Captain America Shatters the Oculus

Steve Barton   |  

Apr 13, 2014

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Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all? Actually, it was Captain America, followed closely by talking animated birds. The new haunted mirror movie Oculus still managed to score a fair share in its third place opening weekend.

Opinions have been contentious regarding Mike Flanagan’s Oculus, but audiences showed up this weekend for the first wide release horror film in about three months.

The Blumhouse Productions/WWE Studios co-production got off to a modest start with a $12 million opening. According to Box Office Mojo, that’s about on par with the last haunted mirror flick to hit theaters, Mirrors, which opened to a tad more than $11 million.

Divergent’s fifth place weekend granted another $3.4 million, bringing it to over $125 million domestically. The formula should now be obvious to Hollywood producers looking to adapt female-centric genre novels to films: dystopian future romances, yay; supernatural romance, nay. Twilight time has passed and we are now basking in the dawn of Hunger Games-inspired tweenertainment.

The next big screen installment in the Divergent franchise is already set to roll and it was announced this past week that the final book in the series will be, for absolutely no justifiable reason other than to maximize profits, divided into two films. In retrospect, it’s rather amazing that Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy didn’t end up as six films.

Next week, A Haunted House 2 tries to justify its existence while Johnny Depp threatens our existence by turning into the Lawnmower Man in Transcendence and Disneynature’s Bears celebrates Earth Day by showcasing the “giant, marauding, godless killing machines” that haunt Stephen Colbert’s nightmares.

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