Horror films have jolted the post-pandemic box office, thanks to the success of movies like Paramount (PARA)'s surprise blockbuster "Smile" and Jamie Lee Curtis's final bout as Laurie Strode in "Halloween Ends."

The genre, which has made a comeback over the past decade thanks to production studios like Blumhouse and A24, has helped theaters recover after COVID-19 forced the industry to a screeching halt.

"Horror movies tend to be driven by a middle-adult to young-adult audience, who were the first to come back to theaters over the past year and a half," Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at Box Office Pro, told Yahoo Finance, emphasizing that younger viewers are the ones who will drive the theatrical business in the long term.

When analyzing the theatrical returns of the 13 horror films that debuted post-pandemic, 53% of the audience was under the age of 35 with audiences skewing mostly male (52% male versus 48% female), according box office analytics platform Enttelligence.

Robbins added that originality has played a huge factor as well, explaining: "So many of these original films have clicked with fans of the genre. 'Smile,' 'Barbarian,' 'The Black Phone.' That's a terrific set of movies just within the last few months that have done really well."

"Smile," which had a production budget of just $17 million, went on to secure a higher-than-expected domestic debut of $22 million. To date, the film has surpassed a worldwide gross of $168.5 million.

Similarly, "Barbarian" and "The Black Phone" quickly surpassed their respective production budgets with the former securing more than $10 million in its domestic opener (versus a $2 million budget) while the latter nabbed $23.6 million (versus a $16 million budget.)

"Horror films maintain a low risk," Robbins said. "They aren't expensive to make and they have a very low threshold to success. And when a film like 'Smile' can just break out, it's just the cherry on top for a studio like Paramount to spend as little as they did, relatively speaking, and for that film to become such a massive hit."