There's outgrossing, and then there's outgrossing. Saw III has just set a Halloween-weekend record, pulling in $34.3 million to become the biggest opening ever for this holiday, and it's now among the rare horror series to see progressively better openings: III is up several million dollars over last year's Saw II opening.

Critics who ventured out to see the film this weekend -- it was not screened in advance for us -- may be divided over the quality or entertainment value of the film, but they all seem to agree that the movie ratchets up the gore factor considerably over its predecessors. Nick Schager of Slant Magazine dismisses the film with a snappy "peddles gruesomeness of a disgusting rather than frightening order," but the positive reviews, what few there are, are even more effusive about how truly revolting Saw III is. Alex Sandell of Juicy Cerebellum says:

This is the most vile Saw yet. It's louder than before, gorier than before, meaner than before, and the torture devices are more painful than before.

...This is for the hardcore horror fan and for the hardcore horror fan only. This isn't for the casual fan, the easily grossed out, or those who are prone to bouts of vomiting upon viewing scenes of torment that run as long as 15 minutes in length (straight, without a break).

And that's a rave review. Torture porn! What's not to love? Even Laremy himself admitted on Friday that this one stealing the weekend was an easy call.

Laremy was pretty darn close with his predictions on The Departed [my review] and The Prestige [my review], too: Scorsese's contemporary crime drama is still going strong, hauling in $9.8 million, with Christopher Nolan's historical fantasy mystery a smidge behind at $9.6 million. But the poster boy for box office happiness this weekend is Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu: his Babel had a per-screen average of more than $52,000 (for comparison's sake, Saw III's per-screen was just under $11,000). It was playing on only seven screens, so its weekend take looks puny at $366,000, but wait till it goes wide in a couple of weeks. The Oscar buzz it's generating plus the of-the-moment anxieties about terrorism and globalism it explores plus, you know, Brad Pitt, could mean we'll see numbers like that spread across 1,200 screens.

(Box office numbers via Box Office Mojo.)

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MaryAnn Johanson
author of The Totally Geeky Guide to The Princess Bride
minder of FlickFilosopher.com

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