If you have the scratch, they have the scares

The horror biz is booming, as recent Weekend Edition reporting has made clear. But not everyone wants to be up close and personal the with the IRL frights of a haunted house or spooky corn maze. Many would rather experience nightstalkers, goblins and witches that can't escape the theater or TV screen, or zombies and werewolves that won't lunge off the pages of a book.

Chanthal Harris owns Long Dark House in Alexandria, Va. It's a bookstore devoted exclusively to horror and the supernatural. It's been doing business for just over a month and Harris says she already has steady traffic from both genre stalwarts and first-timers.

"You know, I think people are looking for things that they wouldn't normally find in a lot of other places. I've had people comment about the curation and how they're finding something unexpected," Harris says. "And I'm also surprised at how many people are trying to dip their toe into horror."

Harris is no newbie herself: books and horror have been constant companions.

"My love of horror started from an early age. And I joke, but I do truly blame my parents because my dad was a[n] avid reader. He probably takes responsibility more for my fantasy/sci-fi love, but my mother always loved horror," Harris says.

"To me it was completely normal. I didn't think of it as a spooky thing."

So after a career in aviation, Harris decided to follow her passion and open Long Dark House.

"It's exceeded my expectations and, you know, could be the season. But I just am so appreciative that people are as excited about these genres and this experience as I am. And so anytime someone walks through the door, I'm a little surprised and happy and grateful," she says.

The numbers say Chanthal Harris shouldn't be very surprised. Market research by Nielsen says profits from the genre have jumped almost 26-percent year over year.

And the numbers are good for films as well.

Last May, Backrooms — about a horrifying liminal space that exists beyond our own reality — smashed box office records.

With just a $10 million budget, petty cash for Hollywood, it grossed over $400 million worldwide. The feature film started as a short on YouTube. And It's just one title from the newly-merged studio Blumhouse Atomic Monster.

Abhijay Prakash and Michael Clear head up the studio. Prakash is Blumhouse president and handles the company's business strategy. Clear is the president of Atomic Monster and leads the studio's emerging directors program.

"We're drawn like moths to a flame to things that are scary," Clear says. "We reached out to Kane Parsons who had created the short and at the time he was 15 or 16; he was still in high school."

Despite the headlines Blumhouse Atomic Monster garnered for hiring Parsons, Clear adds it's not really all that new for them.

"We've always kind of scoured a variety of sources, particularly for filmmakers who have a sense of how to scare people. Going all the way back to one of the first movies we produced, Lights Out, David Sandberg, the director of that film, was actually himself a YouTube creator," Clear says.

"They say it's hard to describe what scary is but I know it when I see it."

A post-COVID reanimation?

Abhijay Prakash says the COVID-19 pandemic had an outsized impact on the horror film industry.

"Horror as a share of the box office…pre-COVID, was never more than 10% of the box office. Then after COVID though, it's occupying a much larger share. It's over 15%, almost 20% last year and this year. And inside of that we are over half of that box office," Prakash says.

"So our market share is over 50% of the horror box office. And that's where we're focused. We live and breathe it."

Our friends over at the Recreational Fear Lab theorize people are flocking to fear more these days because the real world has been just so darn scary.

But Michael Clear thinks it could be a bit more complicated than that.

"I agree it's part of it, but I also think that one of the things that shifted [is] the bar has been rising for what people need or what draws people to the theatres. It's been rising consistently over the last 10, 15 years," Clear says.

"Maybe all the isolation has just driven people towards more social activities," he adds. "People are craving collective experiences. We're finding more now than before the pandemic that people are going to movies in larger groups. And it just so happens that our genre, because it's participatory – if we do our jobs right, we're getting reactions, audible reactions from the audience – and it can be more fun to experience that with your friends."

"Scary stories in the dark," Abhijay Prakash underlines. "[It] has delivered for thousands of years."

It has to be 'real'

While Blumhouse Atomic Monster makes its bid to reign supreme in theaters, many scream queens and kings are finding bite-sized horror scrolling social media. And often, those scary shorts are the products of AI.

"Personally, I think that, you know, anything that makes filmmaking more democratic can can be great. You know, people who find tools that can enable them to create it will allow more people, more talented people, to enter the space," Michael Clear says.

He cautions that audiences want things to feel authentic, as though the horror on the screen is genuine.

"When it comes to our movies, I think one of the things that just happens to be a characteristic of our genre is that the things that are scariest are the things that feel the most real. So really, when you get down to the way that AI images or whatever may impact movies, you know, our focus is always on doing things as real as possible. Doing things as practically as possible," Clear says.

The 'Disney of horror'

Abhijay Prakash told The Ankler early this year that his goal for Blumhouse Atomic Monster is to be the Disney of fear.

He breaks down what he means:

"Every place that consumers engage with scary stories is a place that we as a business, as a company obsessed with horror and scary stories will be. And then it's only a question of the business model," Prakash says.

Prakash says the studio is exploring creating an attraction from its Five Nights at Freddy's franchise and he also points to the popularity of the stage version of Paranormal Activity.

"So that really is a guiding principle for our company. We want to be everywhere where horror is relevant and it's taking a bigger and bigger place in the culture," Prakash says.

Michael Clear says the idea isn't just to cater to existing fans of the genre, but to grow the fanbase for all things spooky itself. "We like to think that we can provide a kind of gateway horror," he says.

Next week we get a lesson in horror storytelling from one of the most prolific writers in the genre — Stephen Graham Jones.