Spooky season isn’t here quite yet, but you’d never know looking at the box office. The Conjuring: Last Rites, the latest installment about a (problematic) real-life couple who investigated the paranormal, had a massive $84 million domestic opening weekend. That’s just the latest success for horror films. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, Zach Cregger’s Weapons, and Final Destination Bloodlines also had surprising success in theaters this year.

According to Paul Dergarabedian, the head of marketing at the media analytics company Comscore, horror movies have already surpassed $1 billion at the domestic box office. The last time that happened was 2017, when It and Get Out took theaters by storm.

Horror films have always been an easy way to make money in movies because their budgets tend to be low. “Even back in the day, you would have a movie like the original Halloween, which had a very modest budget and then just became this box office juggernaut,” Dergarabedian told Vox.

But until recently, that financial success didn’t always come with critical appreciation. Horror, Dergarabedian told Vox, has been “the Rodney Dangerfield of genres. It can’t get no respect.”

What’s striking about 2025’s horror hits is not only their ability to sell tickets at a time when many other movies are struggling. It’s also the critical consensus that these are truly great films. Sinners and Weapons in particular could contend for major Oscar nominations. It’s a swing toward........

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