10 Films That Helped Blumhouse Take Over Cinema
5. Split
Last year was a very strong, diverse year for horror movies, at both ends of the box office spectrum. Alongside the new adaptation of Stephen King's It, which was a bona fide horror blockbuster, one of the biggest genre successes was Split, which again saw Blumhouse join forces with M Night Shyamalan.
It's a strange, enjoyable thriller that features a bravura James McAvoy performance as a man with dissociative identity disorder, who kidnaps a trio of young girls in the service of one of his personalities, known only as The Beast. In true Blumhouse style, the movie was made for just $9m, but grossed in excess of $270m worldwide - 30 times its budget.
The other dimension of Split's impact comes in its divisive final scene. A cameo appearance from Bruce Willis links the characters of Split to the universe established by Shyamalan in his 2000 movie Unbreakable. The two films are due to be tied together in Glass, which will be released in 2019 and is set to be Blumhouse's first superhero movie, marking the studio's move into the biggest and most financially successful genre in cinema today.