Afraid is set to earn one of Blumhouse’s worst wide release opening weekends in many years. The 2024 horror movie, which follows a family who beta tests a new AI assistant whose desire to help them turns deadly, was written and directed by Chris Weitz and stars John Cho, Katherine Waterston, Havana Rose Liu, and David Dastmalchian. The Afraid movie debuted the same weekend as a variety of new releases, including the political biopic Reagan, the L.A. riots thriller 1992, and the human trafficking drama City of Dreams.
Per Variety, as of Sunday morning, Afraid is projected to debut with a 3-day domestic opening weekend of $3.7 million and a 4-day Labor Day holiday weekend gross of $4.4 million. The movie, which comes with a $12 million price tag, landed at No. 9 on the chart for the weekend, just ahead of weekend 3 of the 15th anniversary re-release of Coraline. That 3-day total is Blumhouse’s worst debut for a movie that opened in more than 2,000 theaters since Jem and the Holograms made $1.4 million in 2015, not counting the pandemic-era release of Freaky in November 2020.
Afraid Continues Blumhouse’s Disappointing 2024
2024 Has Been Tough After A Banner Year For The Company
This disappointing debut for Afraid continues a general critical and commercial slump for Blumhouse after 2023 was more or less a banner year for the company. Although their franchise outing The Exorcist: Believer drastically underperformed, necessitating a creative overhaul for the planned sequel, they scored major commercial hits with M3GAN, Insidious: The Red Door, and Five Nights at Freddy’s. M3GAN was well-received critically as well, earning a Certified Fresh Tomatometer score of 93% and an audience score of 78% on what has now been dubbed the Popcornmeter.
While Blumhouse’s 2024 movies Night Swim and Imaginary have both been commercial successes based on their budgets, neither has been a runaway hit at the level of the company’s 2023 success stories, and both were roundly rejected by critics, earning 20% and 24% scores respectively. Afraid‘s 21% score and disappointing debut add two additional levels of disappointment to the year’s Blumhouse movies. While it remains to be seen if the upcoming James McAvoy movie Speak No Evil can reverse this trend, it may likewise turn out to be modest success at the level of the earlier titles.
Speak No Evil
is an English-language remake of the 2022 Danish movie of the same name.
It doesn’t seem that Blumhouse will shake off the doldrums that it is sinking further into with Afraid until 2025 and beyond. It seems likely that more critical and commercial successes are indeed on the way, as the company has several prominent projects on the way, including The Wolf Man, from The Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell. Also on the docket are promising franchise titles M3GAN 2.0, The Black Phone 2, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, and an untitled Insidious movie.
Key Background
- Director Chris Weitz is known for About a Boy (2002), The Golden Compass (2007) and The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009).
- Before AfrAId, John Cho’s most recent horror movie was The Grudge (2019).
Why Afraid’s Box Office Opening Was So Low
Bad Reviews, Crowded Competition, & An Overall Slow Weekend
There are a few reasons why Afraid earned Blumhouse one of its lowest box office openings in nine years. As previously mentioned, the 2024 horror movie was hit with a wave of bad reviews just a day before its theatrical release on August 30. Overall, critics described Afraid as a disappointing and mediocre movie that struggles to balance its ambitious themes regarding artificial intelligence, with its attempts to address the issue often seen as superficial or misguided. Some critics note that Afraid even feels like it was produced by AI itself, lacking genuine creativity and human touch.
Though
Afraid
‘s underwhelming box office debut signifies a difficult time for Blumhouse, the studio should be able to regroup and recapture its success with several prominent projects on the way.
While Afraid fails as a sci-film, according to critics, it simultaneously fails as a horror movie, lacking any effective scares. Its plot has been described as predictable and not particularly thrilling, failing to generate the suspense or excitement one might expect from a Blumhouse horror movie, resulting in a dismal 21% score on Rotten Tomatoes from 28 reviews. Since reviews from critics generally have little effect on a movie’s performance at the box office, there are a few other reasons why Afraid drastically underperformed.
As previously mentioned, Afraid opened at the box office against some crowded competition in Reagan, 1992, City of Dreams. It ended up being a slow weekend for these new releases, though Reagan slightly overperformed expectations to finish fourth behind holdover hits Deadpool & Wolverine, Alien: Romulus, and It Ends with Us. Overall, it was one of the summer’s slower weekends at the box office, despite the four-day Labor Day holiday, and Afraid was just one of three new releases that failed to make much of an impact.
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Blumhouse Key Facts Breakdown |
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|
Movie |
Rotten Tomatoes Critics Score |
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score |
Box Office |
|
AfrAId (2024) |
21% |
48% |
N/A |
|
The Exorcist: Believer (2023) |
22% |
59% |
$136 million |
|
M3GAN (2023) |
93% |
78% |
$180 million |
|
Insidious: The Red Door (2023) |
39% |
70% |
$189 million |
|
Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023) |
32% |
87% |
$291 million |
In addition to negative reviews from critics, Afraid may have also suffered from bad word of mouth among audiences over its opening weekend. On Rotten Tomatoes, the horror movie has a 48% audience score, recently renamed the Popcornmeter, with 100+ verified ratings citing many of the same issues that critics had. Though Afraid‘s underwhelming box office debut signifies a difficult time for Blumhouse, the studio should be able to regroup and recapture its success with several prominent projects on the way.
Source: Variety
