The cheap horror movie Ouija, yes, inspired by the board game, came in at No. 1 this weekend with $20 million, not a surprise to anyone tracking the box office, seeing as it's only days before Halloween and history shows that teen audiences will show up to literally any horror movie opening at the multiplexes this time of year. Not that they liked it much, slapping it with a "C" Cinemascore to go along with its dismal Rotten Tomatoes rating, but once again, it was a $5 million dollar movie that opened to four times that amount, so it's a win for Universal no matter what.
In second place was the Keanu Reeves actioner John Wick, which got surprisingly good reviews, which in turn probably helped it to the $14 million it made this weekend (not great of course, but twice what experts were predicting, given the total flop of his last epic, 47 Ronin). It may be a boost for Reeves' sagging career at least. The rest of the top five were holdovers, with Fury dropping 45% from last week, Gone Girl just about to overtake Benjamin Button as the highest grosser of David Fincher's career, and the animated Book of Life bringing its domestic total to $29 million.
Top 5:
- Ouija- $20 million
- John Wick- $14.2 million
- Fury- $13 million
- Gone Girl- $11.1 million
- The Book of Life- $9.8 million
In limited release, St. Vincent expanded to over 2200 screens, earning $8 million and falling just shy of the top ten, while the Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour opened in five theaters for a strong $125k. Finally, Lynn Shelton's Sundance film Laggies earned $78k, also from five locations. Next Friday, Halloween brings us the Jake Gyllenhaal thriller Nightcrawler and Nicole Kidman's Before I Go to Sleep, as we await the first big blockbuster opening weekend in a while, which will be November 7th with the release of Interstellar and Big Hero 6. See you then!
