Oct. 16, 2023

Horror is a Profitable Genre

The horror genre has existed for the longest time. People love a scary story. They get your heart pumping and your adrenaline flowing. They’re hard to put down and even harder to forget. That’s the kind of content engagement marketers dream of. By: Dylan Low

Horror content has been a popular genre for decades, and it continues to be so. According to a recent article in Forbes, there are several lessons that content marketers can learn from horror writers to make their content more engaging. One of the key takeaways is to set the mood of the content. Horror stories are built on the same blocks as any other story, but they paint those blocks black and draw skulls and spiderwebs on them. Tone is what turns a sun-dappled forest of graceful deer into a shadowy wilderness where predators lurk. It’s an elementary concept in fiction but often overlooked in marketing content.

The concept of Horror

“The idea of what horror is expanding,” stated Meg Hafdahl, a book writer that has completed 11 stories about the genre. “As a community, we’re learning, ‘Oh, horror isn’t just a girl falling and she’s topless and there’s a knife.’ You can talk about the human experience on multiple levels.” Especially in 2022, popular films such as The Menu, Bones and All, Pearl, X, Bodies Bodies Bodies, M3GAN, Smile, Barbarian, and Nope, all represented relevant yet controversial topics being mental health, social class and racism. These films all became extremely successful in the box office, with The Menu, a movie that describes the naivety of haute cuisine in a satire fashion, earning up to US$73 million in worldwide box office.

“Horror is a wonderful way of speaking to current issues without lecturing people,” clarified Chloe Okuno, the director and writer of renowned horror film Watcher. “Because of the nature of the genre, you never feel the theme is overshadowing the form.”

What makes horror films so unique is that there are a variety of methods to showcase the feeling of fear and terror, a main reason why audiences are so captivated by them.

Horror content sells better is that it involves the senses. A key part of setting the mood is getting all the senses involved. Engaging the senses of smell, taste, and touch as well as the big hitters of sight and sound helps your audience imagine the experience. In addition, observing storylines in which actors must confront the worst parts of themselves serves as a pseudo character study of the darkest parts of the human condition.

The mutual emotion of being afraid

The pandemic affected the film industry, seen in the North America Box Office having a 34% decline from pre-Covid times in 2019. Yet, horror remained unaffected, with low-cost horror movies still bringing in high revenue and audience numbers. Terrifier 2 for example, which despite a reported budget of $250,000, garnered up to a grossing income of US$15 million globally.

Not only does Horror extensively appeal to consumers, it is special in the way that the experience is entirely different watching live in cinemas and at home. 

“Where else can you be with hundreds of strangers in a room all having the same exact experience?” Paramount’s worldwide marketing and distribution president Marc Weinstock expressed. “You’re not distracted, you’re just sitting there and you have no idea what’s going to happen next. I think that’s something you can only experience in a theatre.”

According to BBC News, horror is becoming a profitable genre with zombie experiences, haunted houses, and high-concept horror films. Hollywood Branded also suggests that scary content increases brand recall and provides positive associations.

Hence, horror content sells better because it sets the mood, involves the senses, and provides character studies of the darkest parts of human nature.

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