Google recently conducted a study investigating moviegoers’ motivations when heading to the multiplex and, presumably, how it can convince them to stay home and watch that pay cable service they’re still maybe going to launch someday instead. What they found is that fans of different genres go to see movies for different reasons, reasons that could be kind of embarrassing to horror lovers if their collective dignity had not already been stripped away by saying the words “one for Jason Goes To Hell, please” out loud.
Basically, the study showed that people who go to see dramas are drawn in by a film’s plot, comedy fans by an outstanding cast, action fans by a known director, and family-film viewers by good reviews (presumably reassuring parents there will be no errant bare butts or dirty words). Horror-movie viewers, on the other hand, are most likely to end up in the theater if the movie has a convenient show time. In other words, many of the people who go see horror movies are the kind of people who show up at the theater with no particular movie in mind, just a desire to “see a movie.”
For enthusiasts of the genre, this has a couple of implications. On the one hand, this encourages studios to keep churning out paint-by-numbers fare like Ouija—which, let us not forget, was the No. 1 movie in America—because a horror movie’s quality is apparently irrelevant to its box-office prospects. On the other, that very lack of concern brings with it a certain freedom, and horror continues to be a genre where up-and-coming filmmakers can break through to a wider audience. Even if most of them are there just because.
[story via Cinema Blend]