The Biggest Horror Movie Flops of the 2000s – MovieWeb

Horror is typically a very lucrative genre for movie studios. Compared to sweeping dramas and big-budget action movies, horror movies are relatively cheap to make. They tend to do well at the box office, too, as fans of horror seem to be a dedicated bunch. Directors like Wes Craven, Ari Aster, John Carpenter, and M. Night Shyamalan have made names for themselves by almost exclusively doing various types of horror movies.

Like all movies, horror movies are prone to the almighty dollar. Once in a while, a horror movie is so bad that the only scares it provides are scaring people away from the theaters. Whether it's due to a nonsensical plot or bad acting (or both), horror movie flops certainly have the potential to bomb at the box office too. These horror movies from the 2000s couldn't find any traction with audiences and ended up doing some truly frightful numbers.

Kim Basinger stars in Paramount Pictures' 2000 supernatural horror movie Bless the Child. The movie is based on the 1993 novel of the same name by Cathy Cash Spellman. Kim Basinger plays a woman who is raising her adopted niece, but she soon learns that the child has supernatural powers. Her niece is being sought out by a Satanic cult and displays unusual telekinetic abilities.

Bless the Child was shot in Toronto, Ontario Canada which doubles for New York City. Despite a powerhouse cast that also includes Rufus Sewell, Jimmy Smits, and Christina Ricci, the film simply couldn't get off the ground. Bless the Child received considerable negative reviews and lost about $15 million ($24.7 million today) at the box office.

Ice Cube has taken on some interesting acting roles throughout his career, but 2001's Ghosts of Mars might be his most unusual. When Earth's resources become depleted, humans establish a colony on Mars. Over 600,000 people live, work, and raise their families there while using the planet's natural resources. The only interesting part is that Ice Cube plays a convicted felon named James "Desolation" Williams, who is apparently killed in the warriors' attack.

Miners soon discover a hidden colony deep underground that has been dormant. The group is made of evil warriors who are set on taking over the bodies of their human counterparts. Ghosts of Mars is as ridiculous as it sounds. The movie only made $14 million in theaters ($22.3 million adjusted for inflation), a number that is truly out of this world. You'd be better off checking out some of Ice Cube's best movies instead.

No, FeardotCom isn't about Elon Musk's recent attempts to derail Twitter. It's about a New York City detective named Mike Reilly (Stephen Dorff) who's tasked with uncovering who is behind a series of murders linked to a mysterious website. Reilly wonders if the murders could be linked to a notorious serial killer named Alistair Pratt (Stephen Rea), a man known for abducting and torturing his victims.

One could argue that FeardotCom was doomed to fail as it opened alongside the smash hits Signs and My Big Fat Greek Wedding in 2002. FeardotCom debuted at #5 in the United States and pulled in a measly $18.9 million ($29.7 million today) worldwide against a $40 million ($62.9 million today) budget. With a painful 3% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it's safe to call FeardotCom one of Hollywood's biggest 404 errors.

Another horror box office bomb starring Stephen Dorff is 2003's Cold Creek Manor. When Copper Tilson (Dennis Quaid) moves to the countryside with his wife Leah (Sharon Stone), he's approached by a repairer named Dale (Dorff) who is looking for a job. Dale was recently released from prison but insists he's worked on the manor for several years and deserves to stay.

Tilson soon discovers that Dale is an enemy with a secret past. He knows the history of the manor and its supernatural occurrences. It's revealed that Dale killed his family, and he intends to murder Copper, Leah, and their kids as well, and drop them down a well on the farm called the Devil's Throat. Cold Creek Manor followed a ton of horror movie clichs and scored poor reviews as a result. Roger Ebert gave the movie a paltry 1.5 stars and said the movie only works if we "abandon all common sense."

RELATED: Best Dennis Quaid Performances, Ranked

By all measures, 2003's Dreamcatcher should have been a hit. The film is based on Stephen King's popular novel, and it features an all-star cast that includes Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Timothy Olyphant, and Billions star Damian Lewis. When a group of friends goes hunting in the remote wilderness, they discover a mysterious force deep in the woods. They soon realize they're dealing with aliens who are trying to use telepathy to stir up old memories and manipulate the men.

Dreamcatcher opened to largely negative reviews and only ended up making back about half of its production budget. The movie is directed by Lawrence Kasdan, who managed to make a comeback as a screenwriter after the film's box office failure. Kasdan co-wrote the Star Wars films Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens and Solo: A Star Wars Story. Needless to say, Dreamcatcher is not one of the best Stephen King movies.

Exorcist: The Beginning is a psychological horror movie that was released by Warner Bros. Pictures in 2004. In it, Stellan Skarsgard plays a former priest named Father Lankester Merrin who was forced to commit murders by Nazi Germany during WWII. He's haunted by his past and ends up renouncing his faith to try to live a peaceful life.

Exorcist: The Beginning overcame bad reviews to make a net profit of $28.1 million ($42 million today) at the box office. However, by 2004, it was clear that moviegoers were tired of The Exorcist and its various reboots and spinoffs. Exorcist: The Beginning was released in theatres in 2004 but didn't even get a proper Blu-ray release until 2015. There are currently no talks of another Exorcist remake.

In the mid-2000s, horror director M. Night Shyamalan was at the height of his game. He was on a roll with movies like The Sixth Sense, Signs, and The Village, and there was a ton of hype around his 2006 movie Lady in the Water. The movie focuses on a man named Cleveland Heap (Paul Giamatti) who rescues a young woman (Bryce Dallas Howard), only to find that she's a character from a fairytale-like world with a hidden secret.

Lady in the Water underperformed at the box office and currently holds a brutal 25% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It was considered to be Shyamalan's first flop, and he hasn't really recovered with a big hit since then. Critics panned the film's convoluted and silly plot and thought it was corny that Shyamalan gave himself a pretty big role in the movie.

RELATED: Every M. Night Shyamalan Movie, Ranked

In the mid-2000s, Hollywood superstar Nicolas Cage found himself in debt, and he was forced to make some questionable acting choices to get out of it. 2006's The Wicker Man was certainly one of those choices. The movie is a remake of the 1873 British film of the same name. Cage plays police officer Edward Mallus who investigates the case of a missing child. He travels to a remote island only to find that a Satanic cult lives there. The cult performs rituals similar to the Salem witch trials and Mallus infiltrates them to find out where the missing child is.

The Wicker Man didn't quite make back its production budget at the box office. Richard Roeper and guest host Aisha Tyler gave the movie two thumbs down, stating that the film was "entertainingly bad."' Oddly, there's a Wicker Man reboot coming to Netflix that will attempt to correct the failures of the disastrous movie.

Quentin Tarantino's 2007 movie Grindhouse is a lot of things. It's a horror film, an action movie, and a pulp serial favorite, all mixed together. Grindhouse is literally two movies blended into one, with an intermission between them. The first movie is called Planet Terror, and it's the more straight-up horror movie of the two. The second is called Death Proof, and it stars Kurt Russell as a guy who drives around killing people with his car.

Compared to Tarantino's previous movies, Grindhouse was a bit of a letdown. The film was very high-concept and many viewers probably didn't understand that Tarantino was trying to create a movie reminiscent of the old exploitation double features of the 1950s. Grindhouse lost upwards of $40 million ($56.2 million today) at the box office, and Tarantino himself has some theories about why the movie failed.

In I Know Who Killed Me, Lindsay Lohan stars as a girl named Aubrey Fleming who goes missing in a suburb called New Salem. She's kidnapped by a sadistic killer and placed bound and gagged on an operating table. A parallel story involves a motorist finding a young woman on the side of the road who bears a striking resemblance to Aubrey. The audience soon learns that Aubrey's version of the events may not be exactly as it happened.

I Know Who Killed Me fell flat on its face upon its release in 2007, making less than $10 million ($14 adjusted for inflation). Critics found Lohan's performance to be boring and uninspired, especially compared to her earlier comedy films. The movie was short on thrills, jump scares, and twists, making it one of the more forgettable entries in Lohan's lengthy film career.

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The Biggest Horror Movie Flops of the 2000s - MovieWeb