Box office analysis

First thing I looked at where the horror films with the largest box office.

10 highest grossing horror films of all time Wkipedia

The numbers were nowhere near as high as some of the tentpole films produced by companies in The Big 5 like Universal but the horror genre has it's advantages: budgets tend to be low due to  lack of stars, lack of costly IP/franchise, there are exceptions: IT (2017), limited CGI costs, the genre itself has a fanbase, strong female roles (final girl) boost appeal.

To grasp a better understanding of the horror genre I looked how film budget's, BBFC and MPAA affect the Box office and overall success of the film in the market.

Three of the most popular low budget horror films of all time:

• Halloween (1978) $300k - $70m (most of the budget went on just 2 days with Donald Pleasance, a relative 'star')
• Blair Witch Project (1999) $60k - $25m 
• Paranormal Activity (2007) $15k - $194m (Distributor Paramount did use millions for the marketing. Established Jason Blum as the low budget Michael Bay)

A lot of the horror films I looked at didn't have a MPAA for China telling us that the film wasn't distributed in China because of the violence or nudity in the film. This would affect the box office with China being the world's second-largest movie going market, reaching 45.7 billion RMB in 2016.

I found that films with lower age ratings or part of franchises performed better at the box office. The majority of the films had similar MPAA R or BBFC 18 ratings as they are violent. There was also a large difference in the age ratings between the US and the UK, with the US being more harsh.