Horror Hits Peak in 2025
Lights down, armrest gripped, teeth clenched – just an average evening at the cinema for a horror film fan.
The genre is having a great year in 2025, with the top three examples – Sinners, Final Destination: Bloodlines and 28 Years Later – taking a total of £41.3m ($55.6m) in the UK.
That’s compared with £39.5m ($53m) for the nine biggest horrors released throughout last year, according to Box Office Mojo.
In North America, scary movies have accounted for 17% of ticket purchases this year – up from 11% in 2024 and 4% a decade ago, according to a report from the Reuters news agency.
“Right now it feels like we’re in the renaissance of horror,” Chase Sui Wonders, one of the stars of I Know What You Did Last Summer (IKWYDLS), tells BBC Newsbeat.
“Everyone’s going to theatres watching horror movies.”The small screen’s also helping to switch us on to new releases.
According to data provided by TikTok, there’s been an rise in horror-related videos globally on the app in the past 12 months.
It said 10.7m people used the horror hashtag – an increase of 38% – while HorrorTok rose 40% to 2.6m.
The tags aren’t exclusively used on movie-related content, but TikTok said it had noticed a spike in videos using them during the Cannes Film Festival in May.
While the figures for the past year could suggest a horror explosion, long-time fans argue the popularity hasn’t crept up on us out of nowhere.
Ash Millman, a journalist and presenter who specialises in covering horror, says the genre’s success has been more of a slow-burn than a jump-scare.
Over the last 10 years, she says, it’s been gathering more critical and commercial success.
