It was a horrible weekend for movies. The two leaders — “Nightcrawler” and “Ouija” — cratered over the three-day Halloween period. Each took in $10.9 million. On many weekends, that would barely put either film into fourth or fifth place. Maybe the two movies weren’t so horrible. Maybe there were other reasons each failed so dismally.

According to Box Office Mojo:

The Top 12 earned an estimated $81.9 million, which makes this one of the slowest weekends of the year. That can partly be attributed to the “Halloween effect”: moviegoers were preoccupied with other activities on Friday, which set the weekend back quite a bit.

This is a chicken-and-egg sort of thing, though: fearing this Halloween effect, the big studios avoided the date entirely. Had someone stepped up to the plate with a broadly appealing offering, the aggregate box office wouldn’t be nearly as low.

That does not negate the fact that both movies cost much more than $11 million to make. Also, film grosses almost never rise in their second weekend after release. This past weekend was the first for “Nightcrawler” and second for “Ouija.” The grosses for both will drop again during the upcoming weekend.

By the way, to put the failure of the two movies into some context, the top-grossing movie release last quarter, “Gone Girl,” has taken in $641 million.

“Nightcrawler” and “Ouija” each will be lucky if it brings in $50 million over its time in theaters. Some movies make money. These two almost certainly will not, unless perhaps, they do well in the world of streaming or DVDs.

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