While shoestring budgets can often translate into abysmal box office numbers, sometimes movies defy expectations and rake in hefty sums. Which '70s slasher classic turned $140,000 into a multi-million dollar franchise? We've got the details on the best low budget horror movies that killed it at the box office.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00 While shoestring budgets can often translate into abysmal box office numbers, sometimes
00:05 movies defy expectations and rake in hefty sums.
00:09 Which '70s slasher classic turned $140,000 into a multi-million dollar franchise?
00:15 We've got the details on the best low-budget horror movies that killed it at the box office.
00:21 Inspired by the success of John Carpenter's Halloween, Sean S. Cunningham and Victor Miller
00:26 concocted a story about a group of teenage camp counselors who are killed one by one
00:31 by an unseen killer just weeks before the reopening of an abandoned summer camp.
00:37 Originally titled A Long Night at Camp Blood, the film that would become Friday the 13th
00:42 was shot on a budget of only $550,000 and sparked a bidding war over distribution rights
00:49 between Paramount Pictures, United Artists, and Warner Bros.
00:53 Paramount eventually won the rights to the film, nabbing Friday the 13th for $1.5 million.
00:59 The studio knew they had a hit on their hands and put approximately $500,000 into the movie's
01:04 advertising budget.
01:06 They later added an additional $500,000 for a total of roughly $1 million spent on marketing
01:12 when it started killing it in theaters.
01:15 Paramount's rather modest investment paid off, as Friday the 13th brought in a whopping
01:19 $59.8 million at the box office.
01:23 Adjusted for inflation, the film brought in over $203 million by 2022 standards, making
01:30 it the highest-grossing horror film of 1980.
01:33 The massive success at the box office sparked a franchise, with every installment except
01:38 Jason X making at least three times its budget at the box office.
01:42 Notably, Friday the 13th Part V, A New Beginning, made ten times its budget.
01:48 When Friday the 13th was given the remake treatment in 2009, the film was shot on a
01:52 budget of $19 million, but brought home $92.7 million at the box office, proving that while
01:59 the franchise as a whole has delivered mixed returns as far as quality, Friday the 13th
02:04 is a guaranteed way to slash up the box office.
02:08 Open Water is a sadistically engineered nightmare from the mind and lens of writer-director
02:13 Chris Kentis, therein Susan Watkins and Daniel Kintner end up stranded in the Big Blue Pacific,
02:19 as the title states, when their scuba diving guide crew raised anchor and departed back
02:24 to shore without doing a proper headcount.
02:27 Bit by bit, dehydration, hunger, and exposure creep in, and that's before the first shark
02:32 fin glides into the frame.
02:34 "Daniel, is that a shark?"
02:38 "Maybe.
02:39 Or a dolphin."
02:40 Shot on digital on an economical budget of $500,000, Open Water made out like a bandit,
02:47 with a domestic opening of $1,100,943 and a lifetime gross of $55 million.
02:54 A mouse-quiet survival movie about a long, salty swim became a runaway hit, but why?
03:00 Roger Ebert credits it to a simple, universal fear of abandonment.
03:05 The acclaimed critic wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times,
03:07 "I'm not afraid of water and don't spend much time thinking about sharks, but the prospect
03:11 of being lost, of being forgotten about, awakens emotions from deep in childhood.
03:17 To be left behind stirs such anger and hopelessness."
03:20 Further fueling the film's popularity was its loose connection to true events.
03:24 The story is based on the 1998 disappearance of American couple Tom and Eileen Lonergan,
03:30 whose guide crew had not noticed their absence until two days after they failed to return
03:34 to the dive boat in the Coral Sea.
03:36 Like so many horror movies based in reality, Open Water offers a cosmic middle finger in
03:42 lieu of a happy ending, which was just what the post-9/11 crowd ordered.
03:47 Get Out, Jordan Peele's directorial debut, was made with a modest budget of $4.5 million.
03:53 It starred then-unknown actor Daniel Kaluuya, offered an unflinching depiction of racism,
03:59 and didn't rely on gore or expensive visual effects to attract audiences or generate scares.
04:05 Against the odds, the psychological horror-thriller would go on to earn over $255 million worldwide.
04:12 Much of the film's success is due to good old-fashioned storytelling, as it draws on
04:15 the realistic horrors and relatable anxieties associated with meeting your partner's parents
04:20 and being the only Black person in a room full of white people.
04:24 The film's use of casual and systemic racism as the main villain during what would become
04:29 an era fraught with racial tension was also particularly timely.
04:33 While the original ending had Chris being arrested and imprisoned after defending himself
04:38 against Rose and her family, Peele decided to rewrite it after several high-profile police
04:42 brutality cases sparked meaningful conversation on the pervasive nature of racism in modern
04:47 society.
04:48 In the new ending, Chris, and the audience, would experience a knowing moment of despair
04:53 when the police car arrives, only to breathe a sigh of relief when his friend Rod steps
04:58 out of the car to rescue him.
05:00 According to Peele, this ending allowed for the originally intended reaction to be preserved,
05:05 while still allowing for a happier ending, relatively speaking.
05:08 "I mean, I told you not to go in that house."
05:14 In addition to good storytelling and timeliness, the massive critical and financial success
05:19 of Get Out can also be attributed to the fact that its concept of "the sunken place" became
05:24 a viral sensation, sparking memes and becoming part of the cultural lexicon as a popular
05:29 term for silence and complacency in the face of systemic oppression.
05:33 Despite being technically low-budget, the film's solid execution and boldness in forcing
05:38 audiences to acknowledge the reality of racism definitely paid off in a big way.
05:44 Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 classic Psycho is a low-budget success by design.
05:50 The master of suspense was rumored to be growing bored with the lack of challenge his bigger-budget
05:54 projects presented when he purchased the rights to the novel that would be the basis for Psycho.
05:59 In the documentary The Making of Psycho, the film's screenwriter Joseph Stefano says that
06:04 Hitchcock had a clear vision for a low-budget hit when he pitched the movie, one he presented
06:09 with a signature Hitchcockian diss.
06:12 The filmmaker cited some other recent black-and-white hits, then said,
06:15 "How would it be if somebody good did one of these low-budget movies?"
06:20 Hitch relished a challenge, and Psycho was just that.
06:23 According to an IndieWire retrospective, he made the movie for around $800,000.
06:28 He cut costs by filming in black-and-white with a television crew.
06:32 The film's lack of color was a striking choice that also made practical effects easier, as
06:37 when Hitchcock famously used chocolate syrup to create fake blood in the film's famous
06:42 shower scene.
06:43 His gamble paid off.
06:45 Psycho made at least $32 million at the box office, though its historic run is often cited
06:51 as raking in upwards of $50 million.
06:53 With adjustments for inflation, Psycho grossed around $400 million during its theatrical
06:59 run.
07:00 This turned out to be a lucrative payoff for the director.
07:03 When he initially pitched the project to Paramount, executives weren't entirely convinced the
07:07 lurid tale would pay dividends.
07:10 Hitchcock was so confident in his project that he chose to forgo his typical salary
07:14 in favor of 60 percent of the film's gross.
07:16 "We all go a little mad sometimes."
07:18 Hitch returned to bigger-budget projects after Psycho, but his detour into shoestring filmmaking
07:24 is forever immortalized in a masterpiece that was able to terrify audiences for little more
07:29 than the cost of a jar of chocolate syrup.
07:33 Every now and then, a low-budget, under-the-radar horror pic starts generating the type of buzz
07:38 that results in smashing success.
07:40 In 2005, Neil Marshall was known — if he was known at all, really — as the director
07:45 behind the horror comedy Dog Soldiers.
07:48 Marshall's follow-up was The Descent, the story of a group of female cave divers who
07:52 inadvertently disturb the den of terrifying subterranean monsters.
07:56 The film looks plenty slick, despite being filmed in a very limited location — a dark,
08:01 damp, claustrophobic cave created entirely on a set at Pinewood Studios.
08:06 Coupled with the fact that the entire cast was pretty unknown, the budget was relatively
08:10 low — under $5 million, to be precise.
08:13 The Descent first opened in the UK in 2005.
08:17 A year later, it made its way to the Sundance Film Festival, where it earned rave reviews
08:21 and plenty of hype.
08:22 By the end of 2006, The Descent was making plenty of best movies of the year lists.
08:28 All told, it hauled in $57.1 million against a budget of £3.5 million, which is approximately
08:36 $4,700,000 American dollars.
08:39 It seems impossible nowadays that the horror classic A Nightmare on Elm Street could be
08:44 described as "low budget," but that's exactly what it was back when it was released in 1984.
08:49 "Who are you?"
08:51 The film started off with a $700,000 budget, which quickly boiled over to $1.1 million.
09:04 Adjusted for inflation, that's approximately $2.68 million in today's world, which would
09:09 most definitely still be considered "low budget."
09:12 What could have been just another dead-end horror gag turned out to be a bonafide phenomenon,
09:17 and Wes Craven's horrific high school tale ended up grossing a whopping $51 million globally.
09:23 Adjusted, that number would be over $137 million in 2022.
09:28 The film was such a roaring success that it ended up pulling New Line Cinema out of the
09:33 financial straits they'd been in since the company was founded in 1967.
09:37 They had renegotiated their debts in 1980, but were still trying to keep their heads
09:41 above water when A Nightmare on Elm Street made the studio's dreams a reality.
09:47 When talking about micro-budget horror films that shine bright at the box office, it goes
09:51 without saying that Unfriended is one of them.
09:54 Ingeniously executed, it is one of the first major screen-life horror films, and plays
09:59 out entirely on a MacBook screen.
10:02 It tells the story of digital possession caused by cyberbullying, where six high school students
10:07 are joined by an unknown, mysterious user during a Skype session.
10:11 When the sinister entity is revealed to be their classmate Laura Barnes, who died by
10:15 suicide a year earlier, the teens begin dying one by one.
10:19 They can't hide, they can't log off, and they're forced to make harrowing confessions and watch
10:24 as the spirit takes over their Facebook accounts, posting incriminating footage that ties them
10:29 to her death.
10:30 The film had its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival in 2014, before
10:35 Universal Pictures released it theatrically a year later.
10:38 Against its humble $1 million budget, Unfriended was highly successful at the box office, and
10:44 grossed $62 million worldwide.
10:47 Its $15.8 million opening weekend was the biggest debut for an original horror movie
10:52 since The Conjuring in 2013, and its success is credited to its originality and creative
10:58 marketing campaigns.
11:00 "He came home."
11:02 John Carpenter is an undisputed master of horror.
11:05 If the man has a single crowning achievement, it was most likely 1978's Halloween, the slasher
11:11 classic that introduced the world to Michael Myers and spawned a franchise that is still
11:15 going strong to this day.
11:17 At the time, the slasher genre as we know it today wasn't really a thing, though movies
11:22 like Psycho and Black Christmas were arguably two of the first in what would become the
11:27 subgenre.
11:28 Carpenter wasn't a term at the time, and that needs to be understood when looking at what
11:32 Carpenter did when he was approached to make a movie about a killer stalking babysitters.
11:37 It wasn't a template for success, especially when you consider that it was made on a budget
11:42 of $325,000.
11:44 Thanks to some compelling marketing that leaned heavily on the title and left things pretty
11:48 mysterious, Halloween went on to become one of the most profitable horror movies in history.
11:53 To date, it has earned just over $70 million at the box office, which is more than 230
12:00 times its original budget.
12:01 Those kind of returns simply don't happen in Hollywood.
12:05 James Wan's 2013 film The Conjuring was a massive hit, taking in $317 million and using
12:12 the reportedly true stories of Ed and Lorraine Warren to develop a franchise around memorable
12:17 supernatural villains.
12:19 That film interestingly begins with the introduction of a possessed doll named Annabelle, a disturbing
12:24 figure that made such an impression, despite not being the film's antagonist, that it got
12:29 its own spinoff merely a year later.
12:31 "Oh my god, John."
12:33 "That's the one, right?"
12:35 "Yes."
12:36 2014's Annabelle focuses on the doll itself via its connection to a vicious Satanist attack
12:42 intended to conjure a powerful demon.
12:45 According to an interview with director John Leonetti, the film was intended as part of
12:48 a strategy to spin new projects out of successful films and their existing fanbases.
12:54 Making an extraordinary $257 million in box office returns on a mere $6 million budget,
13:00 the strategy worked.
13:02 The movie cemented The Conjuring Universe films as top performers and kept the eerie
13:07 doll in the spotlight.
13:09 There's low-budget filmmaking, and then there's The Evil Dead.
13:13 The original cabin-in-the-woods horror film was made completely independently, with writer
13:18 and director Sam Raimi begging anyone he could to finance his film.
13:22 He ended up raising $375,000 — about $1.3 million with inflation — and headed to rural
13:29 Tennessee to film their low-budget gore-fest.
13:31 "The best part is, we get it so cheap."
13:33 "Yeah, why are we getting it so cheap?"
13:36 "Well, I don't know.
13:37 Might be in real bad shape."
13:38 The Evil Dead was like a filmmaking boot camp for many of its young crew, including the
13:43 20-year-old Raimi and one of his oldest pals, star Bruce Campbell.
13:47 They endured a grueling shoot in the Tennessee wilderness that eventually forced crew members
13:52 to leave one by one.
13:54 In the end, it was only Raimi and Campbell working late into the night on their demented
13:58 dream.
13:59 "Ash, I don't want to die.
14:00 You're not going to leave me, are you, Ash?"
14:04 Thankfully, it was all worth it, as The Evil Dead went on a gross $2.4 million at the box
14:09 office, which is about $8 million with inflation.
14:12 That means The Evil Dead made back six times its budget just at the box office, and that's
14:18 not accounting for its eventual home video release.
14:21 Cult classics like The Evil Dead do even better on video, and this film was no different.
14:26 Fans who couldn't see it in theaters because of its NC-17 rating sought it out on VHS.
14:31 In 1987, it spawned a sequel, Evil Dead 2.
14:35 From there, Raimi created an entire franchise that has grossed more than $150 million worldwide.
14:41 The film's frenetic energy, unusual camera techniques, and gross-out gore made it an
14:46 all-time midnight movie classic.
14:49 Lee Winnell knows his way around a low-budget horror success story as not only the screenwriter
14:54 for the first two Saw films, but also as the writer and director of 2020's The Invisible
14:59 Man.
15:00 Shot on a modest budget of $7 million for low-budget horror juggernaut Blumhouse Productions, the
15:06 modern adaptation of the classic horror film exceeded all expectations and took home $143.1
15:13 million.
15:14 It was the top of the box office during its opening weekend and enjoyed a successful three
15:18 weeks in theaters until COVID-19 struck and theaters around the globe shut down.
15:24 In the subsequent weeks, The Invisible Man continued to play almost exclusively at drive-in
15:29 theaters and reclaimed the top spot at the box office during its 16th weekend, when physical
15:34 media and VOD rentals were already available.
15:37 The same week that the United States box office reported a $0 opening weekend, in March of
15:42 2020, the on-demand streaming service Fandango Now reported their biggest weekend in history
15:48 with The Invisible Man at the top of the most-watched list, with a $19.99 rental price tag.
15:54 While VOD numbers are not reported, we do know that The Invisible Man brought home over
15:58 $13 million in domestic sales of DVD and Blu-ray, proving that audiences really, really wanted
16:05 to see The Invisible Man.
16:08 It's not an exaggeration to say that no one was expecting One Cut of the Dead to come
16:12 crashing into the horror space like a feral cannibal.
16:15 Upon first glance, the movie seems like a routine, micro-budget zombie picture.
16:20 Made for 3 million yen, which is about $25,000 in Yankee currency, the story surrounds a
16:25 production team and cast who are assigned to make a single-take zombie movie for live
16:29 TV.
16:30 It's a tall order for filmmakers with the limited resources these ones have.
16:34 They don't even have money for an air compressor, and theatrical blood must be manually blown
16:39 through a tube for splatter effects.
16:41 But this team has the power of cinema on its side, and they pour their blood, sweat, and
16:46 tears into a scrappy movie that would surely have zombie cinema pioneer George A. Romero
16:51 nodding in approval.
16:52 The first half-hour of One Cut of the Dead treads the same well-trodden path of the usual
16:57 zombie outbreak tropes with quiet gusto.
17:00 In fact, it does it so well that, before the turn, one might shut off the movie and miss
17:05 out on the incredible narrative pivot that occurs, taking a ho-hum zombie story template
17:10 and transforming it into a heartfelt, goofy love letter to movies and filmmaking.
17:15 The payoff was immense.
17:17 Viewers fell head over heels for the movie to the tune of a worldwide gross of $27.5
17:22 million.
17:23 The movie went on to become the seventh-highest-grossing film in Japan in 2018, and is currently enjoying
17:29 extended praise on underrated horror streaming service Shudder.
17:34 When Saw premiered in 2004, director James Wan was an unknown name in the film industry.
17:40 After writing the script with his friend and fellow filmmaker Lee Winell, Saw was produced
17:44 for just $1.2 million.
17:47 Despite this tiny budget, which was small even by horror movie standards, Saw went on
17:52 to become a massive financial success, grossing over $103 million globally.
17:58 The success and subsequent popularity of the Saw franchise can likely be attributed to
18:02 the fact that it offered a refreshing take on scary movies, so much so that it is often
18:07 credited with revolutionizing the horror genre as a whole.
18:11 "I wanna play a game."
18:14 One element that sets Saw apart from other horror movies of the era is the fact that
18:18 it deviated from the popular "teen slasher" formula.
18:21 In fact, the main characters aren't teenagers at all, and there's no campiness or fan service
18:26 to offset the film's unfiltered violence.
18:28 Additionally, the movie's villain wasn't a supernatural phantom or a mindless murderer.
18:33 Instead, Saw introduced the world to Jigsaw, a sadistic game master and serial killer who
18:38 uses his victims' own survival instincts and morality against them.
18:43 The moral dilemma aspect worked alongside the extreme body horror present throughout
18:47 the film to evoke a visceral response that made Saw unforgettable to viewers and critics
18:53 alike.
18:54 Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez's faux documentary all but reinvented the horror genre overnight.
19:01 When it debuted in 1999, The Blair Witch Project popularized the found-footage format and ushered
19:07 in an era of dread-based, less-is-more horror that would dominate the 21st century.
19:12 Along the way, it became one of the best box office success stories of all time.
19:17 Before post-production and marketing costs, which bumped the film's cost up to as much
19:21 as half a million dollars, the project was originally shot for a minuscule budget of
19:25 around $35,000.
19:28 The Blair Witch Project made massive box office returns after a successful viral marketing
19:32 campaign convinced viewers it might contain real footage of actual missing people.
19:37 The movie grossed nearly $250 million worldwide, benefiting from word of mouth among viewers
19:44 who bought into the urban legend at its center.
19:46 The film's success paid for its initial budget several hundred times over.
19:50 "I'm scared to close my eyes.
19:52 I'm scared to open them."
19:55 Unlike some films on this list, the shoestring elements of The Blair Witch Project are easy
20:00 to see.
20:01 The film's grueling shoot largely took place in the wilderness with handheld cameras.
20:05 The filmmakers were so cost-conscious, they told Roger Ebert they even returned one of
20:10 the cameras to Circuit City for a refund after production wrapped.
20:13 The shoot itself was also inexpensive.
20:16 It took only eight days, with a detailed outline in place of a script.
20:21 At the start of 1930, with the Great Depression in full swing, Universal Studios was going
20:26 broke, having lost $2.2 million at a time when that was a dangerously huge amount of
20:32 money for a studio to lose.
20:34 Then, the monsters came to the rescue.
20:36 First, there was Dracula in 1931, with Bela Lugosi, which earned the studio a $700,000
20:43 profit.
20:44 When studios see numbers like that, they immediately start thinking of ways to replicate the success.
20:49 And sure enough, Carl Laemmle Jr., Universal's head of production, immediately announced
20:54 that more monster movies would be on the way.
20:56 That same year, the studio unleashed Frankenstein, adapted from the novel by Mary Shelley.
21:02 These days, it's easy to overlook how scary Frankenstein seemed to audiences in 1931.
21:08 Horror grew more graphic and more extreme in the decades to come, desensitizing its
21:12 core audience in the process.
21:14 But back in '31, the movie-going public had never seen anything quite like Frankenstein.
21:20 And when Boris Karloff first stepped onto the screen, buried in the now-iconic makeup
21:25 created by Jack Pierce, audiences flipped — in a good way.
21:29 They couldn't get enough of it.
21:30 "It's alive!
21:32 It's alive!
21:34 It's alive!
21:35 It's alive!"
21:36 Shot on a small budget of $262,007, Frankenstein initially earned the studio $1.4 million.
21:45 Universal kept the pick playing in theaters over the years, and by 1953, Frankenstein
21:49 had jolted to $12 million at the box office.
21:54 Years ago, writer and director James DeMonaco and his wife were almost killed one night
21:58 by a drunk driver in Brooklyn, New York.
22:00 After the incident, she told him in the heat of the moment that she wished she could just
22:04 have one free murder a year.
22:06 And thus, the basis for The Purge was born.
22:08 DeMonaco, who was perhaps best known prior to the franchise as the writer of the 2005
22:13 Assault on Precinct 13 remake, used his partner's comment to create the 2013 dystopian horror
22:20 film set on the one night a year during which all crime, including murder, is legal for
22:25 a 12-hour period in the U.S.
22:27 Ethan Hawke stars as a stand-up father who has his family hunkered down for Purge night
22:32 when things go south, and a pack of wild yet eerily polite Purgers make their home a target
22:39 after a man they attempted to kill takes shelter in the family's home.
22:42 "If you don't deliver him by the aforementioned time, we'll release the beast on him.
22:48 And on you."
22:50 The low-budget gem made do with the $3 million budget, but their box office return was one
22:55 for the books.
22:56 The film grossed nearly $65 million domestically and just under $25 million internationally,
23:03 which left them with a worldwide gross of over $89 million.
23:08 There are few movies that can boast the type of success that Paranormal Activity had, which
23:13 was a true lightning-in-a-bottle moment for the horror genre.
23:16 The only thing that even comes close is The Blair Witch Project.
23:19 In any event, director Oren Paley's 2007 movie, which was released theatrically in 2009, will
23:25 go down in history as perhaps the best investment by a studio ever.
23:30 The film originally screened at festivals and, using a lean found-footage format, cost
23:35 a mere $15,000 to make.
23:38 In acquiring the film, the plan was to remake it with a larger budget.
23:42 But producer Jason Blum, founder of Blumhouse Productions, opted to hold a test screening
23:47 of the original before pressing forward, and that changed everything.
23:51 People were so terrified, they left the theater, so instead, $200,000 was invested to film
23:57 a new ending.
23:58 With that, horror history was made.
24:01 Paranormal Activity became a pop culture phenomenon, taking in an astounding $194 million worldwide,
24:09 all from a $215,000 investment.
24:12 It went viral in the truest sense of the word.
24:14 People talked about it with their friends, the marketing leaned heavily into just how
24:18 terrifyingly realistic the movie was, and the intrigue was enough to get people out
24:22 to theaters in droves.
24:24 And it just kept happening week after week.
24:27 While the math gets tricky, it is widely considered to be the most profitable movie ever made,
24:32 when looking at return on investment.
24:34 To date, seven movies have been produced within the franchise, six of which were released
24:38 theatrically, earning a grand total of $890 million worldwide.
24:44 And considering the combined budgets hardly eclipsed $30 million, this is a downright
24:49 cash cow of legendary proportions.
24:52 Tobey Hooper's 1974 low-budget nightmare, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, was an exercise
24:58 in tenacity for its cast and crew.
25:00 The film was made for a minuscule budget of around $140,000, which is just under $800,000
25:07 with inflation.
25:08 The low budget meant that some corners had to be cut.
25:11 For example, the cast was forced to wear the same dirty, bloody clothes each day because
25:16 there wasn't enough of a budget for multiples of the same costumes.
25:20 Performers were injured doing some of the more difficult scenes, special effects didn't
25:24 work, and by the end of shooting, everyone was pretty frustrated with Hooper.
25:28 The good news was that all the suffering translated directly to the screen.
25:32 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a tense and brutal film that feels like it's a little
25:37 too real, in part because it was.
25:39 The low budget forced the cast and crew to get creative and to really dig in, which in
25:44 turn made the movie's horror all the more authentic.
25:48 Audiences and critics were stunned by the gritty, nail-biting film, and it has gone
25:52 on to spawn an entire franchise with sequels and remakes.
25:56 The latest sequel, simply titled Texas Chainsaw Massacre, premiered on Netflix in February
26:01 2022.
26:02 If The Texas Chainsaw Massacre had been made with a big budget and glossy special effects,
26:07 it might not have shocked audiences in the same way.
26:10 Sometimes a low budget is actually a blessing in disguise.
26:15 After the unbelievable success of The Sixth Sense, director M. Night Shyamalan was poised
26:20 to become the next Spielberg, an impossible feat for anyone to accomplish and almost guaranteeing
26:26 that audiences would be disappointed with anything short of perfection.
26:29 His subsequent films Unbreakable, Signs, and The Village performed well at the box office,
26:35 but The Lady in the Water was a financial failure and started a trend of critical flops
26:39 that continued with The Happening, The Last Airbender, and After Earth.
26:44 "You're wrong!"
26:46 The director who was once believed to be "the next big thing" was now viewed as nothing
26:50 more than a twist-ending punchline and struggled to find financing for future projects.
26:55 Then, two years after the failure of After Earth, Shyamalan took out a $5 million loan
27:01 on his Pennsylvania estate to finance his 2015 found-footage horror film The Visit.
27:07 Told through the camera recordings of Becca, a young aspiring director, she and her younger
27:11 brother Tyler are sent by their mother to visit their grandparents at their remote Pennsylvania
27:16 farm for a trip.
27:17 They soon discover that their grandparents are not what they seem and that their lives
27:22 are in serious danger.
27:23 "I'm gonna getcha!"
27:26 Low-budget horror mavens Blumhouse Productions co-produced the Shyamalan film, and thanks
27:31 to their first-look distribution deal with Universal Pictures, Shyamalan's $5 million
27:36 financial risk paid off in a huge way as The Visit brought home nearly $100 million worldwide.
27:43 Shyamalan kept a list of Hollywood executives who had refused to distribute The Visit, noting
27:47 in 2018 that most had since been fired.
27:51 Here's what's next!