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Gore Fest Tops Weekend Box Office with Destination, Basterds & Halloween

August 31, 2009

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HOLLYWOOD, CA (RPRN) 08/31/09 — Young people get a taste for blood before back-to-school

By Keith Williams

Death stalked the corridors of American multiplexes this weekend with The Final Destination claiming an estimated $28.3 million of souls at 3121 racetracks, many of them in 3D. Rob Zombie’s Halloween II knifed-up a grisly $17.4 million in 3025 pumpkin fields but was stabbed itself by Inglourious Basterds grimly hanging onto second place with $20 million. A few hippies could be spotted loitering at 9 with Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock stoking a measly $3.7 million of weed at 1393 communes.

With the lack of common sense one has come to expect all too often from Hollywood these days, two new horror films were thrown to the wolves this weekend, not only splitting each others’ core demo audiences but diverting traffic from two others already out there, all fighting for the same share of the gore-spattered pie.

In the resulting bloodbath, the Grim Reaper stomped over Michael Myers (no, not The Love Guru), with The Final Destination gathering the most bucks. How much the difference between them was elevated by the extra cost of 3D glasses remains to be seen, but the gap is wide enough to suggest FD would have won easily anyway.

The fourth instalment of the FD franchise, each opening bigger than its predecessor, certainly took more than predicted, thanks to wider female appeal, while Rob Zombie’s rehash took somewhat less - not surprising as Mr. Zombie’s ouevre, embracing the trailer trash ethic as it does, remains ugly, tasteless and corrupt and not exactly date-movie territory. Nudged into third place by those basterds, one can only hope and pray the world has had its fill of what was once original and iconic in John Carpenter’s 1978 masterpiece and seek out newer, more imaginative villains in the future.

Elbowed down a notch itself, Tarantino’s wartime fantasy fell by a not-so-inglourious 47% to scalp $20 million from bald punters, District 9 quarantined another $10.7 million following a drop of 41.3% in non-humans, C.G.I. Joe green-screened a fading $8 million from a 34.5% drop in demand for cobras, Julie & Julia baked up a succulent $7.4 million on a 15.% decline in ingredients, The Time Traveller’s Wife flashbacked by 30.8% to grab $6.7 million in the past, leaving Shorts at 8 to get abbreviated by 24% to $4.8 million.

Through clouds of swirling pot smoke we detect the flared trousers of Taking Woodstock at 9, too stoned to climb any higher. After the ground-breaking Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee’s latest work seems to have garnered less-than-enthusiastic reviews and indifferent audience response. The poster’s fab, the cast groovy, so what went amiss with something that ageing hippies like myself can’t wait to see?

Whatever else you can say about Mr Lee, he certainly gets around his genres, having tackled action/comic book, civil war dramas, 70’s suburban angst, gay cowboys in love, Jane Austen, and not forgetting of course all those crouching tigers and hiding dragons. Given the choice between would-be blockbusters such as G-Force and G.I. Joe, a little film about characters involved in one of the world’s most famous concerts certainly holds far more appeal.

Talking of which, teetering on the edge of infinity at 10, it’s sayonara to those crazee guinea-pigs at G-Force, going down with swine fever by 30% and a top ten finger of $2.8 million.

Weekend Estimates courtesy boxofficeguru.com

photo:Bobby Campo and Shantel Van Santen

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