Domestic Earnings of All Horror Movies Released Through the First Half of 2016

The Commercial Failures

Midnight Special

We can start with Midnight Special, which may very well be the finest film featured in this list. So why did it fail so miserably? Terrible promotional neglect, a near-microscopic theatrical release and a lack of an identity. Trailers left us all to wonder what the hell is happening in this film. Subsequent promotional videos didn’t do much to clarify things, and as a result, fans didn’t want to see a film that didn’t seem to know anything about. Who could blame them?

For the record though, it’s an extremely enjoyable feature.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

The truth is, this is a pretty faithful transfer of the novel itself, which was quite gratifying. The film, while not perfect, gifted us a few noteworthy scenes and impressive performances. The special effects are impressive and the picture is wonderfully edited. But all of those strengths couldn’t change the fact that Star Wars: The Force Awakens was still drawing large, interested crowds, or that the kid-friendly Kung Fu Panda 3 was eating up the competition. The brutal truth to this film’s failure is the simple fact that the period picture held no interest for today’s crowd. The contents of the story are dramatic and often tread diva-like waters. Kids these days couldn’t care less about what happened in 19^th century England. They just don’t give a damn. No phones, no interest. That’s 2016’s reality.

Gods of Egypt

Let’s be entirely honest with each other. Gerard Butler already dressed as an ancient warrior and waged hell upon his foes. We’ve seen that before, and there wasn’t a shot in the dark that Gods of Egypt could pretend to outperform 300. These are entirely different animals. Now, the other big reason this one didn’t catch on with movie freaks? It looked terrible, the CGI on par with micro-films that debut on the SyFy network. No joke, the CGI was that bad!

Gods of Egypt lost $110 million at the domestic box office. Fortunately for Lionsgate, the film just managed to recover its $140 million budget thanks to the international surge.

The 5^th Wave

The 5^th Wave should resonate with Hollywood, because it’s a film that proves not every sprawling epic set of novels is guaranteed to turn into financial blockbusters once they hit the big screen. Why did The 5^th Wave fail to catch on with US viewers? Because we really didn’t give a damn about the books to begin with. A whole lot of us have not only not read the books, but we’ve never even seen them. A great deal of us didn’t even know they existed!

The 5^th Wave only lost a few million dollars against its budget on the domestic market, but for a film that Sony had major hopes for, the outcome wasn’t pretty. Let’s leave this one to rest in the boneyard.

The Huntsman: Winter’s War

Universal can’t be too happy with this one. That said, the pic’s predecessor, Snow White and the Huntsman did huge numbers, and The Huntsman: Winter’s War garnered the attention of international fans. It’s unlikely we’ll see a third film in this franchise, as American fans have delivered their verdict, and that verdict was an indifferent middle finger.

The film put the studio $67 million down in America. For what was supposed to be an amazing bit of eye candy became little more than an afterthought… about five minutes after it was released.

Independence Day: Resurgence

Okay, this one has to be the year’s biggest stinker (so far). Not only is the picture missing all the charm of the first Independence Day film, it’s also missing Will Smith and the dose of humanity that left the first feature so magnetic.

This is a simple case of waiting too damn long. If we were going to see an Independence Day sequel, we needed to see it at least 10 years ago. It’s just not appealing to fans today… and again… come on – NO WILL SMITH!? Get outta heeya… or find a way to make up that 90-plus million the studio chucked into oblivion.