October Offers New Movie Releases

October has been a great month for film: Taylor Swift’s concert film of her Eras tour, the long-awaited Five Nights at Freddy’s, and the film adaptation of Killers of the Flower Moon, based on the book by David Grann. All three films have played a huge role in attracting people to the movies as of late, with The Eras Tour opening with $92.8 million, FNAF opening with $78 million, and Killers opening with $46.6 million.  The Eras Tour, the most profitable of the three, was exciting for Swifties, yet unexciting for cinema workers; with bracelet trading and fun costumes galore, Swifties flocked to the theaters. 

“My theater was pretty chill… not super loud,” junior Abigail Allman said.  She acknowledges that this is an uncommon experience for Eras Tour attendees.

For many, the film posed as an alternative to buying tickets to the actual concert. 

“It’s a great opportunity for people who didn’t necessarily have the funds or opportunity to see her live,” junior Heidi Nicholas said.

The tickets to Taylor’s tour have been infamously expensive, some tickets ranging in the tens of thousands, so a movie ticket (priced at $19.89, a nod to Taylor’s album originally produced in 2014) is a drop in the bucket comparatively.  Five Nights at Freddy’s, which is based on the game series of the same name, has been long anticipated by fans who have heard rumors of the movie’s production for years. Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to the hype for many. With a star-studded cast including The Hunger Games’s Josh Hutcherson and Scream’s Matthew Lillard, the movie may have fallen short of its promising cast.

“Honestly, it didn’t really live up to expectations, but I don’t hate it,” junior and longtime FNAF fan Mark Sifuentes said. “I overall enjoyed it but I wish it stuck more to the lore.”

Despite many fans’ disappointment, it did phenomenally at the box office, replacing the 2018 movie Halloween as Blumhouse’s most profitable opening weekend.

Unlike FNAF and The Eras Tour, Martin Scorsese’s drama Killers of the Flower Moon did surprisingly badly at the box office, even attracting heat from Avengers’s director, Joe Russo. The box office failure could be due to the nature of the movie, as it is a long (3 hours and 26 minutes) historical drama– not very appealing to the masses. In spite of this, the movie is receiving high critical acclaim with a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 4.3 / 5 on Letterboxd.  All three films have received love worldwide from fans, despite what critics or box office records show.

“The movies might attract different audiences, but the love for film is shared between them,” junior and movie lover Jake Touchstone said.