Absolutely overwhelming has been the box office of the fourth and, apparently, the last installment of ‘Warren file’, subtitled ‘the last rite’, in its first weekend. Can boast of being the second best premiere of a horror movie in history (Only behind ‘IT’ in 2017, although these data always have to take them with tweezers, for that of inflation and other issues that relativize the records). Absolute or only relative triumph, the figures in any case are impressive. When I didn’t have them all the movie to be.
The best file. 187 million dollars worldwide (104 of them at the international box office, 83 million in the American, 4.1 in La Española) endorse the premiere as the best in the franchise. It has also been a good support for IMAX screens, where it has generated 14.3 million dollars, the best premiere of the giant format in the horror genre. With these figures, the ‘Warren’ file (which also includes the spin-offs ‘the nun’ and ‘Annabelle’) becomes the highest grossing of horror cinema, with 2.3 billion accumulated dollars.
A key moment. This film arrives at a key moment for the franchise. Although the main deliveries of the series have always enjoyed a great box office, Criticism has not always treated them well: this, without going any further, has a 56% in Rotten Tomatoes. Only the first two deliveries rise from 80%, while films such as ‘The Nun’, ‘Annabelle’ or the third ‘Warren’ file are between 25 and 55%. Although Criticism and box office do not always go hand in handit is a reflection of a certain boredom and exhaustion signs that can then have an impact on the box office. It has not been the case, among other things because they are cheap films (between 20 and 50 million budget) and very profitable, however scarce the collection is.
Terror is fashionable. To calibrate the proportion of this success, it may be good to compare it with a couple of recent successes of the genre, As Jorge Loser did in Bluesky: Only in his first weekend, ‘The last rite’ has entered 67 million dollars more than ‘the substance’ and ‘return it’ together and in all its careers. And these yes, films venerated by critics. A few weeks ago we talked about How gender is In good streakchaining a success after another (this summer, for example, ‘Weapons’ and the aforementioned’ return to me have dominated the box office): the resurgence of terror in the tastes of the people thanks to the streaming And his low cost in front of the blockbusters are making the genre live an extraordinary moment.
The exhausted formula. However, and despite the roller that has made the film with this week’s box office, the bad reception of criticism is natural: the formula has become a copy of itself, and in recent years the clones have emerged everywhere, even outside the franchise itself: ‘Liver us from evil’, ‘ouija’, ‘corpse’, ‘Winchester’ … even in Spain we have had ‘Verónica’ Patron: Demonic houses, possession of innocent creatures and scares very often shot with an identical visual pattern.
There is a whole arc of approaches to this style, from The most artie of A24 (which has already configured the aesthetics of the genre with ‘Heredityary’) to that of the most verbenera Blumhouse, which prepares a new sequel to ‘Insidious’, whose first deliveries have also been key to shape this subgenre of horror movies. The box office is no longer infallible but in most cases the public continues to respond very positively.
Why horror cinema works despite everything. Apart from the reasons listed above, there is an extra. In times when the industry is buried of clonic formulas, as with absolutely all the large -budget blockbusters and where the authorship of a film has ceased to be a value (the directors of Marvel movies, for example, are completely exchange), horror movies bet on constant surprise and forced differentiation to get attention.
Of course, terror is not safe from franchises or farms, but it is taken in another way: with more humor and more carefree. As in ‘Warren File’, belonging to a saga is not a chain that prevents flying free, but an excuse to increase volume and nonsense. The horror cinema has ended up being one of the scarce redoubts of creativity within commercial cinema and the public understands it intuitively. There is no bad criticism that can with that.
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