Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
June 11, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Jay Barney: If you ask me, this is a much bigger story than what happened last weekend at the box office on a number of different levels. The Purge was advertised just the right way. It never came across as a pure horror flick. There was a creepy philosophical element to it that audiences obviously embraced. Tracking everywhere was way off, from most low balling this opening by half to our own Reagen Sulewski missing it by over $20 million. I doubt anybody could have seen this coming, though.
This is a perfect example of positive buzz and early anticipation for a film; the new movie of the week and internet excitement made this incredibly successful. Everyone in the business saw a decent to good opening weekend coming for The Purge, but the film obviously benefited from the attention and its success skyrocketed. Now You See Me had the same thing happen last weekend.
Brett Ballard-Beach: I am aware of (though in no way was a target of) what sounds like a terrific social media campaign, which punched up what is an awesome high concept for a feature, turning the home invasion genre on its ear slightly. (Set aside the fact that the reviews and now weekend buzz have been lackluster.) Features I have read indicated that people who never turn out opening weekend for horror films or who only attend say, one, horror film a year, were excited for this. It is one I (in a younger incarnation) would have been out for on opening day. As with Now You See Me, I think it is also benefiting from some lackluster blockbusters that have led audiences to seek out something that at least has a faint whiff of originality. It may also be just the right film to come along in a world where a 3D printed gun, and all the unfathomable implications that carries, is now a reality.
Edwin Davies: I think the key to this success lies in the novelty of the concept, which is a pretty solid Twilight Zone-esque one if on its own, but which also prompts people to think, "Well, what would I do if all crime was legal?" The concept itself might not stand up to all that much scrutiny, and by all accounts the film pretty much just uses it as a jumping off point for a fairly standard home invasion thriller, but it's provocative in a way most horror films aren't, and I think that the social media campaign played off of that idea pretty well. On top of that, the home invasion storyline is one that hits people close to, well, home, and the success of The Strangers a few years ago demonstrated that people can be drawn to a story that places horror in a safe, familiar setting. It hits them in a very vulnerable place, psychologically speaking, and if played well, that can have a huge impact. The combination of that with a premise that people haven't seen before seems to have drawn people out in spite of the lukewarm response, though I think that might keep it from doing as well as it could have if it was actually good, since it's got the next couple of weeks all to itself as far as horror is concerned.
Max Braden: That's a big surprise. The Strangers was successful, but not this successful. I'm trying to think of other home invasion genre movies that have done nearly as well... Panic Room opened to $30 million in the spring of 2002, held the #1 spot its second week, then was #2 on the third weekend. I don't think that's quite the right comparison, since it was more of a thriller and The Purge is obviously targeting the horror market. That opening weekend is impressive, but I don't think it's going to survive well with This Is the End and World War Z coming up.
Reagen Sulewski: I've seen a bit of talk about the 99% vs 1% political allegory angle that the film takes, but I'm not sure that comes across in the ads at all, and I don't think horror fans really look for that kind of thing. But I think that was my overall mistake - miscategorizing it. I had it as a thriller or sci-fi when it's really positioning itself as a horror film, which as we've all seen, often gets a lot of mileage out of miniscule budgets. At $3 million this was going to be a winner regardless, but they've managed to turn this into one of the big stories of the summer. This is the thing with high-concept films - there's often a huge payoff if you can market it correctly, and if you can't - well, Upside Down (to pick a recent example) didn't lose a lot of money, I don't think.
David Mumpower: I am particularly amused by Max's post because when I saw the trailer for the first time, my reaction was that it was equal parts Panic Room and The Strangers. Panic Room takes place in a single (massive) home and while the title indicates the claustrophobia of a single room, David Fincher correctly identified the cleverness of the premise. By having the good guys and the bad guys able to converse, negotiate, threaten and (eventually) battle, the action was intensified. The sublime nature of the idea is that everyone is centrally located and forced to combat one another.
The Strangers comes into play not just because of the masks worn by the invaders but also because that story tells the same premise in a different manner. Panic Room is about an attempted heist gone wrong. The Strangers is about a group of people who seek to do harm to their neighbors.
In advertising the restlessness of Panic Room combined with the survival elements of The Strangers, The Purge taps into one of the best movie premises in recent memory. Is the idea original? Of course not. There was an Elizabeth Shue movie in 1996 called The Trigger Effect that explored similar themes regarding the sudden introduction of lawlessness into an ordered society. But none of the three movies mentioned above provided the visceral thrills demonstrated in the two minutes of the trailer for The Purge. It looks amazing and it promises a type of story that is always effective when done well. While this is only my second most anticipated Ethan Hawke movie this summer (we still don't have Before Midnight yet), it is still one of the top six movies this season to me. I am with the masses on The Purge and I am thrilled to see it surpass the opening weekends of much more hyped 2013 releases such as Epic, After Earth and A Good Day to Die Hard.
Kim Hollis: I believe this result is incredibly surprising. I have to admit that I saw very little advertising for the film at all, if any, but I guess I'm not really the target audience, either. I think we can credit this to some very savvy marketing that took advantage of a fresh-feeling, thought-provoking premise to entice people to come see how it all played out. I'm extremely impressed that Universal was able to get this sort of result with a non-remake, non-sequel property.