Halloween Day is set to kick off on Tuesday. The Halloween season has yielded interesting results for the movie theatre industry. Indeed, horror films have shown an amazing propensity to catch fire and draw in big crowds. Some of the most profitable movies in history have come from the horror genre. Take The Blair Witch Project, which boasted a modest budget between $200,000 and $750,000. It had just under $250 million at the worldwide box office.

Paranormal Activity took the profit crown roughly a decade later. The production budget for this film was just $15,000 and the post-production and marketing budget was $215,000. It raked in nearly $195 million worldwide.

Five Nights at Freddy’s is a video game series and media franchise. The games involve solving puzzles and utilizing the environment of the in-game restaurant to defend against hostile animatronic characters who wake at night. The movie version, also titled Five Nights at Freddy’s, was released on October 27, 2023. This past weekend, the scrappy video game adaption raked in $78 million at the domestic box office. This was despite less-than-favourable reviews.

The horror/comedy managed to easily sweep away Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour and Martin Scorsese’s Western crime epic Killers of the Flower Moon over the final weekend of October. Five Nights at Freddy’s boasted a $20 million budget, making it another in a long line of extremely profitable horror installments that seemingly came out of nowhere. The performance also represents another positive sign for the cinema, as the return of horror as a profitable genre should boost optimism for AMC Entertainment (NYSE:AMC) and its peers.