An ode to those surprisingly resilient January horror films

The grimmest month of the year, January brings almost nothing in terms of new entertainment. The gaming and music industries stop dead to let our wallets regain a bit of heft, while most of us eschew theater seats, either to stay warm indoors, return to work and school, or try and get fit before inevitably giving up in February anyway. But where horror fans are concerned, there have been some diamonds in this dumpster fire of culture over the years.

Whether they were made by powerhouse auteurs or exploitation filmmakers, January has seen a surprising number of successful horror movies over the years, dating to the early 1980s. While many titles from that decade were either trashy as all hell or perceived as such by their distributors, some films earned their stripes with fans, including David Cronenberg’s seminal body horror Scanners (1981), most famous for the scene where that guy’s head graphically explodes. It’s badass.

The ’80s also brought lesser offerings in the form of slasher cash-ins like The Madman (1981), The Mutilator (1984), and Intruder (1989). Given that the rise of VHS took place that same decade, we reckon this was because cynical studios were trying to get the biggest return for their buck by pumping stuff out when there was minimal competition in theaters, and ensuring they’d still have time to shove the movie onto rental store shelves before Halloween.

A bona fide cult classic, Tremors, arrived in January 1990—albeit not by design. The endearing horror-comedy with a pre-fame Kevin Bacon initially eyed a November 1989 release, but the film was pushed back so it could be edited down to qualify for a PG-13 rating. The mass-marketing effort for the film backfired, though, and in the face of January audience apathy, Tremors only made $16 million from a $10 million production budget. Like Scanners, though, Tremors eventually earned rightful recognition via the VHS market.

January horror releases picked up steam in the late 1990s, with films like From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), The Relic (1997), and Deep Rising (1998). The latter two were efforts by then-unseasoned directors, while the former featured Robert Rodriguez at the helm with a script penned by Quentin Tarantino. The vampire Western From Dusk Till Dawn was seemingly too violent and sexual for the masses, and star George Clooney was an untested leading man at the time, as ridiculous as that sounds. Still, the flick refused to die, and its returns were sustained by the profile of a writer/actor fresh off Pulp Fiction.

The 2000s mostly saw January horror releases that either bombed or only reached niche audiences. The latter was true of The Mothman Prophecies—released on January 25, 2002—an adaptation of a 27-year-old book based on a 1960s urban legend. Starring Richard Gere, the film stabbed at the enigmatic storytelling of David Lynch and The X-Files, but its lack of creature thrills divided opinion: for every person who hailed it as tense and enigmatic, another called it confusing or disappointing.

January 2003, though, brought Final Destination 2, a sequel to the 2000 blockbuster hit, which earned $112 million. You’d have expected distributor New Line to have more faith in the project, given the success of the first Final Destination film. But the likelihood is the film simply fell through the cracks. New Line had released The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers in December 2002, Freddy Vs. Jason in August 2003, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake the following Halloween, and The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King to end 2003, meaning the studio simply didn’t have enough space on its release schedule to give Final Destination 2 a proper theatrical window. Still, the sequel managed to gross $90 million and set the stage for a generation-spanning franchise.

In 2008, the January release game was transformed by Cloverfield. Matt Reeves’ found-footage monster movie was a smash hit thanks to savvy marketing. Early trailers didn’t show the big baddie or even the title, sending audiences onto fledgling internet message boards to unpack what exactly was happening and in the process whipped up some word-of-mouth buzz.

By the time the movie finally came out, the hype had reached category five levels of intensity. Eager fans braved the cold and skipped their January gym sessions to get some answers to all their questions, to the tune of a $172 million haul at the box office. Too bad Cloverfield’s commitment to point-of-view, on-the-ground cinematography meant the film was less concerned with what the monster was than its destructive effects. Cloverfield wasn’t about the creature, but the human response to the anarchy in its wake, and it was ingenious.

Since then, and especially since the advent of streaming, horror films have repeatedly bucked against January’s reputation as a horror movie wasteland. M3GAN got a wide release on January 6 last year and became a surprise hit, despite distribution on Peacock, which streamed the flick into everybody’s living rooms barely a week after the film’s initial release in theaters. Same story with the critical and commercial hit Infinity Pool, which hit theater screens on January 27 and became available to purchase on-demand barely a fortnight afterward.

Are the days of January representing the calendar’s darkest days of horror, and culture in general, over? Well, with distribution being in such an evolutionary spot it’s impossible to conclude anything yet. Still, some freaky classics have emerged at the dawn of a new year, and we can only applaud their ability to find success against all odds.