Why are there so few horror movies coming out in October?

That's a question we asked last year after noticing Carrie was the only horror movie set to hit movie theaters in a Halloween-loving month that used to be swamped by scary movies. It just seemed strange that no one was taking advantage of that dearth of horror movies by releasing something -- anything -- in theaters. Several months later and we're still a bit confused about that, but now we're looking at the 2014 release calendar and wondering something different: Is April the new month of horror movies?

Here are all of the genre films hitting theaters this month:

Afflicted

Alien Abduction

Jinn

Under the Skin (It may not be a typical horror movie, but it's absolutely terrifying)

Oculus

Only Lovers Left Alive (Not outright horror, but it's got vampires, so it counts)

13 Sins

A Haunted House 2 (a spoof, but its main audience is horror fans so...)

Proxy

The Quiet Ones

That's nearly a dozen theatrical horror movies for April, and if you add in VOD releases you have noteworthy additions Stage Fright and Wolf Creek 2. Granted, the majority of those are limited releases only opening in a small number of theaters scattered around the United States, but even if all we counted were Oculus and The Quiet Ones, that's still twice as many wide releases as October got.

Considering we're such horror junkies, it is a bit hard to complain about this. It's great to have new genre films to watch all year long, we're just wondering why April, of all months, is suddenly so dense with freaky flicks. Is it because Evil Dead made a nice chunk of change around this time last year? Perhaps. Distributors do love to try to spot a trend and chase it, but we suspect the explanation is simple: it's obvious counterprogramming.

The box office has become saturated with giant blockbuster movies, and right now the big studio options are movies like Noah, Divergent and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Not everyone cares for those types of movies, though. Sure, they make giant piles of money, but we're entering a period of such blockbuster saturation that more selective audiences are opting to see whatever isn't a blockbuster movie, and if you're burned out on CGI, a small-scale horror movie is a pretty nice alternative.

That's just our theory, at least.

Oh, and if you're curious, there are currently two horror movies dated for this October: Dracula Untold and Paranormal Activity 5. The latter was slated to come out last October, though, so we're not holding our breath for it just yet. As for Dracula Untold, you can expect to get your first glimpse of that when the trailer is attached to Godzilla.

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