What social listening can tell us about the films release, and the resurgence of interest in horror in mainstream culture.

Over the first weekend in the US it took a box office of $21,652,560: massive for an ‘indie’ horror movie. But what did people actually think, and what does the film’s popularity tell us about horror in 2025 and beyond? On Christmas Day in the US and New Years Day in the UK, Dave Eggers latest period spectacular, a retelling of Nosferatu opened to critical acclaim.

There were 940k mentions of Nosferatu or #Nosferatu across social between December 1st - January 31st. These posts created over 216 Million engagements. The majority of the mentions still happened on Twitter, but as the next slide shows TikTok was (again!) home to the vast majority of engagements. Newcomer Bluesky is marking itself out as a potential film twitter replacement. It was the third most popular platform by volume of mentions, with the the average post generating 10 engagements. Twitter posts generated 40 engagements on average, but Twitter has 620 million more users than Bluesky so.... Reddit was home to the second highest volume of mentions and shows how many marketers need to stop sleeping on this platform.

I know that marketing posts always say engagement on TikTok is down, but I think that might be due to the content being posted. Every single social listening analysis I run shows TikTok blowing everything else away in terms of engagement. Look at the TikTok engagements Vs. the Instagram engagements. The data is pretty clear.

The audience that tagged their gender were slightly more male than female. They were mostly 25-34. There was less gender disparity in the under 24 audience. Unknown 69.4% Male 18.4% Female 12.2% Male Female 0 200 400 600 800 1000 60 45-59 35-44 25-34 18-24 <18 TL:DR Younger Gen Z girls like horror as much as their male counterparts.

We know that Reddit was a key platform, but which subreddits were home to majority of the conversation? Although r/horror was the most popular, r/roberteggers had a very similar amount of posts. This echoes the larger shift towards a longer tail, niche, interest-based, cozier internet that I’ve been tracking over the last year. TL:DR Younger Gen Z girls like horror as much as their male counterparts

How did Nosferatu overlap with other communities? On TikTok the core conversation was very film-focused, but outward spread here illustrates just how many different communities Nosferatu resonated with. We’re seeing everything from #medievalTikTok to #fragranceTikTok sitting alongside Nosferatu.

The TikTok hashtags used alongside #nosferatu were primarily what you would expect, and position this platform as fandom central ,but TikTok also seemed to fully embrace the film's gothic nature in a way that other channels didn’t. Other overlaps of note were #gothgirl & #makeup with 4% overlap, #letterboxd also with 4% #gothtok with 3% and #booktok also with 3%.

TikTok is the long tail. It’s impossible for others to understand without intertextuality. It’s subculture 101. It’s disparate communities relating to content in specific-to-their-interests ways. It’s also where the goth girls and MUAS go wild with unbridled creativity.

Despite all of the money spent on marketing, this cosplay post from a TikTok account with 39k followers, generated the most engagement on any single post. 2.1 M Likes 375k shares 16k comments 185k saves The takeaway here is to learn as much as you can about the communities who’ll vibe with you on TikTok and choose your creator partners super carefully. Outside of the mainstream, bigger is almost never better.

Typically whenever we see a subculture hit the mainstream in such a big way, there will be clashes between the hardcore fans and the newcomers who don’t understand the rules. One of the more popular posts that quickly became a meme was from a Twitter user, seemingly annoyed by normies talking unsympathetically about something they enjoyed. If subculture no longer exists, then why are people so protective of things that others don’t ‘get’? The popularity of Nosferatu reminds us that not everything has to be for everyone, and that that is okay!

Key Takeaways The main topic of conversation on all the text based social channels was Robert Eggers. The image/video-based social (TikTok and Instagram), both talked more about ‘vampires’ than the director. Reddit keeps growing and is a place where you can be hyper-niche and massively mainstream. Just make sure you’re sharing the right content with the right audience. TikTok and Instagram loved the gothic sensibilities. Men were almost twice as likely to talk about Robert Eggers, while women over-indexed on talking about Lily Rose Depp. Despite having the lowest active monthly user numbers, Bluesky emerged as home to 9% of overall conversation. You should REALLY be considering Bluesky.

But this is just one film, is interest in horror increasing elsewhere? Social trend prediction tool NextAtlas shows that a variety of horror themed trends are already in progress. This isn’t just film either: we’re seeing it across fashion, music, and primarily in books. From #romantasy to ‘good for her’ (mega booktok trends) horror is happening everywhere.

I use social and digital data to decode communities and their impact on culture. Need some data-backed cultural intelligence? Drop me a DM.