Horror Movie Statistics:150+ Checked Figures on Box Office, Lost Films and Fans (2026)

What Are the Highest-Grossing Horror Movies?

It (2017) is the highest-grossing horror movie of all time, with $704.1M worldwide, according to The Numbers. 7 of the 25 biggest horror releases came out in 2025 or 2026, led by Obsession (2026) at $521.3M, which is still in theaters.

How we built this list: we gathered candidates from Wikipedia's ranking, then checked each film's own page on The Numbers. A film counts if The Numbers labels it Horror. Figures were checked on October 28, 2026; films still in theaters keep earning.

Easy to misread: other lists differ because they count other films as horror or use another box office tracker, so some show a higher total for It (2017). These films are often called horror, but The Numbers files them elsewhere:

Which Horror Movies Made the Most for Their Budget?

Obsession (2026) earned 521.3 times its $1,000,000 budget worldwide, according to The Numbers, and it is still in theaters. Among films that have finished their runs, Paranormal Activity (2009) leads with 431.5 times its $450,000 budget. The Blair Witch Project (1999) earned 413.8 times its $600,000 budget. Get Out (2017), often called horror's biggest return, earned 56.3 times its $4.5 million budget.

Budgets are the production budgets The Numbers reports. They don't include marketing.

How Many Silent Films Are Lost?

70% of American silent feature films are completely lost, the Library of Congress reported in 2013. Of the 10,919 American silent features released from 1912 to 1929, only 14% (about 1,575 titles) exist in their original format.

Horror's most famous loss is Lon Chaney's London After Midnight (1927), which the Library of Congress calls the "holy grail" of lost film. Read more in our guide to lost horror movies.

Easy to misread: you'll often see 75% or 90%. The Library's own 2013 study says 70%. An older Library page says "fewer than 20%" of American silent films survive in complete form, and that half of American films made before 1950 no longer exist.

How Many Horror Movies Are in the National Film Registry?

39 of the 925 films in the Library of Congress's National Film Registry are horror by HorroRated's count, about 4.2%. The Library's own descriptions call 17 of them horror. By the decade they were added: 9 in the 1990s, 13 in the 2000s, 10 in the 2010s and 7 so far in the 2020s. The newest film on our list is The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993).

Easy to misread: the Library labels horror unevenly. Its brief descriptions don't use the word for Frankenstein, Dracula, Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, Jaws or The Shining, and its catalog files Frankenstein (1931) under "monster films". So we show both counts. Ours also includes horror comedies and musicals (Ghostbusters, The Rocky Horror Picture Show), sci-fi horror and gothic thrillers (Rebecca, Gaslight).

When Do Classic Horror Movies Enter the Public Domain?

Frankenstein and Dracula, both from 1931, enter the US public domain on January 1, 2027. US films published from 1931 on are protected for 95 years, through the end of that year, according to Cornell University Library's copyright chart.

Night of the Living Dead (1968) has been public domain from the start. Its registration was "cancelled because it was published pre-1978 without a copyright notice," the Library of Congress catalog record says.

Easy to misread: only each film's own new material becomes free. The novels Frankenstein and Dracula were already public domain. What 1931 adds is the films themselves, including the look of Universal's monster, which first appeared in that film. Later sequels and redesigns stay protected, trademarks are a separate law, and other countries use different terms. Dates assume the film carried a copyright notice and any required renewal. When a copyright date and a release date differ, the earlier date controls, as Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain explains.

What Does Research Say About Horror Fans?

Horror fans showed greater resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic in a 2021 study of 310 people, but a 2026 study of 235 students in Lebanon found no such link. Other studies measured what happens in the body: enjoyment peaks at a "just right" level of fear, and going with friends raises arousal.

Easy to misread: these are small studies, and most show links, not causes. For the bigger picture, see why people like horror movies.

How Many Horror Films Were Banned as Video Nasties?

72 videos appeared on the UK's "video nasties" list, and 39of them were successfully prosecuted, according to the BFI. The list came from the Director of Public Prosecutions, who named videos he believed might break the Obscene Publications Act. Video recorders had reached the UK in 1978with no law on what could be sold. The Video Recordings Act 1984 required every video to be rated, and from 1985 the BBFC rated them all.

The new rules reached beyond the list. After the BBFC decided that even an 18 certificate wasn't right for home viewing, The Exorcist (1973) was removed from UK video shelves at the start of 1988 and stayed unavailable for11 years.

Easy to misread: 72 counts every title that ever appeared on the list, which the BFI describes as "ever-changing".

Where Are Horror Movies Filmed and Set?

Canada stands in for America: 62 titles in HorroRated's archive were filmed in Canada, but only 3 are set there. Of the Canada-filmed titles with a known setting, 22 of 28 are set in the United States, including The Changeling (1980), Silent Hill (2006), American Psycho (2000). California leads both lists, with 74 titles filmed there and 51 set there.

Our data: from HorroRated's Atlas of Dread,388 archive titles with a documented filming or story location, from Wikidata and our own research (how it's researched). Each title counts once per place. These describe our archive, not every horror film, and they update with the Atlas.

Where Can You Stream Horror Movies?

Tubi carries more of HorroRated's archive than any other US streaming service, with 128 titles, and 252 archive titles are free to watch with ads somewhere. The counts below update every week.

Our data: current US availability for HorroRated's archive, from JustWatch via TMDB. See every list on where to stream horror.

Horror Myths vs. What the Source Says

Some of the most repeated horror numbers don't match their sources. Each claim below is labeled by what's wrong with it: outdated, wrong, misattributed (credited to the wrong company), misdefined (depends on what's counted), resting on a weak source, or overstated.

What Do These Horror Numbers Add Up To?

Horror is in a big-hit era: many of its all-time top earners came out in the last two years. Its history is far more fragile: most of the silent era is gone, and the sound-era classics that survived are now passing into the public domain, starting with Frankenstein and Dracula. The most-shared horror numbers are often the least reliable, so check the source before you repeat one.

How We Checked These Numbers

Every figure on this page was checked on the page or document of the publisher that produced it, on October 28, 2026. We prefer government, university and peer-reviewed sources. Box office figures come from the tracker that collected them. We don't cite stats roundup sites, paywalled summaries or AI-written lists, and we don't use Wikipedia as a final source.

• Checked figures link to their source. Our research notes keep the exact wording, where it appears and the date checked.
• HorroRated's own counts (filming locations and streaming) come from our archive and are recalculated every time the site rebuilds.
• Genre labels are the source's own (The Numbers for box office, the Library of Congress for its descriptions), except where we say "by HorroRated's count". Our own reviews and scores are explained in how we rate.

What we left out

• Horror's share of the US box office by year. The Numbers removed its free genre history pages in 2026, and we found no live primary source with the full series.
• Audience percentages such as “60% of horror fans are women” or “55% of horror viewers are 18 to 34”. None traced to a primary source.
• “72% of people watch a horror movie every six months”. A 2020 University of Turku press release says it, but doesn't give the survey's size.
• The story that the last print of London After Midnight burned in a 1965 vault fire. We couldn't check it at a primary source.
• Halloween spending. It returns with the National Retail Federation's new survey, usually published each September.

Spotted a number that's wrong or out of date? Tell us

Sources

Each source below was checked on October 28, 2026. Box office figures link to each film's own page on The Numbers in the tables above.