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People in masks are creepy. Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers have taught us this.

Kim Hollis: The Strangers is going to get lost in this news cycle, but it opened to a spectacular $21 million over the weekend. On a $9 million budget, this film has started better than Speed Racer did in its first three days. What do you think is the cause of this success?

Max Braden: That's a similar opening to Prom Night in early April, and it's been that long since there was a real horror movie for audiences to go see. But just as with Prom Night (which only grossed $47 million during its run) and many other gore films, The Strangers will probably die a quick death at the box office.

Pete Kilmer: The ads I saw on TV were effective. The whole "inspired by real events" tag was a real eye-grabber for me. This movie is done, though, and will be on DVD and on-demand pretty quickly.





Tim Briody: This is about as big a surprise as Sex and the City was, and nobody's going to mention a word of it. It's going to enter freefall from here, but $21 million for Generic Horror Film Du Jour which was effectively getting thrown to the wolves is an incredible accomplishment.

Reagen Sulewski: The truly surprising thing about it succeeding is that it isn't a remake and doesn't have a teenage cast, or both.

David Mumpower: Tim is absolutely right in that on pretty much any other week this year, The Strangers would be the story. Tripling tracking is a stunning accomplishment. I foolishly wrote this off as an irrelevant also-ran in the weekend forecast. In hindsight, my mistake was in ignoring my own interest. I had found the visual of the people with the creepy masks to be a memorable one. In fact, I've had it randomly flash in my head at several intervals over the past week. That's a sign of a great job by the marketing people, who definitely deserve to take a bow here. $21 million for The Strangers is a phenomenal accomplishment. It's a nothing project on paper.

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