The Conjuring the Box Office Winner: Hopefully It Will Usher In Summertime Scary Movies Like Japan

Well it seems that low budget horror movies are scoring big with movie goers this year.

The Conjuring's $41.9 million debut is a new record for an original R-rated horror movie ahead of last month's The Purge ($34.1 million). It's also the second-highest start ever for a supernatural horror movie ahead of Paranormal Activity 2 ($40.7 million). For distributor Warner Bros., it's also higher than Pacific Rim's opening last weekend, which is particularly noteworthy given Pacific Rim's price tag was nearly ten times as high as that of The Conjuring.

So in other words spend 1/10th of the amount of Pacific Rim and you still make the same amount of money with a good scary movie like The Conjuring. The Purge did a killing this summer as well. I hope this will mean that scary movies invading the summer "Blockbuster Season" will become a new thing. 

In Japan scary movies are the norm during the summer because people like to get a scare in order to beat the heat. That is not how it is in the US because most scary movies are pushed toward Halloween because that is our cultural norm. I can understand this bias but I'm hoping The Conjuring doing so well in the summer will be the start of something similar to what they have in Japan.

I can see Americans coming to a nice air-conditioned theater and instead of watching a misfire "tent-pole movie" like Pacific Rim instead watching a small budget scary film like The Conjuring. I mean getting a chill from a nice supernatural thriller is always welcome when Americans are baking all over the US. Plus, I would love to see Guillermo del Toro making a supernatural thriller (his movie "Mama" was outstanding) instead of a $200 million robots vs. monsters movie any day.

The best part about summer scary movies is that the studios can make 10 The Conjuring's for each Pacific Rim. So you can throw quite a few scary movies at the wall and maybe some real chillers will stick. I'm sure some will be misfires and boring The Ring knockoffs but hopefully we can get some iconic scary movies if we are lucky. I'm looking forward to seeing The Conjuring tomorrow and will write a movie review for sure.