Amityville: The Awakening has made only $742 at the box office in its opening weekend in 10 theaters. This makes the Bella Throne and Jennifer Jason Leigh horror movie one of the worst openings of all time, according toIndieWire.
The film’s synopsis sounded slightly predictable, but not like the worst opening of all time.
Belle, her little sister, and her comatose twin brother move into a new house with their single mother Joan in order to save money to help pay for her brother’s expensive healthcare. But when strange phenomena begin to occur in the house including the miraculous recovery of her brother, Belle begins to suspect her mother isn’t telling her everything and soon realizes they just moved into the infamous Amityville house.
The movie is the 10th installment of the Amityville horror series, but it totally ignores the several other sequels that came before it and instead exists as an independent movie within the franchise, even though it is technically a direct sequel to the original 1979 The Amityville Horror. But why exactly did it make, on average, just $74 per theater?
To be totally fair, there are a few reasons that may help explain why the movie bombed so hard this weekend. The movie was filmed in 2014 and has received virtually no advertising whatsoever leading up to its release this weekend. Moreover, the film was released for free on Google Play a few weeks ago, and will be available on Blu-ray and DVD just next month. Finally, the film was released by Dimension Films, a division of the Weinstein Company. That makes The Awakening the first movie that the Weinstein Company has released since the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal broke a few weeks ago.
2017 has been a banner year for horror movies, with huge blockbuster hits like It and Get Out contributing to making 2017 officially the best year ever for horror movies at the box office. It doesn’t seem like The Awakening will make much of a dent in that legacy, but hey… at least it tried.
