Weekend Box Office - Sequel Horrors Haunt Theaters

Halloween. The season of costumes, trick-or-treating, and that classic American tradition: making something cheap and and selling it to the unwitting masses for a tidy profit.

This weekend Paranormal Activity 2 beat the Halloween weekend rush by opening a week early. The low budget horror/thriller was put together on a slim $3 million budget and earned back over $41 million in its first three days for an easy number one.

The $20 million Paranormal Activity 2 banked its first day was a record breaker for biggest opening day for a supernatural thriller, beating out the $14.8 million record held by sequel The Ring Two.

This weekend also marks the second in a row that a low budget sequel earned more cash than it deserved to be number one. Last weekend's champion Jackass 3-D dropped almost 60% from last week, but it was still strong enough to hold second place. Next week, it will likely cross the $100 million mark and break into the year's top twenty.

Clint Eastwood's latest offering, Hereafter starring Matt Damon, expanded from 6 theaters to over 2,100 and earned about $12 million. Not an exciting debut, but that's what you get when you try and market a drama as being somewhat supernatural during Halloween season. Horror fans can sniff the real thing from a mile away, usually by the lame plot and bad acting. Something from Eastwood and Damon has too much thoroughbred to fool those fans.

1. Paranormal Activity 2 * $41,500,000  -  Total: $41,500,000 LW: N     WR: 1     THTRS: 3,216

2. Jackass 3-D $21,600,000  -  Total: $87,147,000 LW: 1     WR: 2     THTRS: 3,111

3. Red $15,000,000  -  Total: $43,483,000 LW: 2     WR: 2     THTRS: 3,273

4. Hereafter $12,005,000  -  Total: $12,320,000 LW: 28     WR: 2     THTRS: 2,181

5. The Social Network $7,300,000  -  Total: $72,931,000 LW: 3     WR: 4     THTRS: 2,921

6. Secretariat $6,917,000  -  Total: $37,360,000 LW: 4     WR: 3     THTRS: 3,108

7. Life as We Know It $6,150,000  -  Total: $37,615,000 LW: 5     WR: 3     THTRS: 3,019

8. Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole $3,175,000  -  Total: $50,172,000 LW: 6     WR: 5     THTRS: 2,236

9. The Town $2,720,000  -  Total: $84,653,000 LW: 7     WR: 6     THTRS: 1,918

10. Easy A $1,750,000  -  Total: $54,785,000 LW: 9     WR: 6     THTRS: 1,632