With Halloween approaching, audiences want to be spooked and 'The Grudge' scared its way to the top of the box office. 'The Grudge' toppled 'Shark Tale' which had been number one for three weeks. The cartoon fish story still managed the number two slot but it was far behind 'The Grudge''s $40 million weekend. Don't feel too sorry for 'Shark Tale' its total take of $137 million so far already makes it the eighth highest grossing movie of the year.

'The Grudge' is a remake of a Japanese horror movie and did far better than its predecessor, 'The Ring' which started the trend of remaking Japanese horror films. 'The Ring' was a sleeper hit that gained more audiences the longer it was in release.

The Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez movie 'Shall We Dance?' actually went up in the statistics, finishing at third with $8.6 million. Ben Affleck's new movie 'Surviving Christmas' which debuted this weekend was out of sync with viewers who weren't ready for the holiday season. It came in seventh making a tiny $4.5 million and continuing Affleck's box office slump. Puppet theater has also proved relatively unsuccessful as South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone's 'Team America: World Police' grossed $6.6 million to come in fifth.

Box office totals were down from this time last year. Hopefully if audiences still have a taste for horror, the deeply disturbing film 'Saw' will do well when it opens on Friday.