States Of Horror
In a year that has seemed to fly by in the blink of an eye, Halloween has crept up on us (or at least me) in classic jump scare fashion. And while hopefully, this year brings some more out-in-the-world festivities than last, finding a good scary movie to watch at home is definitely a favorite October pastime.
The horror genre is a curious one in that it can defy easy categorization. What makes a horror movie a horror movie? It’s not as easy to determine as say a comedy, romance, action, or even thriller. The core elements of a great horror movie are tension, fear, suspense, and of course, your basic every day scares.
Good ones possess some of these, the better ones all of them, and the best weave them each together around a satisfying story. But when all is said and done, all of this is still at the fickle whim of audience subjectivity.
There’s even some debate about how old the genre itself is. For example, according to Roger Ebert, Robert Weine’s The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari from 1920 could be considered the first true horror film. This preceded 1922’s Nosferatu and 1931’s Frankenstein and Dracula, also considered seminal in their own right.
But we can look even further back to find some of the earliest seeds of this genre. All the way back to 1896 when George Méliès made Le Manoir du Diable (The Haunted Castle). Thanks to the magic of YouTube you can see all 3 minutes of this film right here.
While I doubt anyone watching this would have even a twinge of fright (it actually even made its contemporary audiences chuckle at times), the early cinematic contributions to the horror genre are unmistakable. The hallmark feature of the short is the rapid appearance and disappearance of witches, ghosts, and demons. A transmogrifying bat and old fashioned skeleton even show up.
The phenomenon mystifies and terrifies our main characters and, even through the grainy lens we have on this film, you can clearly see these early inventive visual tricks that are now so synonymous with Méliès and ones that are too easy to take for granted today.
We’ve come a long way since those humble roots 125 years ago. The horror genre has become an industry onto itself generating over 20 billion dollars in box office revenue in the United States alone. There are 15,681 films designated as horror movies available to stream across the marketplace.
As I looked at some of the most well-regarded films of the genre, it dawned on me that most of them share a crucial ingredient that I initially left out of the list above; a great location.
Psycho. The Shining. Nightmare On Elm Street. Get Out.
These films are indicative of the wide range of narrative styles a horror movie can possess but all of them rely heavily on the settings in which they are filmed. This concept led me to wonder what regions of the United States have been home to the most horror productions.
And so this week, I emerge from my spooky rabbit hole with a menu of top horror movies broken down by their production states.
These films were selected out of the possible 500 top-grossing (domestic) horror movies of all time. Now granted some of these films were shot on stages and were potentially attracted to the state for non-creative reasons (tax incentives, budget, etc…) but looking through the full list it’s clear a large portion of them prominently feature the geographical backdrops as a key element of the story.
In all, 71% of the top 500 grossing horror films have been at least partially shot in the United States
318 of these productions were filmed in two or more states. Silence Of The Lambs and The Amityville Horror (the original) were shot in the most number of states (6).
Here are the top ten states (and maybe one day-will-be-a-states) for top-grossing horror production:
California
New York
Illinois
Georgia
Louisiana
Pennsylvania
Utah
New Jersey
Texas
District of Columbia
Here is the full view of every state that has hosted a top 500 grossing horror film production. All but Idaho, Hawaii, North Dakota, Arkansas, and South Dakota are represented.
And because a post would not be complete without some sort of ranking mechanism. Here are the top 25 states with the most horror box office to their name.
High five to my home state of Illinois, one of three states in the billions club.
This week’s menu is grouped by states of production so please note many movies will show up multiple times if they were filmed across different states. I will also note the total number of states on each poster.
Finally, because our initial criteria resulted in over 300 films, I’m applying a quality filter using our blended audience and critic scores to highlight the top picks for easier browsing. Don’t worry, we’ll keep it rather low at a minimum of 45% to account for a wide variety of tastes.
I hope everyone has a safe and fun Halloween. Of all our lists to date, this one has the most availability across all the films listed so hopefully you might find a movie or two to check out as well.