In an age of corporate marketing, movie audiences, more than ever, are divided into tidy demographic slivers, even if some of the slivers are pretty big (e.g., teenage fanboys). One demo that has received increasing attention from the industry over the last decade is the faith-based audience: evangelicals and other Christians. Hollywood first saw the light of their box-office clout in 2004, when Mel Gibsonâ??s â??The Passion of the Christâ? became the â??Star Warsâ? of faith-based cinema. Ever since then, though, evangelicals have been targeted almost exclusively with painstakingly wholesome message movies â?? dramas of feel-good middle-class holiness like â??Heaven Is for Real,â? â??Godâ??s Not Dead,â? â??War Room,â? and the recent sick-child-healed-by-God drama â??Miracles From Heaven,â? starring Jennifer Garner, which had a total domestic gross of $91 million. At their best, these movies exert a disarmingly virtuous and chaste appeal; at their worst, they edge into the pious and the treacly. Good or bad, theyâ??re a genre unto themselves, and they have fed a perception of the faith-based audience as G-rated pursuers of storybook uplift.
We do not, however, think of evangelical moviegoers as seekers out of grisly, flesh-ripping horror and ghostly figures rising from the dead (well, okay, except for â??The Passion of the Christâ?). We donâ??t think of them as fans of over-the-top fright films. But maybe we should, given that the most popular faith-based drama of the summer season so far is â??The Conjuring 2.â?
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