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this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2025
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Horror
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A place to discuss your favorite films, games, books and everything else horror related eh.
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My bad, I meant horror specifically. I would have thought it would be Scream, Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Those franchises seem to have better name recognition among the public (and more fans?).
I wonder if the Alien franchise is counted more in the sci-fi/thriller genre, it would make sense.
Edited my OP for clarity.
The entirety of the Conjuring series was released in recent years when ticket prices were much higher than they were back in the 70s/80s and the population is bigger compared to most other horror series. Plus they were released a lot closer together to keep the momentum going and maintained a similar level of quality as they were not cheap trash after a couple of films, except for maybe one or two. Don't know for sure, only watched the first two Conjuring movies myself.
Agreed on most points. Although I am not sure about quality.
The films I watched were OK, but not that much better than say Jason X or A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, both productions generally considered to be weak releases in their respective series.
Conjuring seems to have a more serious tone, but IMO that's not always a sign of quality in horror productions. There is a lot of low budget/b-movie stuff that worked out pretty well and was innovative (Host being one example).
But you are right, with nominal dollars, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street don't stand a chance since their heyday was in the 80s.
It just feels that A Nightmare on Elm Street has exponentially higher name recognition than Conjuring. I bet if I asked my grandma, she would vaguely know about Freddy Kruger. With younger generations, I would also argue Conjuring would have lower brand recognition. This is in Eastern Europe.
But I guess name recognition is not the same thing as cinema revenues in nominal dollars (especially with no recent theatrical releases for series from the 80s).
I would say the first two Conjuring movies that I saw had solid writing, acting, lighting, sound design, cenemography, and other features that are used to describe movie quality. They spent more and it shows.
Those things are not all necessary for a movie to be entertaining or even top tier movies, but they are lacking in the Friday the 14th and Nightmare movies.