Jacob Hall

Star Wars: The Force Awakens was always going to make enough money to make most blockbusters tremble in fear. That was inevitable. It’s a Star Wars movie. The big question lingering over this opening weekend concerned whether or not it’s surely enormous opening weekend would break the records set by Jurassic World earlier this year. And now, with the early estimates in, we can answer that question: yes and no.

It was actually a pretty solid weekend at the box office for movies that weren’t brand new. If your movie was playing in its second, third, or even fourth week, you were fine. If your movie was a new release, you were in for a rough couple of days. While the The Martian, Goosebumps, and more showcased impressive legs, a huge batch of other movies faltered this weekend. At least five major releases fell flat on their faces.

The success of Hotel Transylvania 2 proved that family-friendly horror-themed movies stand to make a whole bunch of cash when released in the vicinity of Halloween. Now, Goosebumps is here to ensure that we’ll be getting slightly scary kids’ movies every October for the foreseeable future. The adaptation of the popular book series opened at number one, riding a wave of nostalgia and family appeal to a very strong start, beating out some pretty serious competition.

It’s October and you know what means — it’s time to dust off the horror genre and spend a few weeks screaming at your television. Since actually getting off your couch and actually getting a movie off the shelf is too much effort, we’ve gone ahead and done all of the hard work for you. Here are the 10 best horror movies currently streaming on Netflix Instant. From bonafide classics to newer discoveries, these movies have a little something for everyone.

Pan has had disaster written all over it for the better part of a year now, so it’s not surprising that Joe Wright’s Peter Pan origin story stumbled in its opening weekend. However, no one was prepared for it to stumble as badly as it did as it ran face-first into The Martian and Hotel Transylvania 2.

Oh, boy. Here we go. The first trailer for The Angry Birds Movie is here this is the culmination of something. It’s big moment for something. The mere existence of this movie means something. We don’t know what those somethings are, though. All one can do at this moment is watch this preview and ponder, uh, something.

Alex Trebek is a cultural institution, a beacon of knowledge and grace under pressure. Everyone loves him. Which is why it’s always amusing to watch the unflappable host of Jeopardy say silly words and phrases in that reliable deadpan of his. A recent episode of the immortal game show saw him forced to say the name “Turd Ferguson,” which should amuse anyone with a passing knowledge of modern comedy.

After September opened with a whimper, we were prepared for a dull couple of weeks. It looks like we shouldn’t have been so quick to judge. The one-two punch of The Perfect Guy and The Visit have suddenly made the least interesting month of the year interesting, opening big and opening close enough to one another to make for an interesting race. In the slower movie months, weekends like these are rare treats.

Summer is officially over, September is here, and the movies stink. While the big releases and heavy-hitters of the fall movie season make the festival rounds or rev up their marketing campaigns, audiences have to tough it out and wade through a lot of not-so-good movies. Welcome to September. It’s like this every year. Get ready for an excruciating month at the movies and at the box office.

There’s one reason and one reason only why we’re getting a Ghostbusters remake in 2016 instead of an actual Ghostbusters 3 five years ago. That reason is named Bill Murray and he’s been the not-so-secret sequel roadblock for as long as we can remember. But then he accepted a small role in the new reboot, because he’s Bill Murray and Bill Murray does whatever he wants. Sometimes that means randomly showing up at your birthday party. Sometimes that means popping up in a film franchise that he seemingly had zero desire to revisit. Now, Murray explains his reasons for joining a new Ghostbusters movie he was so vocally against.

All summer movie seasons end with a whimper and 2015 was no different. The final weekend of August was a pretty sad display across the board, with Straight Outta Compton nabbing the number one spot by default while just about every new release faltered. You know it’s a slow weekend when a movie promoted exclusively to faith-based audiences nabs the number two spot.

The original The Karate Kid is one of those seemingly untouchable slices of ‘80s nostalgia. Everyone above a certain age has a soft spot for it. It has effortlessly merged with general pop culture, with characters like Mr. Miyagi and lines like “Wax on, wax off” existing outside of the film that created them. It’s a touchstone … but what if it’s a touchstone that we have been misunderstanding for the past 31 years? What if Ralph Macchio’s Daniel isn’t the hero of the film, but actually – dun dun DUN – the real bad guy?