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Edwin Davies: It's got to the point where horror films live and die on the strength of their opening weekend, and the opening weekend depends on how good the trailer is. The trailer for The Devil Inside did a pretty effective job of selling the premise, crammed enough quick shocks in to get pulses running and generated a decent amount of interest in the process. More importantly, it was the first new film of the year and it opened without any competition. People getting back into the swing of things after the first week back at work/school probably felt like they needed to unwind with something stupid and The Devil Inside filled that role perfectly. It's going to crater spectacularly next week, but this pretty much confirms that if you make them cheaply and manage to hack together a decent trailer, it's pretty hard to go broke making trashy horror films.

Reagen Sulewski: I was apparently willing to give this more of a benefit of the doubt than most people, but not enough. Whatever we can know now about just how bad this film is, none of that mattered before opening weekend, and that was a great trailer. Legitimately unnerving. I'd assumed it would behave like the last fakumentary exorcism film, but instead it got treated more like Paranormal Activity. Horror fans are kind of mystifying, you know?

Max Braden: It was a decently creepy trailer, so I could see people heading out to see it to shake off that last bit of holiday craziness and settle into the new year with a horror flick. I wonder, too, if there was just enough time for Friday night crowds to report how bad it was, and Saturday crowds going to see it just to try and prove them wrong.

David Mumpower: If I'm a producer for The Darkest Hour, I walk up to every teen I see and slap them. Then, I ask "Why this and not that?" The Devil Inside feels like the movie theater equivalent of a flash mob. There was no ostensible selling point that distinguished it and even the studio felt that way about it. But school was back in session and everybody talked their tweeps into this being the weekend activity of choice. So, everybody snuck into an R-rated movie with the least thought out ending in recent memory. They have to keep that website active for decades to come. That strikes me as more busy work than anybody involved with the project wanted.

We do *not* grade on a curve.

Kim Hollis: The Devil Inside also joined a short list of a half dozen films to earn an "F" Cinemascore, along with previous F-scorers Solaris, Bug, Wolf Creek, Darkness and The Box. What's a film you think deserves an "F" Cinemascore, and why do you choose it?

Matthew Huntley: Wow, so many to choose from, including Radio Flyer, Big Daddy, Batman & Robin, Santa With Muscles, Your Highness, Green Hornet and Jack & Jill. But if I'm allowed to name only one, it would be Bad Boys II. To me, an "F" Cinemascore goes to movies with no concept of entertainment and whose material unjustly makes viewers angry and offended. Sure, movies can provoke anger and offensiveness, but they have to have an agenda. Bad Boys II doesn't have one, and it passes fomenting off as entertainment. It's so overblown, loud, incoherent, mean-spirited, homophobic, contrived and cruel that I hope it has its makers asking, "What were we thinking?" After the equally bloated Transformers movies, Michael Bay still owes us a compensation movie, if he's even capable of making one.

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