Horror is dead. Just kidding.

Paramount Pictures hoped to avoid the October clutter and catch post-Halloween audiences with Overlord, their WW II-themed horror film from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot. The Julius Avery-directed film was riding high off positive reviews out of this past September’s Fantastic Fest, but couldn’t connect with general audiences as it barely topped $10M in its opening weekend. (It could have been worse – Sony’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web: A New Dragon Tattoo Story only took in $8M.) With a reported budget of $38M, it added another $9M overseas for a global take of $19M. It needs at least $125-150M worldwide to break even. Unless China comes through in spades, chalk this one up as a flop.

There’s a bit of a parallel between Overlord‘s failure to draw in an audience and that of Fox’s The Predator, both films that went for brawn over brains, delivering nonstop action and buckets of fun. While the latter may not have had the full support of the community, Overlord appeared to draw strong positive responses from horror fans across social media platforms and here on Bloody Disgusting. From phenomenal character development to wicked, gross-out effects, Overlord delivered a perfect hybrid between the original Predator, Inglourious Basterds and Re-Animator.

It appears that Paramount sold us horror fans, but missed out on the general public – could they have marketed this as a World War II thriller as opposed to that of horror? It’s quite possible trying to sell both audiences bit the studio in the ass. No matter, Overlord is one of the most entertaining genre films of the year and we highly recommend seeing it.