Universal continued their 2018 hot streak with the family adventure The House With a Clock In Its Walls, which ended up a bit higher than the high end of expectations, leading the charge with an impressive $26.8 million. Meanwhile, a slew of rather unconventional wide releases hit theaters, all resulting in pitifully low numbers.

The House With a Clock In Its Walls took first with an estimated $26.8 million. Among comparisons, that’s a few million higher than Goosebumps and almost on par with Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. What makes that more impressive is that House was the cheapest of the three – carrying a thrifty price tag of just $42 million, versus Goosebumps‘ $58 million and Peregrine’s $110 million. Additionally, both of those other films were released in 3D, while House only had a standard IMAX release.

From here, it seems as though the film is set for a lengthy run; after Friday estimates, it was pegged at around $23 million, but ended up pushing past that after an excellent 47% jump on Saturday. While it does face some competition from Smallfoot next weekend, it should benefit from being a more seasonally relevant choice among audiences looking for something Halloween related.

In second was Lionsgate’s A Simple Favor, which one-upped its solid opening with an impressive 35% dip, pulling in an additional $10.4 million thanks to strong word of mouth and reviews. The thriller has now doubled its production budget worldwide, and still has plenty of cash left to collect by the end of its run. This is a much needed win for Lionsgate, especially after a rough summer.

To find the new releases of the weekend means going all the way down to 8th place, where Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9 debuted in a rather large 1,719 locations, yet only pulled in $3.1 million. This pales in comparison to Fahrenheit 9/11, which collected more than ten times this when adjusted for inflation, despite opening in less than half as many theaters. While it was never expected to hit that films record breaking heights, this is a disappointing result.

Amazon tried their hand with the studios very first out-of-the-gate wide release in the form of Life Itself, the melodrama which opened in 2,609 locations to the tune of just $2.1 million. That meant a paltry per theater average of just $807. The film was ravaged by critics and had almost zero advertising, leading to this terrible result. It will likely disappear entirely from theaters next weekend.

All the way down in fourth was The Predator, which hemorrhaged 65% in its second weekend. Admittedly, this drop isn’t quite as bad as the 72% fall suffered by Predators, but with a theater count of over 4,000 that’s simply no excuse. From here, it’ll suffer to make much more than $50 million by the end of its run.

The biggest loser of the weekend, however, was Neon’s Assassination Nation, which inexplicably opened in over 1,400 locations yet barely cracked $1 million, averaging an eye-popping $733 per theater. Up until the weekend, Nation was scheduled for a limited release (meaning under 600 locations), but Neon apparently figured it had enough gas in the tank to justify this release, apparently hoping to capitalize on buzz and controversy – unfortunately, it didn’t have much of either; reviews out of Sundance were generally lukewarm, and the premise ended up being too unconventional for mainstream audiences. Still, the fact that the distributor decided to go so wide at the last minute is a rather unprecedented move, but don’t expect it to happen again anytime soon.

Moving into the specialty market, The Sisters Brothers and Colette both opened in four locations with per theater averages of $30K and $39K respectively. These are both pretty good results, but don’t expect either to do much business outside of the arthouse crowd.