Kids don’t trick-or-treat like they used to. And going to the movies to get scared witless on the year’s creepiest holiday is also fading.
That’s a major turnaround from the not-so-distant past when “Paranormal Activity” and before that the “Saw” franchises dominated the holiday at the box office for nearly a decade. It’s not that horror movies’ popularity is fading. In fact, it’s just the opposite: so many scary movies have found box-office success outside of the end October that Halloween has become an afterthought.
“Horror movies have the ability to scare the cash out of audiences no matter what the calendar says, be it the holidays — ‘The Exorcist’ was originally released at Christmas in 1973 — the first quarter, summer, fall or winter,” Rentrak senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian told TheWrap.