We've all agreed that 2024 has been a monumental and exceptional year for horror, cementing the genre as one of the best and most profitable as of late.
Next year is shaping up to be another big year for horror fans, but before we say goodbye to 2024, let's take a look back at some of this year's best-performing movies at the box office and a few of the worst.
Alien: Romulus
As the first Alien franchise since the polarizing 2017 flick Alien: Covenant, Alien: Romulus had a lot of expectations to live up to and it surpassed them all with flying colors. Helmed by director Fede Álvarez, a champion of using practical effects in horror, Alien: Romulus wound up being a refreshing new entry into the beloved sci-fi horror franchise.
The film made bank at the box office, too, grossing more than $350 million on an $80 million budget. That, coupled with the positive reviews and renewed attention on the long-running film series, helped make this movie a success, and sequel talks are already happening.
Flop: The Exorcism
This is the second exorcism-centered horror movie Russell Crowe has starred in the past two years and unfortunately for the actor, this one was much less successful than last year's The Pope's Exorcist. In The Exorcism, Crowe plays a struggling actor hoping to make a comeback in a horror movie.
But during his time on set, his mental state begins to decline as he witnesses strange things happening around him. Reports suggest the movie had an estimated budget of around $20-22 million and since it only earned about $9 million overall, you can see why it was a flop.
A Quiet Place: Day One
The third film in the A Quiet Place franchise took things in a different direction in that it is a prequel set before we meet the Abbott family. Instead, this film is about the characters of Sam (Lupita Nyong'o) and Eric (Joseph Quinn), who find themselves trying to survive the first day of the invasion in New York. A Quiet Place: Day One is one of the most successful horror films of the year, grossing more than $260 million and making it clear that this is a franchise here to stay.
Flop: The Crow
The Crow was always going to be a complicated movie to remake due to the franchise's troubled history, and unfortunately, this Rupert Sanders-directed reboot struggled to make a splash with fans, critics, or at the box office, making about $24 million on a $50 million budget and overall becoming a loss for distributor Lionsgate.
That's not all that surprising given the long and complicated production for this film, which has actually been in development since 2008. Hopefully, Bill Skarsgård's next big project (Nosferatu) will do much better.
Longlegs
One of this year's most talked about films thanks to Neon's exceptional marketing campaign and the performances from stars Nicolas Cage and Maika Monroe, it's no wonder Longlegs did so well at the box office. The serial killer thriller went on to become the highest-grossing Neon movie of all time, even surpassing the company's Best Picture-winning movie Parasite.
Flop: AfrAId
AfrAId was one of this year's worst films by far, the movie is all about the horror of artificial intelligence when a home system runs amok and tries to take over a family's life. Funnily enough, the script sounded like it might have been written by an AI.
The writing and dialogue were the main culprits behind why the film was so bad, but Blumhouse had a rough year in general with its other films, Night Swim and Imaginary, being poorly received, but at least those movies still did okay at the box office. Not so much with AfrAId, which barely managed to scrape back its $12 million budget.
Terrifier 3
Damien Leone's super-bloody killer clown franchise returned this year with the third entry, which also doubled as a Christmas horror film. Like previous movies in the series, Terrifier 3 had a pretty small budget, albeit larger than the preceding movies. But it ended up being worth it because Terrifier 3 grossed more than $80 million at the box office and will even return to theaters on Christmas Eve where it's likely to generate even more! The film has become the highest-grossing unrated movie, per a tweet by the director himself, and even outgrossed some notable NC-17 movies.