To no one’s surprise, Warner Bros.’ horror film It was the big winner this weekend. Though people still can’t really explain how the film managed to have the biggest fall box office opening for any film ever with $123 million, it pulled in another $60 million this weekend. That gives the film a total of $218.7M domestically and $371M worldwide in just two weeks. We’re talking here Marvel/Star Wars type of huge, big, worldwide grosses in a short amount of time. What gives? Everyone knew the film was going to do well but not like this. Was it very effective marketing or something else?

In the meantime no one was interested in seeing mother!. What can we say about Darren Aronofsky’s horror/surrealistic/crazy ass film? Either it’s a film you’re going to love or hate intensely and most definitely the latter. Critics have been either raving about that film as if it’s some sort of masterpiece of the century, while others despise it or as one critic said that the film “…may be the most vile and contemptible motion picture ever released by one of the major Hollywood studios.”

The film even got a rare F rating from Cinemascore, though one article claimed that getting that grade could be seen as a sort of badge of honor meaning that the film was “adventurous” and takes chances. How about because it was simply just a really terrible movie?

It’s basically a grab bag of Aronofsky’s greatest hits from previous movies such as Requiem for a Dream, Noah and even The Fountain, with lots of ideas and themes “borrowed” from the films of Roman Polanski and horror film master Dario Argento. It also just blatantly steals a lot of Peter’s Greenway’s rarely seen, but very controversial film The Baby of Macon which when it came out nearly 25 years ago was called back then as one of the most sickening and vilest films ever made. What’s old is new again.

Of course, those critics who are loving it do so mainly because first of all, it’s one of the few Hollywood studio films with major name stars that isn’t a remake, a sequel or superhero movie. One has to wonder if mother! had been an independent film with no name stars restricted to the film festival circuit would critics have gone so crazy over it. Second, film critics, and let be honest here, love to show off and show people or “rubes” that they’re hipper than 99 percent of the rest of the population. So mother! is catnip to them. They can interpret the film any way they want to show that somehow they’re smarter than everyone else when in reality the film is really just a big pretentious mess.

And there’s doubt the film was always going to be a tough sell and not surprisingly it fared poorly this weekend. Paramount tried to sell it as a straight-up horror film like It, even copying the image layout from the main poster for Roman Polanski’s classic 1968 horror Rosemary’s Baby for its ad campaign. But people didn’t even show up. It was like the public could smell a stinker before they even saw it, or maybe just because people have had enough of Jennifer Lawrence, an overrated talent if there ever was one and who seemingly came out of nowhere to be in 100 films in the last four years alone. Or maybe the film just needed some black people in it?

Whatever the reason the film tanked, coming in third with $7.5 million is guaranteed that it will have perhaps the biggest second weekend dropoff of the year once word about it gets round.

In second place, with with $14.8 million was American Assassin, Lionsgate’s second hitman/assassin movie in row after the The Hitman’s Bodyguard which became somehow an unexpected box office hit for the studio. However, chances are most likely that American Assassin won’t be so lucky.

The rest of the Top 12 are mainly summer holdovers including Annabelle: Creation, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Dunkirk and Wind River, all of which still have some box office legs and are holding on.

In the meantime, Dunkirk finally crossed the half a billion mark worldwide with $508 million and will still keep grossing more money well into the fall.

1) It WB (NL) $60,000,000 Total: $218,710,619
2) American Assassin LGF $14,800,000
3) mother! Par. $7,500,000
4) Home Again ORF $5,334,160 Total: $17,135,244
5)The Hitman’s Bodyguard LG/S $3,550,000 Total: $70,357,040
6) Annabelle: Creation WB (NL) $2,600,000 Total: $99,900,361
7) Wind River Wein. $2,553,586 Total: $29,122,401
8) Leap! Wein. $2,117,930 Total: $18,659,716
9) Spider-Man: Homecoming Sony $1,875,000 Total: $330,262,248
10) Dunkirk WB $1,305,000 Total: $185,141,652
11) Logan Lucky BST $1,040,997 Total: $26,871,098
12) The Emoji Movie Sony $975,000 Total: $847 $83,885,035

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