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Max Braden: It's remarkable that in just a few days this movie will have earned more than Patrick Wilson's other most recent horror film, Insidious, earned in its entire run two years ago. (And Insidious 2 is expected to be released in just a couple months from now). I don't think there's a lot different between the two horror films conceptually, but I think the tone is the key: The Conjuring looks like the type of horror that makes audiences laugh about how scared they were after they've heard themselves screaming. That's the basis for the appeal of going to "haunted" houses at Halloween - it's fun to be scared. The key seller here had to be the clapping hands in the trailer. What kind of non-spoof horror movie does that and still manages to take itself seriously? So where in Insidious you're supposed to care about the characters and the plot, and maybe who the cast is, I think in The Conjuring it's all about the challenge: "okay, let's see how well you can scare me." When you get that right, you get the money.

David Mumpower: For months now, friends of mine who are not generally fans of the horror genre have been raving about the trailer for The Conjuring. During this time frame, I started to contemplate something. If a lot of low budget titles such as this open well anyway, what is the bump for the rare horror movie that looks especially good? It is similar to the aforementioned The Purge in this regard, albeit with the caveat that The Purge is not a true horror movie per se. What we learned this weekend is that there is a respectable box office boost when a horror title appeals to people outside the normal viewing demographic. Now, that is not an Earth-shattering revelation by any stretch but it should entice studios into finding better concepts in addition to the slasher garbage that drives horror genre box office revenue.

I also believe we should laud James Wan for once again delivering a quality product against a frugal budget outlay. Insidious earned $100 million globally against a production budget of $1.5 million. With The Conjuring, he was given a much larger budget of $20 million, which is still dirt cheap. The opening weekend box office scaled along with the budget; ergo, Wan has already recovered production costs after a weekend in theaters. Suffice to say that he deserves a raise and is positioned to be the next Wes Craven/Sam Raimi if he continues to deliver like this.

Kim Hollis: Turbo, a DreamWorks Animation film distributed by Fox, earned $21.3 million from Friday-to-Sunday and $31 million since its debut on Wednesday. What do you think of this result?

Matthew Huntley: Although this figure is below expectations, I'm not terribly surprised by it. The concept and trailer for Turbo didn't make it seem like anything special, and with trusted franchises like Monsters University and Despicable Me 2 occupying the family demographic, there just wasn't room for the little snail that could. Everything about this movie appeared vanilla, and gave off a sort of "been there, done that" impression, and with what's likely a very predictable story line, parents probably chose other ways to keep their kids cool and busy this past weekend.

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