Currently in theatres for Halloween, Ouija: Origin of Evil is merely the latest mid-sized 2016 horror to punch above its weight, box office-wise. In this blog for the Herald, I talk about why this year’s horror hits bode well for the future of the genre, and movies in general. 

Hollywood is not known for its creative risk-taking. It is an entity driven forward by one simple rule: follow the money. Of late, that singular mentality has resulted in a mainstream film marketplace increasingly dominated by blockbuster tentpoles and Oscar-bait dramas, with fewer and fewer ‘mid-sized’ movies being released.

Which is why the 2016 horror boom is so encouraging. Marked this week by the release of the surprisingly awesome Ouija: Origin of Evil, 2016 has seen a rash of medium-budget horror films do well at the box office, especially in relation to their production costs.

These kinds of films used to be Hollywood’s bread and butter. The studios would throw a lot of genre movies into the marketplace, then see what stuck. Nowadays, more often than not, studios are placing all their eggs in fewer and fewer giant baskets.