The great thing about horror movies as a genre is just how accessible they are to filmmakers, with some iconic horror films being made for pennies on the dollar. Compared to many other films, horror movies are often able to see an absurdly high return on investment thanks to the genre’s in-built audience, who are frequently more willing to hear out new ideas and concepts. In fact, some of the greatest horror movies of all time were made with shockingly small budgets.
There are several factors at play that allow horror films to be some of the most cost-efficient movies around. For one, manufacturing a good scary atmosphere is often better done with the classic advice of “less is more”, allowing the audience’s imagination to fill-in-the-blanks as the tension creeps ever higher. Secondly, horror movies are great for bottle films with limited scope, able to take place in single haunted houses or star a lone killer in a mask. All of these elements lend themselves to cheap but effective filmmaking.
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The Blair Witch Project
Revolutionized an entire subgenre
The Blair Witch Project is significant for not only its absurdly high net profits, but for the way it completely revolutionized the found-footage horror subgenre. The film follows a ragtag group of guerrilla documentarians as they investigate the mysterious Blair Witch, an urban legend about a witch that supposedly lives in the wilderness outside of a town in Maryland. They soon learn the legend is all-too real as they find themselves lost in the woods, slowly losing their sanity and harassed by a mysterious off-screen force.
The Blair Witch Project famously was thought to be real for a time after its release, and it’s easy to see why. The fact that the main cast aren’t trained actors and were really terrorized in the woods by the impromptu horror helps lend an air of legitimacy to their horrified reactions. With purposefully amateur camerawork, excusably fuzzy footage, and only an empty wooded location for the majority of the action, it’s easy to see why the film was only $60,000 to make, yet it still punches far above its budget with an enduring legacy.
9
The Evil Dead
Kicked off an iconic franchise
Perhaps the most overlooked film in Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead franchise is actually the very first entry, simply titled The Evil Dead. The movie often gets unfairly passed over in relevancy due to the sequel essentially being a better remake of it, but it’s still the first showing of Burce Campbell as Ash Williams taking on the horrific Deadites, who are resurrected after him and his girlfriend inadvertently summon them to the mortal plane. What follows is a maddeningly gory showcase of all kinds of nightmarish torture.
The Evil Dead sees Sam Raimi pioneer his zooming, flying camerawork meant to be from the Deadites’ perspective, born out of necessity as the film needed to fill time with spooky encounters without having any more room in the budget for special effects. Raimi wrings every meager drop out of a budget of no more than $500,000, if that, with daring practical effects and giving chances to then-unknown talent. Considering the iconic franchise it spawned, it’s safe to say that every dollar was well-spent.
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Saw
Forged gold from its limitations
In some cases, iconic horror movies only exist because of the budgetary constraints they were working under in the first place. The expansive Saw film series began with a single movie of the same name, which laid the groundwork for the Jigsaw Killer to menace audiences for years to come. The story concerns two of the sick game master’s latest victims as they’re trapped in a bathroom and made to commit unspeakable acts for a chance at survival.
The majority of Saw takes place in a single room, something that was born out of necessity due to the film’s relatively small million-dollar price tag. It may sound expensive, but for a film featuring recognizable talent like Danny Glover and Cary Elwes, it wasn’t much to forge elaborate traps with as later films in the series today. Saw essentially invented a whole new species of slasher villain while subsisting on a relatively lean production cost that was mostly absorbed by its star power.
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The Night Of The Living Dead
Began the enduring zombie craze
Though different subgenres of horror may come and go over the years, zombies seem to be an enduring staple. The shuffling undead hordes may wax and wane in popularity, but some version of them always seems to persist in pop culture, refusing to completely die off in relevancy. That might never have been the case if it weren’t for George A. Romero’s The Night of the Living Dead, arguably the first true zombie movie that popularized the classic decaying monsters audiences know and love today.
The plot concerns a group of survivors who endure a horde of zombies descending upon their fortified house, laying the foundation for many classic tropes zombie fans celebrate to this day. Made for only around $114,000 in 1968, translating to just under a million in today’s money, the singular location, black-and-white cinematography, and modest pacing all make the cheap production work for the story. Few horror films leave as big a legacy for the cost they were created as The Night of the Living Dead.
6
Get Out
Proves that lean horror filmmaking isn’t a thing of the past
Notably, The Night of the Living Dead broke boundaries by featuring an African American protagonist, but no one would revolutionize Black horror quite like Jordan Peele did with Get Out. Today, Peele’s horror movies are perhaps the most famous thing about him, but at the time of Get Out’s release, he was still best known for being one half of the brilliant sketch comedy duo Key & Peele. Get Out centers on a Black photographer who goes to visit his white girlfriend’s affluent family in the suburbs for the first time, only to uncover a sinister secret.
With a relatively low cost for a blockbuster of 4.5 million, Get Out relied a lot on its direction, writing, and sense of natural tension as a big fear factor rather than dramatic special effects or setpieces. Luckily, Jordan Peele is able to dole out each of these elements with astonishing mastery, later put to good use in his other horror films. Without Get Out, it’s hard to say that other serious Black horror films like Sinners or the Candyman remake would have ever been given a chance.
5
Halloween
Hard to match in terms of influence-per-dollar
Some horror movies might be cheap for a blockbuster or a studio production, but none of them embody true scrappy filmmaking quite like John Carpenter’s Halloween. Giving birth to a long-running cinematic franchise, Halloween marks the first appearance of the masked murderer Michael Myers, a seemingly normal child from a small suburban town who becomes an unspeaking, remorseless killer. Breaking out of the mental institution he’s imprisoned in, Myers sets out on a new killing spree.
The impact that the original Halloween has had on pop culture is undeniable, with Michael Myers becoming one of the most iconic masked slasher villains ever. That makes it all the more impressive that Carpenter made the film for only $300,000, just over one million adjusted for inflation. With that small start, the film was able to make 70 million dollars worldwide and change the landscape of slasher movies forever.
4
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Pushed the envelope with blood and guts
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Halloween was far from the only small-budget slasher flick from the 70s to leave a big pop culture impact with its masked villain. Enter The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, still a spine-chilling horror film that has generated its own retinue of Texas Chainsaw sequels and spin-offs. The movie concerns a group of friends who find themselves face-to-face with a family of cannibalistic murderers in rural Texas while on an ill-fated road trip.
The level of violence depicted in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre forever increased the amount of gore similar films could get away with, harnessing both controversy and acclaim to warrant lasting pop culture relevancy. Made for no more than $140,000 in 1973, translating to only around $700,000 today, it’s astonishing that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre looks as good as it does. Firmly establishing slasher tropes that were only roughly formed by previous films, the legacy of the nauseating gore isn’t one to scoff at.
3
Paranormal Activity
Revitalized the haunted house
The Blair Witch Project may have laid the foundations for the found-footage horror genre, but no series brought it into the modern age quite like Paranormal Activity. The classic haunted house set-up is iterated upon here with a family that tries to capture the various supernatural phenomena they observe happening around their house with a series of cameras. Upon reviewing the footage, it turns out that their fears are all too justified.
Made for an astonishingly measly $15,000, Paranormal Activity has some of the most influence-per-dollar of any horror movie in creation. Not only did it spawn a litany of sequels in its own right, but it had a measurable effect on the style of every modern haunted house or found-footage horror film to come after it. With purposefully homemade-looking filmmaking and a single central location, the real genius of the film is in its budget-friendly script.
2
Psycho
Gave birth to the modern slasher
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Classics like Halloween or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre may have totally changed the landscape of slasher films on impressively small budgets, but they likely owe their existence to Psycho. Easily the most famous of suspense master Alfred Hitchcock’s films, Psycho tells the story of one Norman Bates, on the surface a friendly, if socially awkward, proprietor of his family’s hotel. However, Norman Bates is soon revealed to have an infamous appetite for the murder of young women, hinting at a deep-seated psychosis centering around his mother.
Without Psycho, it’s hard to say that the modern slasher movie would even exist, with the infamous shower scene striking a chord with audiences that has endlessly been recaptured since. For a Hitchcock movie, the film had quite a tight budget of around $800,000 in 1960, representing about 7 million dollars in today’s money. Compared to the priceless return on investment the film has had as both Hitchcock’s highest-grossing feature and as a pop culture icon, Psycho‘s production cost seems like a downright steal.
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A Nightmare On Elm Street
Changed the rules on scary movies
A Nightmare on Elm Street is a film whose effects are still felt in horror movies today, not just in slasher films, but across the whole genre. This film sees the rise of yet another famous blade-wearing slasher villain, Freddy Krueger, a former sexual predator who was burned alive for his crimes by a cadre of angry parents. Freddy returns to literally haunt the dreams of a new batch of high school students in his sleepy hometown, hunting them with absurd supernatural powers.
The rules and unique threat of Freddy’s dream-invading powers can still be seen in every horror film that features a special gimmick with its villain, from the sound-sensitive monsters of A Quiet Place to the sexually transmitted curse of It Follows. Even beyond that legacy, A Nightmare on Elm Street forever changed the face of moviemaking by being Johnny Depp’s first starring role, essentially responsible for the career of a staple Hollywood star. It’s amazing that a low-budget horror movie made for only million dollars was able to have such an influence.
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