Typically, there’s been a very specific window for when horror films are released in theaters. While horror devotees can pop in a scary movie at any time of the year and be thrilled, major studios tend to think the genre works best within very specific times of the year. Typically, around Halloween or in “dead” zones on the calendar, such as the first weekend of January or Labor Day weekend, have been ideal spots to launch new frightening motion pictures. However, the last decade has seen an explosion of mainstream horror films debuting in the summertime and thriving. Summer 2023’s bountiful slate of new horror productions, like The Boogeyman and Talk to Me, only reinforces this new status quo.
What happened here? Like Ghostface emerging from the bushes with a butcher knife, rampant summertime horror movies pop out of nowhere to leave an enormous impression.
Movies across genres used to get dropped in staggered theatrical release plans. Movies would open across North America gradually, and the long-term nature of those releases made it more complicated to pinpoint an “appropriate” time to release a motion picture. After all, what premieres in April could very likely still be playing in September. In the 1970s, though, projects like Jaws (a horror title that helped pioneer the modern blockbuster) established a new status quo where mainstream genre features would now open right away in hundreds of theaters across the country. Long-term theatrical runs were far from dead at this point, but opening at just the right time suddenly became a lot more critical.
As Hollywood adjusted to this new normal, certain genres became quite cozy at particular times of the year. Animated Disney films, for example, were often dropped over Thanksgiving weekend while action-packed blockbusters debuted in the summertime. Horror movies, meanwhile, were relegated to slower weekends and typically dismissed by major studios. These titles were frequently cheaper to make, so they didn’t need, say, the prime Memorial Day or Christmas weekend slots to juice up their box office grosses. Opening in “weaker” parts of the year could still allow the latest Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street movie to turn a nice profit.
Plus, the thought process at the time was that horror films would get crushed by massive blockbusters or comedies in busier times of the year, namely summer. If these films were going to drop in the hottest time of the year, they needed to do it at the tail end of the summer in August, with reduced competition. The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise turned August into a cozy go-to home for multiple installments, including the 2003 crossover Freddy vs. Jason, while Halloween: H20 would also utilize this month in 1998.
For most of the 1990s, this was the standard approach for releasing horror movies, with summertime being off-limits to the genre unless these films were debuting in late August. The handful of scary features that premiered earlier in the summer, like the 1996 Peter Jackson title The Frighteners, didn’t drum up anywhere near strong enough box office to make a case for horror being more prominent this season. However, the decade closed out with a movie that changed the game for summertime horror: The Blair Witch Project. This film kicked off its platform release in July 1999, where it went head-to-head with a slew of much bigger blockbusters. If a microbudget horror production like Blair Witch could become a summer blockbuster, the possibilities were endless for scary summertime fare.
However, for much of the 2000s, major horror films dropping in the middle of the summertime were still scarce. Most that tried to compete with the biggest blockbusters of the era, like Hostel: Part II, met a grislier end than any victim of Chucky or M3gan. However, at the dawn of the 2010s, a seismic shift occurred in this department. The double-whammy box office successes of The Purge and especially The Conjuring in the summer of 2013 changed overnight conventional wisdom on when and where to release horror films. Conjuring especially proved impressive since it bowed in July 2013 and outgrossed much more expensive blockbusters from the same month, like The Lone Ranger and R.I.P.D.
In the following years, movie studios found box office success with summertime horror releases. Insidious: Chapter 3 thrived in the summer of 2015, while The Conjuring 2, Lights Out, and The Purge: Election Year all made summer 2016 a very frightening time for horror devotees. By the time 2018 rolled around, it was common for a challenging artsy horror film like Hereditary to not only open in major wide release in the middle of June but to flourish in this timeframe. By the end of the 2010s, summertime was ripe with everything from horror sequels to arthouse scary films with potential mainstream appeal.
Part of how horror was able to take off in the summertime was simply by studios offering major horror films in May, June, and July. Rarely had something as high-profile as The Conjuring been offered up to general moviegoers in July, for instance, so there weren’t many examples of horror films flourishing in that month. However, this ubiquity in this particular season also coincided with an explosion of the box office potential for horror movies year-round. Titles like Halloween (2018), It, or Us were now playing like big superhero movies or sci-fi blockbusters with all-ages appeal. With the expanding pull of this genre, horror has been better able to excel in the summertime.
Meanwhile, the significantly reduced presence of both traditional and romantic comedies on the big screen in the last decade has left a hole in the marketplace. Moviegoers who don’t want to see a massive action film in the summertime have fewer options than ever. The general loss of those comedic genres in the summer has been a boon for horror fare, though, which now functions as a go-to form of counter-programming against new Marvel and Christopher Nolan fare. Something like Made of Honor used to open opposite the latest action title. Now, the newest Ari Aster film occupies that kind of counter-programming.
Given how the history of horror films has been marked by ebb and flow, it’s doubtful horror’s dominance over summertime can last forever. But for the foreseeable future, it looks like major scary films, including original sleeper hits like Hereditary, are now as much of a staple of the summer moviegoing season as superhero fare or the latest Pixar movies. Thanks both to the genre’s enduring appeal and larger ramifications of greater film industry trends, summertime has become a glorious home for horror features of all shapes and sizes.
And speaking of… here’s a list of all the summertime horrors coming in 2023.
