Four genre films collided at the box office this weekend, and now we have the results. On Friday, I predicted Insidious: Out of the Further would land around $23 million, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma could push toward $2 million, and that both It Ends and Hot Spot were likely headed for trouble. Turns out, we were pretty damn close.
Insidious: Out of the Further actually overperformed, opening to an estimated $25.3 million. That’s below the $33 million debut of The Red Door, but still an incredible result for the sixth movie in a 15-year-old horror franchise. Every time Insidious feels like it should be running out of gas, audiences show up again.
The movie I was really watching, though, was Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. I thought projections around $1.5 million were too conservative and said it could flirt with $2 million. Sure enough, MUBI’s slasher pulled in approximately $1.9 million from 1,036 theaters, bringing its domestic total to around $3.6 million. That’s a terrific result for such a niche movie, and its smart marketing and strong word of mouth continue to find an audience. Now let’s see if it can hold next weekend.
NEON’s It Ends wasn’t nearly as encouraging, earning only about $60,000 from five theaters, or $12,000 per theater, ahead of its nationwide expansion. I’ve been skeptical of this release strategy from the beginning. The movie premiered at SXSW more than a year ago, briefly appeared digitally, disappeared, and is now being resurrected theatrically. Maybe NEON can connect with Gen Z when it expands, but this isn’t exactly a strong launching pad.
And then there’s Hot Spot, which officially became Cold Spot. I thought the Noomi Rapace sci-fi thriller might struggle to reach $500,000. It did even worse, grossing only around $250,000 from 268 theaters. That’s less than $1,000 per theater and essentially dead on arrival. Frankly, this probably should have gone directly to streaming rather than burning money on a theatrical marketing campaign.
So the weekend played out pretty much as expected, with Insidious actually beating expectations and Hot Spot performing even worse than anticipated. But Camp Miasma remains the fascinating one. A weird, niche slasher has grown from five theaters to more than 1,000 and is still finding an audience. That’s the kind of theatrical success story horror could use more of.
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