In 2013, ten years after The Texas Chainsaw Massacre had initiated the horror remake boom, two new adaptations of significant horror titles had wide theatrical releases. On a surface level, Evil Dead and Carrie garnered similar box office revenue – worldwide totals of $97.5 million and $84.8 million, respectively – but closer analysis of their opening weekend figures reveals a disparity. Although released on a comparable number of domestic screens (3,025 and 3,127), Evil Dead took $25.8 million and opened in first place, while Carrie took only $16 million, opening in third. Overall, Evil Dead made more money domestically – fifty-six per cent of the film's revenue came from US cinemas. Carrie was more successful in international markets (fifty-eight per cent), but unsurprisingly so, since it was released in ten additional countries to Evil Dead's forty-two. Most importantly, the gap between the films’ production budgets indicates that Evil Dead, made for $17 million, would have turned a higher profit than Carrie, which had almost twice the budget at $30 million (boxofficemojo.com).

There were both commercial and critical factors that contributed to this inconsistency. Carrie's domestic release date had been pushed back considerably, from mid-March to late October, a decision that the distributor claimed had been taken in order to capitalise on the Halloween season, the prime time for horror releases (Sneider 2013). However, this seven-month delay seemed excessive, and the film's star Chloe Grace Moretz subsequently revealed to Fangoria that it was the result of reshoots to make the film ‘scarier’ (Barton 2013). Any connections between this delay and the anticipation that surrounded Evil Dead's early April release are of course speculative, but teaser trailers for both films released by their shared distributor Sony in October 2012 initiated a significantly stronger buzz for Evil Dead, which continued over the coming months through incessant early promotion, while marketing for Carrie attracted much less fanfare by comparison. Both trailers drew attention to the fact that they were remakes – Evil Dead's warned ‘evil lives again’, while Margaret White (Julianne Moore) can be heard in Carrie's trailer claiming that ‘the devil never dies’.