Editorials
From Niche to Mainstream: How A24 Created a Unique Market for Transgressive Horror
Horror has long been referred to as one of the most profitable genres in all of fiction – film and literature counting. Literature helped bring in some of the most renowned figures in horror, from H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe to modern writers like Stephen King and Junji Ito. Their works – old and new – are highly regarded in the modern pop culture climate we live in today, which has also seen the birth of timeless works of horror in film.
Wes Craven, George Romero, Ridley Scott, Alfred Hitchcock, John Carpenter, and Guillermo del Toro are but a few of the countless figures within the horror genre that have contributed to horror’s rise in the film industry and the genre has consistently turned a nice profit in sales thanks to their mostly cheap productions and strong connections with thrill-seeking audiences. People love a good scare and even if some never quite get one, they’re willing to give it a try with the countless horror offerings each year.
But when horror rises to the level that it has, sub-genres within horror manifest, leading to horror being viewed as a genre with different levels to it. There’s “elevated” horror (more of a societal observation than an actual sub-genre, but worth mentioning) like The Silence of the Lambs, The Exorcist, The Sixth Sense, Black Swan, and Get Out. “Elevated horror” is often pointed out through aspects such as an overly serious tone, almost akin to a drama rather than full-on horror, and loud and emotional performances from the cast not so much embracing the horror, but more so going “above it”, hardly allowing for anything “silly” to come through.
These “elevated” horror films can sometimes cross over with blockbuster horror like the It franchise and the Conjuring universe, which are both examples of serious scares and dramatic acting blending with a more playful tone, akin to a horror event. This blend often appeals strongly to general audiences who tend to recognize certain qualities from major blockbusters in these respective horror films, leading the blockbuster horror genre to commonly produce franchises and sequels of the same cloth and formula.
Away from those two is the world of B-horror, which contains a pulpier atmosphere and plot and is often seen as low budget fare that doesn’t quite steer into complete arthouse, but is too DIY to be considered a blockbuster; an example being the Sharknado series. Despite those limitations, B-horror has still amassed a large following, partially thanks to the filmmakers placing their emphasis on shock, awe, and entertainment over “serious horror”. The entire history regarding B horror is a full article for another day, but to save time, these movies aren’t likely to ever receive Oscar glory, but their popularity remains steadfast with midnight audiences and gorehounds looking for a fun fix.
Despite their vastly different markets within the horror genre, they’ve all found loyal audiences over the years, forming followings that have helped dictate exactly what kind of movies they want to see – a classic supply and demand situation. B-movies aren’t popular with “arthouse” audiences, but people craving a pulpy time at the theater will happily fill that void and the inverse is true with B movie audiences tending to stray away from “intelligent” horror, leaving general moviegoers to fill that void instead. Horror blockbusters try to have the best of both worlds, but their strongest audience is one of casual moviegoers, a strong market on its own.
But what about the horror movies that don’t necessarily fit in any of those categories? The cavalcade of horror films that are not quite shlocky enough to be considered B-horror, not appealing enough to be blockbusters, and a little too off-center and weird to be part of the “elevated horror” category? Arthouse horror, as it’s commonly called, finds itself at a strange impasse where it’s difficult to see exactly what kind of audience the subgenre is appealing to. Exactly how can arthouse films turn over a profit while remaining true to the filmmakers’ intent?
A24 is the answer that we didn’t have a decade ago.
Distributing its first film back in 2013, A24 has always existed as the “voice of the indies” company that it’s viewed as today. Films like Spring Breakers, The Spectacular Now, and The Bling Ring are the types of films that can be difficult to buy the rights for if the intention is to turn over a profit in release. Sure, they’re not terribly expensive, but how exactly would these films be promoted to a wider audience? A24 took charge and offered themselves as a viable alternative to a big studio release that likely would’ve tanked the film upon release.
Instead, the three films have managed to stay in the limelight even today thanks to A24’s continued support for the films and their respective cult followings. A24 played up the idea of these movies not being of the “norm” and considering the star power of the likes of Emma Watson, James Franco, Selena Gomez, and Vanessa Hudgens was present to bring more eyes to the projects, A24 took advantage in advertising these films as the types where your potential favorites act in something never-before-seen.
This same tactic was employed with the immense popularity of Scarlett Johansson in 2014 when the Oscar-nominated star joined A24’s filmography a year after its distribution debut to deliver us the atmospheric horror-drama, Under the Skin. A slow and immensely disturbing story about a literal man-killer, Under the Skin plays into that same “never before seen” feeling, touting its popular lead actress as the draw to a film that’s seemingly unlike anything she has ever done and grabbing the attention of more casual moviegoers.
Under the Skin still wasn’t a box office success and for the first few years of its inception, A24 still weren’t considered box office juggernauts of any kind. Their film catalog was niche and perhaps too off-center for most moviegoers and even the most critically acclaimed of the bunch couldn’t find immense success right away. Even the first few films from A24 mentioned earlier didn’t light up the box office, with Spring Breakers being the most financially successful film at about $31 million worldwide. There was notoriety, but not much else to prop the company up as THE best alternative for art house horror and indies.
2015 represented an important milestone year for A24, becoming the year where not one, not two, but three of A24’s most successful films walked away with an Oscar at the next year’s ceremony. Room earned Brie Larson a Best Actress win, Amy snagged the Best Documentary Feature award, and Alex Garland’s science fiction thriller, Ex Machina, nabbed the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. The latter is by far the most interesting case purely for the fact that it plays out like a weird futuristic horror-thriller, the likes that are bound to be snubbed by both major awards and big distribution companies.
Ex Machina’s surprising Visual Effects win jumpstarted the sort of standards that many people would eventually hold A24 up to in the future. Garland’s sci-fi thriller proved pivotal in A24’s eventual reputation as the place to go for weird and niche films and the very next year, Robert Eggers’ The Witch broke new ground for the company, becoming the highest grossing film in their entire catalog at the time with over $40 million earned worldwide.
Best of all? The movie that broke box office milestones for A24 was a rich, complex, and incredibly inaccessible horror film that dove into the deep end of its setting, with its time period accurate language, lack of “high tension thrills”, and cinematography that used natural lighting to coat the film’s aesthetics in gray, white, and black. There’s no telling just how disastrous it could’ve been had a larger company acquired the film and heavily edited it to appeal to a wider audience and while that could be somewhat true for A24, it seemed clearer than ever that A24 was now becoming the place to go to if you wanted to check out horror films that were different and/or provocative.
The success of The Witch and Ex Machina simultaneously proved that not only is A24 a feasible alternative choice for indies and arthouse films to even be released, but that a market actually exists for these movies. A24 certainly wasn’t the first distribution company to take a chance on arthouse horror films, but the past decade has seen a rise in popularity and success for smaller and more artsy horror films. In 2017, only a year after The Witch, Trey Edward Shults broke out with his incredibly divisive horror-drama, It Comes At Night, two years after his feature-length debut, Krisha, was also released by A24.
Shults isn’t the only filmmaker to benefit from A24’s new market for transgressive horror, as directors like Robert Eggers, Ari Aster with both Hereditary and Midsommar, Yorgos Lanthimos, Alex Garland, The Daniels, Gaspar Noe, Claire Denis, Kevin Smith, and more have had some of their latest (and weirdest) films distributed through A24, increasing their profiles as the company continues to build its stock with more Oscar wins and box office success.
It isn’t a guarantee that an A24 horror film will automatically be successful as a result, but the company’s profile has undergone several new stages of popularity, now being highly touted as one of the most reliable film companies for “non-mainstream” features. But with their growing popularity, it’s difficult to even call them an “indie” company now, which may sound like an insult, but this new stage for A24 has put even more eyes on their film catalog than ever before.
With this rise in popularity, A24 has now found its market for their slate of films. Art house crowds may not rival that of the MCU fandom, but their vocal support for A24 films have sent waves throughout the public eye, as films like Hereditary, Midsommar, and most recently The Lighthouse went on to experience the kind of success that might’ve not been possible if released through another distribution company.
A black-and-white film like The Lighthouse, spoken in a near-incomprehensible dialect and filled to the brim with long and garbled monologues about lobsters, timber, and fart fatigue, was as popular as it was not only because A24 already made Robert Eggers a recognizable name with arthouse horror fans, but the company made strides in touting the film as one of their “marquee” releases of 2019. If a company has no faith in its film, it shows, and A24 is no exception with some releases, but the films it does tout are the very type that would be swept under the rug regardless by most bigger studios.
A24, in the midst of this horror blockbuster boom in the 21st century and specifically in the past decade, has managed to carve out a spot in the horror market by distancing itself from the trappings of large studio-mandated film productions and appealing to its own niche audience interested in arthouse projects. Studios like IFC Midnight and Neon have led by similar strategies, but A24’s gradual rise in popularity helped transform the tactic into something mainstream.
Trailers with the A24 logo now have their own set of expectations as to what we can expect, which normally boils down to something a little weird and perhaps unappealing. Either way, A24 has slowly progressed into becoming a relatively popular term in the film industry. They may not be a household name, but the possibility exists with the studio’s strong slate of films coming in the future, including their next horror release by director Rose Glass, Saint Maud.
While Saint Maud is currently postponed at the time of this writing thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, it was slated to be A24’s next big horror release in the vein of Hereditary and Midsommar, building the studio’s catalog of films and contributing to the expanding field of arthouse/indie horror films being granted time in the limelight with other big releases. It’s a risky strategy, but A24 has built up enough of a reputation to release their films, specifically their horror selection, against mainstream events, a la Midsommar’s release against Spider-Man: Far from Home. The Lighthouse managed to gross nearly $20 million despite being released in a mostly limited format against the likes of Jojo Rabbit and billion-dollar society flick, Joker.
A24, for all their faults regarding their treatment of some of their smaller and more obscure films, have practically nailed their strategy for their art horror films, such as their humorous and often quirky marketing on social media, unique merchandising, and an overall laid back vibe that drastically contrasts the bot-like marketing present in films from larger companies. A regular studio asking you to watch their trailer pales in comparison to A24’s cheeky wording with their marketing. Even if the film seems destined to fail at the box office, there’s extra effort on the marketing team’s behalf to go down swinging. And this strategy has helped endear the company, and now a good chunk of its films, to a wider general audience.
Times may seem strange and unclear for now, but the magic of movies will always be there to help distract and for audiences that crave more off-kilter content, A24 has now built a brand capitalizing on the appeal of arthouse/indie films to success. Whether A24 will keep playing to their strengths or expand into new horizons in the future will remain to be seen, but the budding horror filmmakers chipping away at their respective horror stories may only be a few calls away from having their unfiltered vision be spread on a potentially grander scale with the art horror market A24 has popularized.
Of the three films that make up the Diabolical Trinity of classic religious horror films—Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and The Omen (1976)—The Omen is the most purely entertaining.
While Rosemary’s Baby digs into the societal shifts of the 60s and The Exorcist explores spiritual tensions between faith and doubt in an ever-shifting world, The Omen seems most interested in just telling a thrilling story. It achieves this by blending two major trends of the 1970s, the devil movie and the paranoid thriller, into one crackling adventure yarn. In the process, The Omen has sparked fear and curiosity about what could happen in the “end times” if such events are to occur.
After seeing The Exorcist, producer Harvey Bernhard contacted writer David Seltzer and said something along the lines of, “Hey, write me one of those.” Seltzer, having never read the Bible, thought it would be an interesting challenge, so, according to various interviews, he read the Bible and several commentaries in search of a story. Then he stumbled upon a passage in the book of Revelation, the image of a great Beast rising out of the sea, that sparked his imagination. In the commentaries, he found that the sea represented politics in some interpretations of the text, and he began building his story on that foundation.
Seltzer has told this story often, and I am inclined to believe him. However, from there, much of the theological-sounding lore of The Omen was created purely by Seltzer. Many of the ideas surrounding The Antichrist in the film appear to be drawn much more from the pop-eschatology sensation of the 1970s, The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay, than any Biblical source.
Lindsay’s book was the bestselling nonfiction book of the 1970s and re-popularized views of the “last days” that had been dying along with fundamentalism for decades, namely Dispensationalism, Millennialism, and the Pre-Tribulation Rapture. In dispensationalism, history is broken into several epochs of time (or dispensations) that culminate in the return of Christ and his thousand-year (millennial) reign.
Before this return, a seven-year Tribulation will occur in which the Antichrist comes to power and persecutes all who oppose him, culminating in a battle between the forces of good and evil at the valley of Megiddo, usually called Armageddon. Of course, in this worldview, the true believers in Jesus will be lifted out, or raptured, before all this takes place. Since the publication and popularity of The Late Great Planet Earth, this has been the prominent belief in Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christian circles, though Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestant denominations largely reject it.
Lindsay also did something unique that had not been the case even in dispensationalist circles before him—he posited that the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948 started the countdown to Armageddon. Fans of the film will immediately realize where Seltzer ran with this idea in the first line of the poem created for the movie: “When the Jews return to Zion…”
Damien Thorn and the Creation of Horror’s “Innocent Villain”
Seltzer’s next inspiration focused on the idea of the Antichrist as a child, what he would call the film’s “innocent villain.” In watching The Omen, it is readily apparent that Damien Thorn (Harvey Stephens) does not really do anything evil beyond a bit of normal kid mischief. Even the moment in which Damien knocks Kathy Thorn (Lee Remick) over a second-floor railing can be read as an accident orchestrated by Damien’s diabolically connected nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw). The film takes this idea of the innocent villain a step further by casting Gregory Peck, best known for playing arguably the greatest father in film history, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as Damien’s earthly father, an element that greatly satisfied Seltzer.
The New Testament itself says very little about the Antichrist and certainly nothing about his childhood. In fact, the word antichrist is used twice (1 John 2:18 and 2 John 7 for the curious) and refers to groups of people, not a particular person. There is also a passage in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 in which the writer (usually attributed to Paul) discusses “The Man of Lawlessness” who will “exalt himself over everything that is called God” and “proclaim himself to be God.”
Then there is the Beast of Revelation chapter 13 with “seven heads and ten horns” that Seltzer latched onto, which has been interpreted in a multitude of ways over the centuries. Powerful people throughout history, from Charlemagne, various Popes during the Protestant Reformation era, Napoleon and Hitler, to modern politicians, including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, have all had the label placed on them by various circles. Even religious leaders like Billy Graham have not escaped being called the Antichrist.
Lindsay and modern dispensationalists are certain the Antichrist will be a 21st-century individual as they are equally certain that the Rapture, Tribulation, and return of Christ are imminent, likely within their lifetime. Many scholars and theologians, however, interpret these passages as symbolic representations of the Roman Empire and the first-century Caesars who persecuted, tortured, and murdered Christians and Jews who refused to submit to Imperial rule and worship them as gods. For example, that the Beast from the sea in Revelation has seven heads is symbolic of the famous seven mountains of Rome, with the 10 horns referring to rulers and magistrates of the Empire.
But this is all really of no matter to Seltzer and the story of The Omen. Instead of being concerned with any historical or theological accuracy, he instead built his own lore, which sends Robert Thorn and photographer Keith Jennings (David Warner) on a globetrotting investigation into the nature of the Antichrist and how to stop him. Some of this lore includes the child being born of a jackal, the reaction of animals, the protective cult that arises around Damien, the daggers of Megiddo, and maybe most interesting of all, the peculiar flaws in Jennings’s photographs that presage the ways certain individuals will die.
All these aspects are where the paranoid thrillers come in, as films like Blow Up (1966), Z (1969), The Conversation (1974), The Parallax View (1974), 3 Days of the Condor (1975), and All the President’s Men (1976) were all the rage at the time. Especially in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the idea of journalists (like Jennings) as ordinary heroes who could bring down the powerful, nefarious forces in the world was exactly what audiences craved. And what greater hidden evil force was there than the Devil? This is also why the device of the daggers of Megiddo is so important to a movie like this. If Damien is indeed the Antichrist, there must be a way to stop him, though in the Biblical text, the only power capable of destroying the Devil is God Himself.
The Mark of the Beast, 666, and the Film’s Most Famous Religious Symbolism
The piece of lore created for the movie with the most solid Biblical grounding is the Mark of the Beast. Revelation describes a mark on the forehead or hand of those who worship the Beast and his image. Again, this is symbolic language differentiating those who belong to the power of the Roman Empire and those who belong to Christ, who have the Mark of the Lamb. In Seltzer’s hands, the mark is very literal, a birthmark that is borne by not only the Antichrist but all his followers, meaning they are marked from before birth as belonging to Satan, and there is no escaping it. This is all rather distressing to the priest Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), who betrays his mark by warning Thorn about Damien and pays the price by memorably being impaled by a spire that falls from a church steeple after being struck by lightning.
Why is the mark three sixes? Again, this is drawn from a passage in Revelation that states that the Beast can be identified by calculating his number. In Biblical scholarship, this is believed to be the sum of the name of a man transferred into Hebrew numerology, a practice in which each Hebrew letter also represents a number. Using this method, the number of the name Caesar Nero, which many believe to be the most logical choice, is six hundred sixty-six. In the film and elsewhere, this number is changed to three individual sixes. According to the film, this represents the Diabolical Trinity (a designation also unique to the film) made up of Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet. That Damien carries this unique birthmark under his hair convinces Robert that the child is the Antichrist, and it’s up to him to destroy him.
Part of what makes The Omen great is its ambiguity. Damien could be the Antichrist, or he could be at the center of a series of coincidences. Director Richard Donner stated in interviews that he believed Robert Thorn had gone insane by the end of the film, which, to Donner, is the only explanation for why Thorn would attempt to kill an innocent child. However, that enigmatic smile in the final shot suggests that Damien does embody a spirit of great evil. The sequels, however, all but erase this ambiguity.
In audiences, The Omen sparked a renewed interest in the concept of the Antichrist and the dispensationalist interpretation of the end times that continues to echo throughout the last five decades. Around the time of the film’s release, even Elvis Presley was photographed brandishing a paperback copy of Seltzer’s novelization. Dispensationalist authors like Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, and John Hagee have made millions publishing books and giving lectures about the Antichrist and the end of the world.
The Legacy of The Omen, 50 Years Later
Though A Thief in the Night (1972) preceded The Omen in initial release, it gained quite a resurgence (along with the ability to create three sequels) in the wake of the popularity of The Omen and went on to scar the psyches of Evangelical children for decades. Hal Lindsay was also able to release a film version of The Late Great Planet Earth in 1978, complete with narration and a brief onscreen appearance from Orson Welles.
In the 1990s, the Left Behind series became a cultural phenomenon, spawning twelve books in the core series, a YA spinoff series, video games, and a movie series (2000-2005) starring Kirk Cameron. A bigger studio adaptation of the first book was released in 2014, starring Nicolas Cage. 20th Century Fox and The Omen got in on the renewed “end-of-the-world” vigor by releasing a remake of the original film on June 6, 2006. The franchise was revived once again in 2024 with The First Omen, which explores ideas of the Antichrist and the motivations of those in power in our current religious, social, and political context.
But despite all the sequels, spinoffs, rip-offs, remakes, and “end times” money grabs of the last 50 years, the original version of The Omen remains untouchable. Its greatest strength is that it seeks, first and foremost, to entertain. And it does so admirably.
After half a century, its influence can be felt in horror, the culture at large, and even in various faith circles. It is a testament to the power of story and film that, consciously or unconsciously, fans of The Omen and those who have never seen it alike are, to this very day, marked by the Beast.
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