I really enjoyed Paramount Pictures’ Alex Aja–Sam Raimi collaboration, Crawl, which pitted Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper against several massive alligators in the middle of a hurricane. It’s easily my favorite film by the French-born filmmaker since his ultraviolent debut, Haute Tension. While Aja never stopped being a great filmmaker, this was the first time since his collaboration with Wes Craven on a remake to The Hills Have Eyes that it really felt like he was able to truly be himself. Whether this is true or not is subjective, but one reason I was rooting for Crawl (review) to succeed was so that studios would once again consider him for bigger projects. Give us the Aja of old and let him do his thing!

While Crawl didn’t exactly blow the roof off theaters (pun intended), it did manage a respectable $12 million domestic opening against some really heavy competition, also leaving Stuber in the dust. It also added $4.8M internationally for a global opening of $16.8M. It’s not quite the hit I was hoping for, but it’s also likely going to swim into the profit zone thanks to its modest and respectable $13.5M-$15M reported budget (I’m looking at you, The Meg and Alita). Paramount has had some strong openings overseas and it’ll be interesting to see how the next few weeks unfold for Crawl. We’ll report back next Sunday. International numbers will likely make or break it for Paramount.

In other box office news, Ari Aster‘s Hereditary follow up, Midsommer, added another $3M for an $18M domestic total through two weekends. As I pointed out last weekend, that’s really good for a long-as-hell art film and on par with Hereditary. A24 hasn’t reported any international numbers yet.

The most under-the-radar news is that Annabelle Comes Home, the third film in the Conjuring spinoff series, blasted up globally after adding a shit ton internationally – it currently sits at $174M worldwide and is eyeing a possible $200M, which seemed unlikely after its soft opening. As I previously explained, the domestic take is proof of box office clutter and it’s still finding a way to decimate across the world. The Conjuring Universe is unstoppable right now.