'Scream' tops the box office, becoming the latest horror movie hit

"Scream" dethroned "Spider-Man: No Way Home" at the domestic box office in the latter movie's fifth weekend.

• "Scream" earned $34 million domestically over the four-day holiday weekend.
• It topped "Spider-Man: No Way Home" at the US box office.
• It follows other recent horror hits, including "A Quiet Place Part II" and "Halloween Kills."

Paramount's "Scream," the fifth movie in the horror franchise, kept the box-office streak alive for horror movies over the weekend.

The movie earned $30 million in the US over the three-day weekend and $34 million over the four-day holiday. It was an impressive start for a movie that cost $25 million to produce. Internationally, "Scream" made $18 million, for a global total of $52 million.

"Scream" dethroned "Spider-Man: No Way Home" at the domestic box office after four weekends at the top.

Its success puts to bed questions about whether the "Scream" franchise had any gas left in its tank. The last movie, 2011's "Scream 4," grossed just $38 million total at the domestic box office. 

But horror has been one of the only genres, aside from superhero movies, to persevere at the box office during the pandemic.

Six horror movies topped the domestic box office in their respective opening weekends in 2021:

• "Halloween Kills" — $49 million opening
• "A Quiet Place Part II" — $47.5 million 
• "The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It" — $24 million 
• "Candyman" — $22 million
• "Old" — $16 million
• "Spiral" — $8 million

With older audiences slow to return to theaters, Box Office Pro chief analyst Shawn Robbins noted that "Scream" tapped into two demographics: "thirty- and forty-something adults who fondly recall watching the original trilogy in theaters in the late '90s and early '00s" and "younger audiences who have become familiar with the iconic franchise on streaming services."

According to Paramount, 67% of the movie's audience was between the ages of 18 and 34.

The movie also has a decent Rotten Tomatoes critic score of 75%, the best in the series since "Scream 2."

"After all these years, are audiences still going to fear the familiar specter of a guy in a mask with a knife?" David Sims wrote for The Atlantic. "I say yes: As a jolting piece of entertainment, 'Scream' absolutely succeeds."