For as long as anyone can remember, horror has been the single most profitable genre in the industry, with low budget tales of terror comfortably turning massive profits at the box office, and few have done it better or more regularly than Paranormal Activity.
Found footage in general was both a blessing and a curse for the artform, with countless titles using it as nothing but a one-note gimmick that enabled the filmmakers to knock out a jump scare-riddled project on a shoestring budget and then sit back, relax, and watch audiences pack their local multiplex to the rafters.
While the first Paranormal Activity was a breath of fresh air when it first arrived, the formula grew stale very quickly. And yet, we kept getting new installments on an almost annual basis, all of which ended up deep in the black. Excluding straight-to-streaming sequel Next of Kin, the property is far and away the most profitable in the history of horror after earning over $890 million from theaters on combined production costs of under $30 million.
However, that doesn’t make it anywhere near the best, and it realistically shouldn’t even be part of that conversation. To put that sentiment into perspective, a Reddit thread asking if Paranormal Activity deserves to reside among the top tier of spooky IPs has generated plenty of reactions, and the top-voted comment is a simple-yet-resounding “no.”
The brand has no shortage as fans, something the numbers are there to prove hundreds of times over, but it’s a simple case of commerce triumphing over art when you look at how rapidly the law of diminishing returns set in.