Horror at the Australian Box Office in 2016 - 7th February 2017

Tweet

2016 saw a total of nineteen dark genre movies making the charts in Australia but unfortunately only one blockbuster. The year certainly wasn't devoid of controversy, both online and in the streets, but it did see the release of some pretty solid dark delights with at least two movies making people in and outside the genre stand up and take note. We also saw the continued rise in Asian horror, something I'm high fiving my invisible friend about, and even found footage managed to get an entry. Overall another very solid year indicating Aussies are all about getting a dose of chills in their cinematic diets.

Slight sour note for folks Downunder, no Aussie or Kiwi horror flicks made the big screen, seriously no love for the local product! A number of movies hit disc and I got to say the locals are at least matching the North in the genre, why we don't support our own movies remains a mystery, besides the big stupid ones that the Bogans flock to. Anyways keep checking the site for updates and reviews of the local movies as they become available.

So each year we take aim at something, lock and load baby, this year we're all about Sony being dicks and one certain Reviewer who simply lost his cool over a movie that failed at the box office that he had been backing strongly. So hold onto your linen their folks, rough ride ahead yo!

I'm going to focus on the top ten dark genre grossers for the year as usual, nominate the genres they fall into, and as normal see if we can pick any trends coming out during the year. As usual I'll give the team's overall vote and hey for the first time an average rating, there might be a few surprises from the review rating. Let's roll like we're a tire rocking down mountain road.

In top spot for dark genre releases in 2016 was the Western revenge flick The Revenant, which guaranteed Leonardo DiCaprio an Oscar. Whether or not that Oscar was deserved has raised quite the ruckus on the net, personally I don't swing to either side of the debate, as far as I'm concerned the Oscar are an over hyped self-congratulatory abomination at the best of times. Anyways Fox opened Leo's flick early January on a mildly seductive 247 screens. This one shot out of the blocks on the back of some good vibes coming out of North America scoring a $3.9 opening weekend bow. What did surprised with Revenant was the multiplier which hit a stunning 5 leading to a total gross north of $20 million. Now that's one hell of a result and underlines just how strong word of mouth turned out to be. It did help that the movie appealed to multiple demographics, including the Wine and Cheese set who will dial into anything with Oscar buzz around it.

Surprisingly only a couple of the team caught this one at the cinema, I hung out till the release on disc, but now really wish I had caught a big screen session. Surprisingly no one seems to have been bothered doing an actual review, so I can't drop our initial view on you! Doing a quick round up the average comes out at 9.5/10, so yes we all thought the movie deserved all the accolades it got as well as the commercial success.

The movie is included due to having strong horror themes and some out and out gore, including Leo getting molested, uhmm, mauled by a bear. Yes I would be grizzling after that encounter, I crack myself up on occasion.

Taking out second spot was the most controversial movie of the year, the remake of Ghostbusters. Things got pretty heated on this one from both sides, and I'm saying right here and now that the team from Sony didn't exactly cover themselves in glory over the situation. Things kicked off with the release of the first trailer, and pretty much everyone hated it, and don't get me started on the new theme by Fall Out Boy, that sucked the life out of the universe. So anyway after an explosive reaction to the trailer kicked things into high gear Studio Hacks retaliated by accusing anyone who didn't positively beam about the movie as being misogynistic. While there was certainly a negative reaction to the female cast, and in particular Leslie Jones, which reeked of racism for mine, accusing anyone who might not have found the trailers the best thing to ever have been made immediately of being misogynistic lost the moral high ground for Sony. On the bright side accusations of misogyny brought out the PC brigade and of course the tragic hipsters who were right on board that aspect and were competiting to see who could be the most correct; like a lot of people I felt they needed to give themselves an uppercut. Things really didn't simmer down with more stupid accusations coming out from the Studio, sorry if I don't like Ghostbusters I voted for Trump, WTF! Certainly wasn't going to catch this one at the cinema, but with Sony renewing views of Hollywood being fill of idiots I also put off getting the disk as well for quite some time. Yeah no one was coming out of this one with their reputations intact on both sides of the divide, and besides the quote whores there weren't exactly glowing reviews happening.

So Sony released Ghostbusters in the midst of a growing storm on the net, and in particular youtube.com, mid-July on a large 493 screens and am sure prepared for the worse. The Australian public responded with a solid $4.7 million opening weekend bow, which was cool to see, as stated elsewhere the whole idea that the whole internet explodes on whatever issue is BS invented by second rate hacks for various newspapers dropping click bait on the unwary. An acceptable 2.6 multiplier propelled Ghostbusters into breakout hit status with a satisfying $12.5 million result. Say what you want, that's a great result for the movie in this territory, though due to a complete wipe out up North the franchise would appear to be dead in the water.

Mixed opinions on this one from the team, and yes it's another one we haven't reviewed yet, ranging from extreme negative to positive. Seems the ladies enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than the guys, personally I don't dial into the whole "raping my childhood" thing which one of the dudes brought up, and our average reflects the range of opinion. After a few minutes of testing out my mathematics, I came up with a score of 6/10, but would point out a couple of 8s went down as well as a 3. Will make it a requirement to get a review dropped on this one, which means a re-watch and quite possibly a change in my personal score, who knows but for sure I won't be influenced by whatever the haters of the Studio have to say.

Coming in at number three was the first of the sequels The Conjuring 2, which got universally praised, yet was a movie claiming to be based on fact, a claim that North American critics in particular remained steadfast in their refusal to discuss. Sorry a requirement for any Reviewer is to at least pay lip service to the notion of whether or not a movie claiming to be based on a true story is simply serving up marketing lines or has in fact discovered some situation with a least a passing resemblance to the truth. To avoid doing so pretty much raises the spectre of not being honest with your readers, there could of course be worse accusations levelled but let's shy away from those troubled waters.

In terms of the validity of the claim for this movie being based on real events yes there is a huge amount of information on the Enfield Poltergeist, with even Police records documenting some strange happenings, though over time problems with the investigation into the case have been raised. Yes we are talking an Amityville Horror situation here where hoax is pretty much a given, with only the gullible and ill-informed still believing something went down. Back in the day however things were taken without a grain of salt and the Society for Psychical Research was heavily involved in trying to authenticate the claims of the family under supposed ghostly attack. Guy Lyon Playfair, one of the original investigators who spent quite some time at the house investigating the claims recalls the Warrens. Seems they showed up uninvited and sort of hung out with Ed stating they could manufacture their own paranormal evidence "to make money out of it". Eventually the Warrens disappear into the sewer they emerged from and continued their false journeys elsewhere. So while The Conjuring 2 maybe based on a true story, the actual events depicted in the movie are pure fiction.

Regardless The Conjuring 2 opened 9th June on a solid enough 207 screens and ended the weekend with a sizable $3.5 million. A 3 times multiplier saw the movie breach breakout hit status, with a return of $10.8 million. Regardless of thoughts on the movie or its claims that's a damn fine result for a pure horror flick that is simply out to scare you out of your linen.

Hey another movie that we haven't as yet reviewed, yet it seems to have been in the review queue for months now, not sure what's going on there to be honest. We all really enjoyed Conjuring 2, regardless of marketing hype, and the collective score came down to a strong 9/10, with the general view being we wouldn't mind seeing a few more of these movies down the line. Well-constructed horror movie that doesn't waste its opportunities or sink the viewer in melodrama and jumps scares.

A top ten list wouldn't be complete without Roadshow making at least one entry, and 2016 was no different with the Distributor nailing the release of Goosebumps in mid-January. The movie opened on a large 331 screens and bowed to a solid $2.9 million. What followed was insane, a 3.6 multiplier gifted Goosebumps a $10.3 million result, which is clearly a breakout hit. What was insane about this, yes the multiplier is excellent but nothing to write dispatches from the front about, was the fact the movie kept on keeping on in the face of some bad reviews, and a lot of mudslinging going down from the book fanatics. Clearly word of mouth was rocking the Cineplex down over this one.

This will probably come as no surprise, we haven't reviewed the movie yet and a quick check shows Goosebumps isn't even on our review list! I actually had to text everyone with input to the site to see if we could get a score, and shockingly no one has viewed it either at the cinema or on disc. Hmmm the only Goosebumps I have listed on my streaming service are five seasons of the television show. Wasn't someone going to rock the books at some stage? Might chase up that idea and see who's prepared to knock out some ratings for our younger readers.

Moving along in fifth spot we got Don't Breathe, thankfully a movie some of us did manage to catch during the year. Sony opened the movie early September on a low 176 screens with the opening weekend bow of $1.3 million hardly setting the word on fire. But a strong multiplier of 3.74 boasted the total gross to a resounding $4.9 million. Now that's solid word of mouth promoting a movie beyond its initial viewership.

We actually reviewed this one and dropped an eight out of ten on it. A quick phone around to determine what the team think after repeated viewings and second thoughts pushed that score up to 8.6, with a number of peeps deciding another viewing wouldn't be the worse idea in the world. Yes we all dug the thriller and for sure are going to catch director Fede Alvarez's next feature, got to love a decent horror outing with a few twists in the plot.

Paramount went for the spin doctors mid-March with 10 Cloverfield Lane. The movie dropped on 232 screens and rapped $1,453,444 on opening weekend, had a multiplier of 2.8 eventually making $4.2 million. That's pretty solid and underlines another win for the dark genre in 2016, which against the odds turned into a pretty solid year for horror. Now I have a singular problem with the marketing of Lane and that would be associating it with the big found footage flick that had an exciting first weekend and then died in the arse back in 2008. Cloverfield Lane had been sitting on studio shelves for a number of years, they couldn't decide what to do with it, enter the idea of marketing an unrelated film on the coat tails of another more famous flick, and if you think that is completely unethical behaviour then join those of us that avoid the tragic hipster douche bag tag with a passion. Naturally the Rob Zombie fan club, that would be wannabee heavy metal tattooed folk who love manufactured rock, lapped it up and started to rave about the "sequel" to Cloverfield, Jesus wept!

Surprisingly the overall view from the team was very favourably though folk were viewing the movie as a standalone and not a sequel, we had a delay from the North American release so weren't caught up in the marketing which was as best misleading. I even gave the movie 9/10 on my initial review, yes was highly impressed by the performances of John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and thought the plot of an isolated farmer having gone insane was good gravy. Overall however the team were slightly less pleased with our average coming in at 7.8/10, which is still on the solid side of the equation. This would be an example of people not hitting the cinema because of the dubious marketing campaign but digging into the disc on release, yes folks none of the team deemed this movie important enough to catch on the big screen.

Guess we are back in the situation of shark movies hitting our cinemas to the delight of horror fans everywhere. Sony were on the wave, see what I did there, releasing The Shallows mid-August on 224 screens. The movie certainly thrived off Blake Lively in a bikini, hey not complaining over here, bowing to $1.56 million over the opening weekend, but a low multiplier of 2.4 could only push out the total gross to $3.8 million. Before you start screaming at your screen, yes that's a great result for the genre and definitely puts the subgenre on the forefoot, but I was still expecting a tad more coin than the movie eventually made.

We did our bit with two of the team catching a cinema session and the rest of us dialling into the disc; I have mentioned my distaste for going to the cinema right? Well this is slightly embarrassing we did have a review of this movie but don't seem to have published it, oops, so no initial review score. The ring around found some real solid support for this movie, the femme element were certainly across having a female lead character, I ended up tallying 8.2 which is pretty solid. Besides the ending, which a few people claimed was face palming bad, there were some pretty nice things being said overall.

Sony also took out eight spot with the fifth movie in the Underworld franchise Blood Wars, and yes we are pretty much assured of at least another movie in the series given the ending in this one. The movie dropped 1st December on a sizable 328 screens bowing to $1.54 million, might be some franchise fatigue seeping in as I expected a tad more dollars to be honest. A 2.4 multiplier did see the movie though to $3.75 million, which is pretty much a win in horror terms and that did represent better tracking than the movie achieved in North America. Pity a few other markets didn't share the love Internationally, Kate Beckinsale in tight leathers, what is wrong with people!

So this is one franchise we are all digging, dudes get some heavy action and Kate Beckinsale in tight leathers, chicks get the love angle and the whole tragic gothic nature of Selene's doomed relationships. Naturally we haven't got around to reviewing this bad boy, and seem to be missing a whole bunch of other Underworld reviews as well! I'm going to have to give the team a serious talking to, this is getting out of hand, if you have time to lean you have time to write a freaking review people. Anyways the general opinion was the movie fell slightly flat, just like the last one from memory, and the aggregated score came in as 7.6/10. No one bothered with a cinema visit but the discs were snapped up quicker than Dan can down a pint during happy hour at the Cabana Lounge.

Not to be outdone by the other distributors Warner Brothers got there second entry in the 2016 year chart with Lights Out, a purely perfunctory horror movie out of the Boredwood studio system. The movie landed on 21st July taking 170 screens, bowing to a solid enough opening of $1.1 million. A 2.68 multiplier pushed total gross to around $3 million, which is a big win for the dark genre on any terms. And hey this is position nine, so good deal all round for all things dark and scary at the cinema.

Not surprisingly no one went to the cinema to see this one; seriously this is standard Hollywood teenage orientated horror fantasy complete with jump scares etc. We might however have been slightly premature with this decision, well okay maybe I was slightly premature, as the movie sort of worked in a weird "nothing we haven't seen before" but still entertaining away. The accumulated, average, whatever other maths term I can throw in score was a resounding 6.4/10. The general view was that this movie would work better for the tweens than older horror fans. A few people got a couple of jumps from it, as the movie tries it's very best to raise some sort of scare, but overall no one was putting this on their must watch lists for the year.

Rounding out in tenth spot was Universal's release Ouija: Origin of Evil, the sequel to the less than stella Ouija. The Distributor released Origin mid-October on 171 screens earning a meagre $916,817K. The movie did pop a 2.5 multiplier which pushed total gross to $2.3 million, which is a failure for the dark genre and the only failure in the top ten.

A couple of us actually caught Origin of Evil at the cinema, hey cheap tickets over at Southbank for my Brisbane peeps, and really wished we hadn't. Pretty much a teen orientated flick with effects seen about a zillion times before. Nothing new, nothing much to see, and an ending ripped bloody and dripping from the far superior Exorcist III. I dropped a 7/10 on the movie's arse which to me seemed a fair enough score, teen movie, professionally made, but with no originality at all. Seems I was a tad too positive on the flick, the combined average from the team was a low 5.6/10. People really didn't dig this one with comments ranging from the just another teen movie to the movie being woefully inept with every single twist lumbering over the horizon.

Unfortunately 2016 wasn't a great year for the local horror community with nothing much happening on the charts. Sure there was still a deluge of dark genre on disc but no one saw the one movie to make a mark on the charts. Once again this has more to do with locals prepared to rush cinemas to see whatever cookie cutter flick is being pushed hard rather than supporting the local industry. To be honest this is the fault of local Distributors who have been by and large prepared to pretend they are extensions of the Hollywood studio system rather than forging a unique industry in this part of the world. There are notable exceptions, hello Madman, but by and large that pretty much sums up the current state of play.

This year's disappointments, surprisingly not a lot but still enough to have us wondering about the ethics of the marketing industry. We are talking a force with the ability to convince people to dumb themselves down; as such it needs to be destroyed immediately, sorry falling into left wing rhetoric mode right there. Anyways, and moving along before President Trump decides to nuke my house, Train to Busan failed to leave the station, earning a less than impressive $1.065 million. The movie is arguably the best zombie outing of 2016, but had an uphill battle considering its Korean language and actually has sub themes etc. If you get a chance to catch the movie, and it's on Netflix, then move that viewing right up front of your priority list. Equally the U.S movie The Witch, perhaps the best psychological horror the last five years, failed to gain any sort of foothold with a $600K result, wrap me in plastic and call me fantastic, that's an indictment of our movie going audience folks, and finally because it has been a superb year for the dark genre overall The Wailing, another in the growing list of awesome Korean horror movies, was even less successful reaching a low $225K. I'm actually watching the movie even as I type this. It really does pop between sub genres and rocks the house down. Common denominator kids, all three movies are non-English, or at least not modern English, punters not up for concentration would be my diagnosis.

Overall a very solid year at the dark genre box office, though admittedly we had less than 20 movies reaching cinemas. Give or take a movie, well okay take, everything in the top ten was through the passing mark barrier making 2016 a highly successful year for the dark genre. Pretty good stuff considering the amount of people who rattle on year in year out that horror is dying, hey like the antagonist in a slasher flick it just keeps coming back, 2016 was pretty satisfying. Like the last few years Distributors have kicked January releases to the sideline, which makes no sense because prior to this development January was a happy hunting ground for the dark genre. Things are definitely looking very promising heading into 2017, the genre is in strong shape, so let's get down to the trends that developed through the year.

Once again Asian horror was on the rise in Australia with four movies charting, including two absolute classics, one of which we haven't got to yet but which we really need to review before the year expires. Train to Busan managed 12th spot with an earn just north of a million. Korea has been kicking a few goals recently horror wise, and this zombie effort notched another win for the Nation which continues to impress with original movies that push the boundaries. The Wailing had nearly universal praise from the Critics and definitely huge thumbs up from the horror press but didn't manage to push remarkable numbers in Australia with a $224k result, but let's sit back for a moment and think about that, a Korean horror movie with primarily Korean sensibilities managed to chart in this Market, now that's something I wouldn't have expected 15 years or so ago when we started the site, the old multi-culturalism working in horror's favour y'all.

Not to be outdone the Japanese horror industry also notched a couple of cinema releases to keep the J-Horror fires burning. Shin Godzilla earnt a meagre $143k, but the game here for distributor Eastern Eye was to get the name out in front of the public and especially Big G fans. Guess disc sales are going to be on the brisk side with collectors out in force. And finally Death Note: Light Up the New World earnt $83k from diehard franchise fans and gave some relief to those of us who had to endure the U.S remake of the original concept. Pretty nice result for the Asian industries, looking forward to seeing what might land from that part of the world through 2017.

Gorenography once again failed to take the charts by storm, very limited market in this part of the world, and found footage didn't find as much favour as we expected start of year. I should point out in mitigation however that there really weren't a lot of gorenography or found footage at the cinema during the year. Remakes and sequels remained strong, though with some notable disappointments - I wouldn't be discounting a huge impact in 2017, and the recent trend for Doctor Who releases at the cinema continued, though notably the Christmas special didn't get a theatrical release this time round.

So what am I fanging for in 2017, besides a massive pay rise and a win on the lottery. Alien: Covenant is on top of my required viewing list, hey enjoyed Prometheus so am really happy to see where Ridley takes it next. The non-remake It could be interesting, we really haven't had the definitive movie on the Stephen King book yet. M Night is hitting back with a new horror flick Split, opening night kid, I'm there on opening night. And Aussie splatter fest Killing Ground is going to get some of my hard earns. No doubt I'll catch a few others as well through the course of the year.

Bringing the curtain down on 2016, sorry for the late report but a few movies simply refused to die at the box office, which meant drumming my fingers on my desk for a few extra months. The year was very solid for the dark genre with the top ten movies either really impressing with their figures or being close enough for rock and roll. For anyone following yearly trends, horror is on the rise in Australia with increased earnings and increased releases; it bodes well for next year. Unfortunately the review pile is growing faster than I can knock them over, so button down kids, a few changes will further halt our progress, but we look toward the end of 2017 to finally get on top of things. Support horror, go catch a release at your local cinema folks and more importantly for Aussies, support our local industry by demanding better release dates and more local content in our cinemas.