Jason, etc.
Those were all low budget movies from past years where they made a lot less per ticket, plus most of the Freddy and Jason movies were more popular on VHS/DVD.
Have you ever watched them? They're straight up Christian propaganda. It isn't surprising they've done well.
I didn't notice the Christian propaganda when I watched the original and two other sequels.
The predominant branch of Christianity in my county would definitely not get involved in mystical horror movies.
Doesn't have to target practicing or devout christians to be effective Christian propaganda. Most people in NA are culturally christian and nearly half believe in ghosts. I watched them recently in search of some junk-food horror and out of curiosity of its success. The first one is a blatant villification of women who get abortions and the second one is about apostasy. They specify that the spirits of people who are the cause of this harm are ones that commit sins, they're evil because they aren't christian. In both films, the solution was for the Warrens to deepen their faith or flex it to overpower the demons not through action or change but pure faith. These narratives very strongly reflect a Christian upbringing where authority must be respected at all costs and faith in inaction is more valuable than active change that may bring criticism to systems of power.
This is of course ignoring that Ed Warren was a grooming pedo pos. He and Lorraine were scammers that hated each other and are on record multiple times purposefully manipulating christian iconography and values to the benefit of their stories. The fact they're portrayed as so devout is to lend credence to their roles as heroes in these stories.
Wow. This surprises me too.