"PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2" SCARES AWAY ITS RIVALS

Still from Paranormal Activity 2

Outdoing its predecessor which only was released a year ago, Paramount's Paranormal Activity 2 opened huge this weekend with an estimated total of $43.5 million from 3,216 theatres.  The film now holds the record as the highest grossing R-Rated Midnight Opening of all-time, raking in $6.3 million Thursday night, according to Nikki Finke at Deadline.  Paranormal Activity, made for only a budget of $15k, opened with $19.6 million last Fall and went on to earn $193.3 million worldwide.  Impressively, the film's sequel received fairly strong reviews also, with a 67% consensus at Rotten Tomatoes.

Last week's champion Jackass 3-D also from Paramount, slips to second with an estimated $21.5 million at the Box Office.  It opened last week with a spectacular $50 million and continues to perform strongly, as does Summit Entertainment's Action Flick Red filmed partly here in Toronto.  Red earned $15.2 million this weekend, bringing its domestic total to $43.6 million.

Clint Eastwood's Hereafter had an uncharacteristically weak opening in fourth spot for the iconic filmmaker, earning $12 million from 2,181 theatres.  The Warner Bros. film also is garnering mixed reviews from Critics, with a 51% rating at Rotten Tomatoes.

Audiences are still in-love with David Fincher's The Social Network which in its fourth week slips to fifth spot with $7.2 million based on early weekend numbers, putting it just ahead of Disney's Secretariat which is performing steadily, just now recouping its $35 million production budget.

CLINT EASTWOOD'S "HEREAFTER" REVIEW

Still from Hereafter

When you're a Director of Clint Eastwood's stature, rarely do you ever make a bad film. The question instead is, just how good your film is. Eastwood teams with Oscar-winning Screenwriter Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon) on Fantasy-Drama Hereafter, which ties together the stories of three people in different parts of the world who experience death in different ways.

George Lonegan (Matt Damon) is a man with the psychic ability to communicate with the dead, although he never has truly come to terms with this. Instead, he opts to live the simple life as a factory worker in anonymity. Under the persistent urging of his brother Billy (Jay Mohr), George is encouraged once again to re-visit a joint venture, capitalizing off his psychic abilities, despite his hesitance to do so.

While taking a Cooking Class, George meets Melanie (Bryce Dallas Howard) who starts a new life in San Francisco, attempting to bury a dark past. Once she discovers that George is psychic, the possibility of them pursuing a relationship together is destroyed after he unveils some pieces of Melanie's past (at her urging) she also has never come to terms with.

Meanwhile, while vacationing on an Island with her lover, renowned French journalist Marie LeLay (Cécile De France) has a near-death experience, almost getting killed in a catastrophic Tsunami. Soon after, she returns back to France and tries to re-adjust to her life there, but struggles to do so as she becomes fixated on what she saw while she was unconscious, prior to being revived by rescuers. She then makes the decision to focus on writing a book which explores the concept of a Hereafter, much to the disapproval of her colleagues.

Meanwhile in London, identical twins Marcus and Jason (Frankie and George McLaren) are fighting to keep Children's Aid workers from tearing them apart from their Alcoholic mother. Tragedy strikes, resulting in Jason's accidental death. After being separated from his mother, Marcus devotes his energies to finding a way to communicate with his beloved deceased brother. How is it then, that the stories of these seemingly unrelated people become connected?