Did arthouse horror hit The Witch trick mainstream US audiences?

Critically acclaimed horror film The Witch broke out from the arthouse circuit at the weekend and became a surprise hit with mainstream audiences, making $8.4m (£6m) from a budget of just $1m. Good news all round, huh?

Well, certainly for indie distributors A24, who have previously had relatively small successes with Ex Machina and Room. The opening was the biggest they’ve ever had and its screen average was second only to Deadpool in the Top 10. Also for critics, who had championed the film since it screened at last year’s Sundance and whose words had graced the film’s haunting marketing campaign. But there was one important group who walked away feeling cheated: the audience.

While The Witch landed with almost universally positive reviews (it’s at 88% on Rotten Tomatoes), most came with an important caveat. Yes, the film, a 17th-century-set tale of alleged witchcraft and mass hysteria, has been called “unsettling” and “chilling” but it’s also been referred to as difficult. The Guardian’s Jordan Hoffman said that it was “too slow and verbose to become the next breakout horror hit”, while the New Yorker’s Anthony Lane said audiences will “rightly ask if The Witch even deserves to be called a horror flick”.

Due to the more cerebral nature of the film, A24’s original plan was to give it a limited theatrical run, accompanied by a simultaneous VOD release, in what has become a more standard strategy for films of this size. But, given the film’s easy-to-market title, a range of excitable reviews and the fact that horror films are still reliable money-makers, their plan shifted and an arthouse pic was suddenly being offered up alongside Deadpool in more than 2,000 US cinemas.

It was also a smartly picked weekend with just under-the-radar titles such as faith-based epic Risen and sports biopic Race to compete with. After Thursday previews, A24 knew their gamble had paid off with a $630k start, implying a weekend total of $16m. But word of mouth soon spread and the film ended with half that – admirable for a film of this scale but it was already a victim of thwarted expectations.

Opening-night audiences were surveyed and it received a disappointing C- grade via Cinemascore, a company that specialises in gauging the opinion of cinemagoers. The reaction on social media was similarly underwhelmed.

Horror is one of the few genres that manages to draw crowds in without having to rely on big stars and brand awareness. This year alone, films with similarly opaque titles such as The Boy and The Forest have managed decent totals ($33m and $26m) from small budgets. The majority of audiences weren’t going to see The Witch because they loved Kate Dickie in Red Road; they were hoping to be scared.

But it’s not the first horror film to have pleased critics but frustrated the masses:

The Blair Witch Project (Rotten Tomatoes: 86%, Cinemascore: C+)
The Cabin in the Woods (Rotten Tomatoes: 92%, Cinemascore: C)
Let Me In (Rotten Tomatoes: 88%, Cinemascore: C+)
Oculus (Rotten Tomatoes: 73%, Cinemascore: C)
Piranha 3D (Rotten Tomatoes: 73%, Cinemascore: C)
The Mist (Rotten Tomatoes: 73%, Cinemascore: C)

Even for those who shell out for tickets, horror is incredibly divisive. If a film is too gory or too nasty then it can offend (both Wolf Creek and Saw received an F), while if you leave audiences scared but depressed they will also be unhappy (even hits like Sinister and The Purge could only manage a C+ and a C). But what audiences hate the most is feeling cheated. In 2012, low-budget horror The Devil Inside came out of nowhere to make a remarkable $33m in its opening weekend but the crowds turned against it with a toxic F rating and a second week decline of 76%. Why? The film ends with an unresolved incident and a URL directing viewers to find out more information. Hardly going to lead to ringing endorsements all round ...

But while audiences might have headed to see a new film called The Witch and expected to see something far more conventional, can distributors A24 really be to blame? What’s interesting about the film’s relative success is that the marketing campaign was fairly muted and mainly digitally focused. The film’s TV spots were surprisingly restrained and artful, refraining from pushing it as something it clearly wasn’t. Any expectations were based on what one might expect from a horror film being released on such a wide scale, rather than what the film was sold as.

While it’s likely that the film will suffer in its second week, it’s of little consequence. A small budget and a cheap marketing spend mean that the film is already in profit. It’s also pleased critics that a horror film of this quality is being seen by so many people, having already outgrossed other recent favourite The Babadook and likely to eclipse It Follows within the next week. The genre is, quite fairly, still maligned by most, with cookie-cutter dross dumped in cinemas month after month (The Boy and The Forest managed 30% and 10% on Rotten Tomatoes). It might also lead to other small distributors rethinking release strategies for modest genre fare, ideally titles that start with “The” followed by a creepy word.

So, while the social media fury may still continue (“The witch was the worst movie fucking made mad I wasted my money on that shit”), the scariest thing for many fans is that they might end up watching other films that don’t conform to their expectations and one day – gasp – they might actually start enjoying them.