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Even though Longlegs provided a little bit of respite some weeks ago, the horror genre has struggled to achieve success at the box office this year. It’s been surprising to see major studio releases fail to crack a certain low ceiling during their respective runs, and although there have been a couple of exceptions — Longlegs followed A Quiet Place: Day One — the sad streak appears to be continuing this week, with Sony’s AfrAId under-performing in its debut.
Written and directed by Chris Weitz, AfrAId made $3.7 million in its three-day domestic opening and combined with the $2.3 million that it made in overseas markets, the film’s cumulative global opening stands at $6 million. A horror-thriller about an artificial intelligence personal assistant that becomes way too involved in a family’s lives, AfrAId registered one of the lowest openings for a wide-release horror movie this year. The film was released in over 3,000 domestic locations and reported a per-theater average of just $1,232. By comparison, the 20th-anniversary re-release of Shaun of the Dead had a PTA of over $4,000 this weekend.
Produced on a reported budget of $12 million and starring John Cho, AfrAIdopened to poor reviews; the movie holds a 22% approval rating on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. In his review, Collider’s Matthew Donato wrote, “Afraid doesn’t offer anything to fear and lacks dystopian imagination. It’s a whiteboard that never cleans itself after the brainstorming stage.” The movie was also rejected by audiences; in addition to the C+ CinemaScore that it received from opening day crowds, it also earned a poor 48% audience score on RT.
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Cho previously starred in the sleeper hit Searching, a “screenlife” movie that opened to $6 million but legged it to $26 million on the back of positive reviews. Also released by Sony, Searching inspired a sequel and a spin-off. Earlier this year, Sony released the horror film Tarot, which concluded its run with around $19 million domestically. Tarot is one of the many studio horror films to have under-performed at the box office this year, alongside The First Omen ($20 million), The Watchers ($19 million) Abigail ($25 million), Imaginary ($28 million), Night Swim ($32 million), and The Strangers: Chapter 1 ($35 million).
One of the rare horror hits this year has been Late Night with the Devil, which broke records for the indie distributor IFC Films with $10 million domestically, and featured David Dastmalchian in the lead role. Incidentally, Dastmalchian also stars in AfrAId, alongside Katherine Waterston, Havana Rose Liu, Lukita Maxwell, and Keith Carradine. You can watch the film in theaters, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
