Jon Schnaars's blog

Alexandre Aja's directorial follow-up to "The Hills Have Eyes", received a lukewarm reception at the box office this weekend. In bringing in just over $11 million, "Mirrors" produced on par with some of this year's previous middling horror releases. While it outdrew films like "Shutter" and "The Ruins", it came in behind January's "Untraceable".

After four weeks (four!), "The Dark Knight" freight train that has demolished the box office looks like it might be creaking to a halt. The measly $26 million that Batman and company took in this weekend, on their way to another first place finish, brought the film's domestic total to over $440 million.

With "The X-Files: I Want to Believe," horror saw its 10th release of the year.

A buddy sent me the above from Some-e-Cards, which honestly had me laughing for a solid minute. With the "X-Files" coming up, let's all think back on that glorious time when the idea of the government monitoring everyone's internet and phone usage, and placing CCTV on every corner was a far-flung conspiracy theorist's fantasy. Those were the days...

The word is out: "The Dark Knight" is a pretty good flick. It was also something of a financial success this weekend, especially if you define "something of a financial success" as smashing every fucking record in its path!

When he that is nameth Stephen King, speaketh unto us about that which is horrifying... well, we should probably listen. I mean, the man has written some pretty scary books, amirite?

I'm still getting my head screwed on straight since returning from a vacation this weekend, so I'm going to do a quick rundown in bullet point format because that is the laziest possible format one can write in (but also the most fun to read, go figure!). For your data fix this week, you can peep the Horrors of 2008. Last week I added some fun average and median figures, which you'll see at the bottom.

It won't surprise anyone around these parts that I get a warm, fuzzy feeling inside when folks start talking about box office statistics. If someone busts out a chart, well then they've officially got my attention. All of which is why Erick Lundegaard has just entered the rarified air of Schnaars-man-crush.

This weekend was the 26th out of 52 for 2008. And now that we're halfway to 2009, it's time to make some observations about the slate of horror films that have been offered up thus far.

I was a little surprised to find a review for "Wicked Lake," a new horror release from Fever Dream, in this week's New York Times. I tend to be on top of the upcoming horror slate and here was something I hadn't heard peep about. Typically, that's a bad sign.