2024 horror was great, but the 2024 domestic box office is down about 7% compared to 2023. Last year’s box office, bolstered by titles like Oppenheimer and Barbie, ended nearly 22% higher than the year before, itself a marked improvement over 2021. It’s been a slow and steady recovery post-2020, with studios and distributors trying whatever they can—big events, subscription services—to not only get audiences back in theaters but to also keep them there long-term. Modern audiences point to sound, lighting, and projection as key reasons why the theatrical experience has declined, and while I tend to agree they’ve actively gotten worse, the theater remains my favorite place to be. Horror movies especially invite the best of what the theatrical experience really means, and despite some personal misgivings, this year’s horror movies wouldn’t be the same without theaters.
Horror movies more than any other genre actively invite the audience in. It’s what makes a midnight movie a midnight movie, what signals a gross-out oddity as a future cult classic—the audience jeers and cheers, screams and recoils in unison. There are few experiences quite as magical, and when the cinematic cards align, it’s what makes a movie a movie. There are several suggestions as to why the cinema—and, really, any public, communal space—feels so markedly different than they have in the past, though I’m keen to think it’s a broad dereliction of concern for others after COVID. People just don’t care like they used to.
Well here’s the thing. No matter how hard filmmakers & cinephiles & Nicole Kidmans try to push the “theatrical experience,” the actual theatrical experience is TRASH. I’ve found it to be the least enjoyable way to watch movies, and if I could see everything at home, I would. https://t.co/KEzfToUoBK
Went to my first big boy press screening at a giant theater and not a screening room and I have to say, fellow press and critics, a lot of you are messy as fuck. You get invited to a free screening w/free concessions and so many of you just leave it all over the floor???
but seriously children, not only does using your phone at the movies show a complete disregard for everyone else at the theater, it also deprives you of the single best part about going to the movies: being in a big special room where you’re not allowed to use your fucking phone. https://t.co/dj7BfzZxY4
Whether it’s singing, phones, or (my personal pet peeve) talking, the collective consensus is that people have fundamentally forgotten how to behave in a movie theater. And, sure, it’s principally anecdotal, but just last year, I had two different screenings ruined. The Boogeyman wasn’t great to begin with, though it was made all the worse when some dude threatened to fight me because I gently asked that he stop talking. More than ever before, I understand the anti-theater sentiment. Accessibility isn’t great, prices are high, projection is lousy, and the audience can’t seem to control themselves.
The theatrical ecosystem, however, needs horror, and horror needs the theatrical ecosystem much the same. Evil Dead Rise and 2024 horror movie Alien: Romulus, both originally poised to premiere on streaming, shattered records with their theatrical bows ($147 million and $350 million respectively). The odds of either franchise enduring with a watch-and-wash streaming release would be slim to none.
I don’t have a solution to some of the movie theater’s greatest problems at the moment, but with so many 2024 horror hits, I did think it was worth spotlighting not just the bad, but the good. Those fantastic, transcendent moments in the theater. Those meme-worthy screenings that remind you what the magic of movies is all about. 40 of this year’s wide theatrical releases were horror movies. Among them, Neon saw record-breaking success with Longlegs and Immaculate. Terrifier 3 is currently the highest-grossing unrated movie ever released. That success doesn’t happen without a dark auditorium, a bucket of popcorn, and an audience willing and ready to celebrate the best of what horror cinema can offer.
This year, for instance, I had the most incredible time seeing The First Omen. I hadn’t expected much from Arkasha Stevenson’s prequel, largely because the recent slate of legacy sequels, prequels, and any-quels has been less than great. Color me surprised, then, that I not only enjoyed it (and rank it among the year’s best), but experienced it with as wonderful an audience as I did. When a jackal’s hand emerged from a woman’s vagina, everyone gasped in unison. There were murmurs and wows, as Stevenson’s camera glided through the Roman cityscape. There was even more feverish excitement as the camera dollied back in a later scene, revealing a monstrous mouth composed of candles and hanging lanterns.
The audience was a collective body willing to engage with Stevenson’s more elevated ideals and relish in the visceral genre thrills. I couldn’t have asked for more. In those moments, every rotten moviegoing experience from my past dissipated. I didn’t despise the movies—I loved them.
I went online, eager to hear from fellow horror fans about their positive experiences. None of them invalidate the experiences of those who have reasonably sworn off the theatrical experience. But in a year where I was giddy hearing an audience lose their minds during Speak No Evil’s final act, I wanted to spotlight the best of what the experience could be, the best of what a big screening does for the greatest horror. Check out what some wonderful people shared below.
Staley Sharples (you can follow them here) shared the following:
“I had the opportunity to see an early screening of Longlegs, about a month before it opened wide. Nestled into my seat in the new Vista Theater, surrounded by a sea of horror fans as rabid as I, the room eagerly buzzed as we waited for the most anticipated film of the summer to begin. As Nicholas Cage made his presence known in the first scene, the collective energy in the room began to mirror the film, as we all tapped into one frequency created from the harsh tones and cosmic dread of Longlegs. A particular moment in the third act elicited genuine gasps across the room, a moment which stands out to me nearly six months later as a representation of why moviegoing is so magical. We are all sharing the same breath, the same space, and the same mindset with so many different people, coming together as one if only for a couple of hours.”
Longlegs was a truly evil experience in the best possible way. Despite a packed Friday night screening, my auditorium was completely silent, enraptured by the nightmare Perkins so delicately, carefully crafted. There was a visceral dread, one augmented by the collective unease of everyone there. No wonder it ranks among the best of 2024 horror.
Denise Richards (follow them here) had a similarly wonderful experience at their showing of Coralie Fargeat’s rapturous, piercing, sensational The Substance.
“My positive experience seeing a horror movie this year was The Substance, the best movie-going experience I think I have ever had. It started out dead silent in the theater, that was up until the shrimp-eating scene started, and people were audibly groaning and giggling. Then the car crash that quickly followed garnered really loud gasps. I think at that point, the entire theater knew we were collectively feeling the same things. As the movie carried on, there were very loud reactions, even myself out loud saying, “What the fuck is even going on!!??”. The last about 15 minutes everyone was absolutely losing their minds, it got really quiet and then one person just could not hold it in any long and chuckled so loudly and everyone else followed suit… It made me fall in love with the theater-going experience even more than I already had. It was such a strong feeling of community that I think we’re desperately missing, that I will hold The Substance so near to my heart because of that experience.”
Seriously, if you missed seeing The Substance in a packed auditorium, I’m sorry. The delirium, the manic energy of Fargeat’s masterpiece deserved to be seen as big and as loud as possible. It’s what people mean when they say a movie is built for the theater.
Milo Unkel had just as fantastic an experience at both Longlegs and The Substance (how great was 2024 horror). You can follow them here.
“I saw The Substance and Longlegs and had two very different experiences. With Longlegs, we were in a nearly empty theatre, and it really added to the feeling of dread that I got from the film overall. But with The Substance, our showing was packed, and there were so many people in the audience reacting to it. Personally, I try to be as quiet as I can when I’m at the movies, but during my viewing, I definitely caught myself remarking on it unconsciously (complimentary).”
That’s the power of the communal experience. The internet will never cease debating the merits of going to the movies alone, and sometimes, that’s just how I like it. Picture me five years ago as the only person in a 10 pm screening of Suspiria—that was a transcendent, liminal experience. Still, there’s nothing that quite matches those shared feelings, the shared awe and disgust, the horror and marvel. Explicitly when you can have those post-movie conversations—what did it all mean, what did you think—and more implicitly, when your own understanding of the medium is enriched by having shared it with others.
At the end of their remarks, Sharples shared, “The movie theater has always been, and will remain, my portal into a more hopeful future, a communal space for other people who share the same dreams.”
I feel the same way. Yes, I hate phones. I hate bags of Sour Skittles being torn open during the tensest moment of A Quiet Place: Day One. I hate the talking. Yet, for all the obstacles and lack of decorum, when the movie-going experience gets it right, it gets it really right. When the stars align, it’s a scream, baby
