Summer Is Actually the Scariest Time of the Year For Horror Movies

The History of Summer Horror

The truth is that horror has always done well historically when released in the summer months. For proof you can go back all the way to 1968 when Rosemary’s Baby opened in North American theaters on June 12 and earned $33 million at the box office—almost $290 million in 2023 dollars. Eight years later, in 1976, another Satanic classic, The Omen, also opened in June and tallied a final gross of $61 million in North America, which is $326 million in today’s numbers and clearly a blockbuster. The list from the ‘70s alone, to name a few, includes Race with the Devil (June 1975), The Hills Have Eyes (July 1977), Damien: Omen II (June 1978), The Amityville Horror (July 1979), and Dracula (also July 1979), all of which did respectable to exceptional business. Even the original Friday the 13th was a smash in May 1980, foreshadowing the earlier start of the summer movie season.

Of course let’s not forget the ultimate summer horror movie, Jaws, which opened in June 1975 and became the highest grossing movie of all time for two years, until it was later harpooned by Star Wars.

The trend has carried on through the years, as well. In 1999, The Blair Witch Project opened on July 14 and raked in $248 million globally on its way to becoming a pop culture phenomenon. Less than a month later, The Sixth Sense blew the doors off the box office with an Aug. 6 arrival and a massive $672 million worldwide haul, in addition to later earning six Oscar nominations.

More recently, James Wan scored two big summer horror hits with The Conjuring ($319 million) and The Conjuring 2 ($322 million), which came out in July 2013 and June 2016, respectively. He also produced June 2019’s Annabelle Comes Home ($232 million) and this summer’s Insidious: The Red Door, which has earned a respectable $158 million worldwide at press time. And although he stumbled recently with Beau Is Afraid, director Ari Aster scored indie summer horror hits with his first two movies via June 2018’s Hereditary ($82 million) and July 2019’s Midsommar ($48 million). Relative to budget and size, both films did impressive business.

We’re sure there are other examples of horror movies hitting it big in the summer, as well as cases where they flopped. But the season in which a movie opens, in reality, probably has little to do with its success. Hell, The Exorcist opened on Dec. 26, 1973, one day after Christmas, for the love of Christ. While nominally a movie in which the Catholic Church triumphs over evil, one would hardly think of William Friedkin’s unnerving masterpiece as the kind of fare marketed as a “holiday film.”

Movie ‘Seasons’ Are Overrated

There are many reasons why movies succeed with audiences, and some of them are often inexplicable to critics, filmmakers, and studio execs—especially the latter, who in theory come up with carefully planned marketing schemes for every film their companies release. Again, a perfect example is how the Barbie/Oppenheimer phenomenon was an incredible confluence of audience awareness, solid marketing, and most importantly, a coming together of the pop culture hive mind to create a massive wellspring of interest. But most importantly it wouldn’t have happened if both films weren’t bold, audacious, original projects, wildly different from each other, yet at the same time both born out of a singular vision.