Paramount Pictures’ Paranormal Activity 4 hit theaters on Friday. And it pulled in a little north of $30M domestic (and around $26.5M foreign for a worldwide total of around $57M). All in all this is a huge success for a film that only cost $5M to produce. They’re already in the black. It’s just not as huge of a success as they’re used to. That’s down $22M in the opening frame from PA3 and down $10M or so from PA2, which makes it the weakest performer in the series since PA1 opened in limited theaters in 2009.

Overall the film has a pretty weak Cinemascore, polled audiences gave it a “C” which means a lot of them will be telling their friends not to go (I guess they agreed with Brad). It could end up as the lowest (or 2nd lowest) grossing entry. But let’s not break out the violins just yet. This series is still insanely profitable – and Paramount just officially announced Paranormal Activity 5 for October 2013.

My hope? Either drop the mythology completely or answer some questions about it. The whole “witches” angle isn’t very scary to me. Seeing Katie running around breaking people’s necks isn’t very scary to me either. So either get interesting with some answers or get scary again with ghosts f*cking with people in new ways. Maybe stop tossing people around and figure something else out? I really liked PA3 because it had some legit scary moments – and I’d like a return to pushing things forward in the medium rather than adding a bunch of expositional mumbo jumbo. Maybe this series is like Star Trek and every other one will be good.

Did you see PA4 this weekend? Tell everyone what YOU think by writing your own review.