Other Mommy’s closet is full of ghosts — and so is the box office. The horror film, starring Jessica Chastain as a sinister presence in a child’s room, opened with $28 million across North America, far exceeding Universal’s $20 million projection. It’s the kind of debut that makes studios cheer, even if audiences don’t. CinemaScore slapped it with a D+, the lowest since Megalopolis in 2024. Rotten Tomatoes? A paltry 19%. Richard Lawson called it ‘an attractive but mostly vacuous collection of jumpy bits.’ Still, it’s top of the heap this weekend, not because it’s good, but because nothing else is trying to be anything at all. 

The Social Reckoning, Aaron Sorkin’s follow-up to The Social Network, stumbled out of the gate with just $6 million. That’s below Sony’s expectations, even for a film about Facebook’s dark past. Mikey Madison plays a whistleblower, Jeremy Allen White a journalist, and Jeremy Strong an older Mark Zuckerberg. Yes, Jesse Eisenberg’s version is back, now in a different timeline. The movie has a 54% critic score and a 71% audience rating, which isn’t great, but better than the horror flick’s. David Rooney found it ‘engrossing’, a rare compliment in a week where most reviews were shrugs. 

Elsewhere, Chris Rock’s Misty Green limped into six theaters with $27,000. Adam Driver, Daniel Kaluuya, Rosalind Eleazar. All in a film described as ‘the work of a mature director who knows what he wants to say.’ Alex Gibney’s Elon Musk doc Musk pulled $28,000 from four screens. And NAZA, a documentary on Israel’s military operations in Gaza, earned $85,000 from 72 locations, enough to draw protests outside a Los Angeles theater. 

Verity, Amazon MGM’s Colleen Hoover adaptation, drops 56% in its second frame, now sitting at $56.5 million domestically. Heart of the Beast adds $6.7 million, Resident Evil hits $138.3 million. The real story? No one’s winning. Just surviving. 

Next week: no big releases. Only quiet. And maybe, if you’re lucky, a new issue of KRIMI magazine.