With only $9 million, The Covenant took top spot at the box office this weekend, marking the lowest opening for a number one film in three years. Seriously, $9 million? Man, did anyone go to the movies this weekend? With its PG-13 rating, pic chased after a younger, boy band-ish demographic, however, three-quarters of the audience was 18 or older.

Ben Affleck and the name 'Superman' was enough to boost Hollywoodland ($6 million) into the weekend's number two spot, even though it opened about $1 million shy of what studio execs were expecting. After finishing first two weeks in a row, Disney's Invincible failed to stay ahead of the pack, falling to third place with $5.8 million. Tony Jaa's martial arts extravaganza, The Protector ($5 million), and Jason Statham's Crank ($4.8 million) rounded out the top five.

Full numbers after the jump.

The Covenant revolves around a coven of hard-bodied Harry Potters in a Northeastern prep school. They are descendants of those famously accused witches of Salem, who were apparently the real deal after all. It's pointed out to us that these boys are actually more like witch-kids than witch-men, because they haven't yet reached a crucial birthday in the life of a male witch. At age 18, they will "ascend," which means they'll receive some kind of cosmic endorsement of their witchy virility and gain extra powers. They're already incapable of dying -- we see one of them smash his car head-on into a Mack truck, only to have the car and driver re-assemble in mid-air. But, horror of horrors, they can still grow old. The main witch, Caleb (Steven Strait) takes his new girlfriend Sarah (Laura Ramsey) to meet his father, a bedridden invalid who looks like Hugh Hefner after an hour in the tub. "He's 44 years old," Caleb whispers to Sarah, causing her to bite back a scream.

Age is a constant theme in The Covenant: The main characters discuss "turning 18" throughout the film, usually before or after one of the scenes in which they peel off their clothes and flex finely-chiseled abs. At times, I felt like I was watching a Barely Legal video. When one member of the coven turns 18 on the exact same day his disapproving-of-witchhood parents meet a grisly death, Caleb must figure out whether or not they have a poison apple in the bunch, and if so, how best to go about voting him out of the group. What results is a proudly mediocre mash-up of The Craft and Making the Band. It would all be straight-to-video flotsam if not for the strangely endearing quirks of director Renny Harlin, who's coming off a touch-and-go decade since he was forced to walk the plank over Cutthroat Island. Only Renny would include a scene where two witches are standing toe to toe, about to do battle, and one refers to the other as a "weeyatch."

My #1 favorite horror site, Bloody-Disgusting.com, is spending some solid time at Comic Con, and those bloodthirsty little kooks are reporting on every single horror-centric tidbit you could possibly imagine. In addition to their thorough obsession with Grind House, the BDboyz have also brought us the following news:

• A Saw 3 clip that seems more than a little Barker-esque. And another nasty poster. Coooool. Also, Saw 4 is almost certainly going to hit theaters next October. Yay.
  
• Wan & Whannell, creators of the original Saw, have their new flick, Dead Silence, almost finished.
• Feast (finally) hits DVD on October 17th. They better stick to the date.
• The trailer for Renny Harlin's The Covenant is now online.
• The House on Haunted Hill sequel we mentioned last week? Going direct-to-video.
• Lionsgate will release Ju-On: The Grudge 2 on DVD come October 10th. Strange coincidence: The Grudge 2 hits theaters on October 13th.
• Probably not anytime soon, but Sam Raimi assures us that the Evil Dead remake will happen eventually.
• Neil Marshall just dropped a juicy little teaser: The Descent 2 will be coming soon...

Who knew a comics convention would yield so much cinematic splatter? That's it: Next year, it's Comic Con for Weinberg.