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From ew, The 2012 box office got off to a fine start this weekend, as Paramount’s “found footage” (riiiight…) horror movie The Devil Inside, which the studio acquired for just under $1 million, earned a tremendous $34.5 million in its first three days, becoming the first breakout box office star since The Lion King 3D. In fact, the strong debut marks the third-best January opening of all time behind Cloverfield ($40.1 million) and a re-release of Star Wars ($35.9 million). Is this a sign of things to come in 2012?

Perhaps. But it’s more likely a sign of the recent popularity of possession movies. Demonic tales have made a mini-comeback in the last few years — starting with the success of 2005′s The Exorcism of Emily Rose, which earned $75.1 million domestically. Since then, similar titles like 2009′s A Haunting in Connectictut ($55.4 million), 2010′s The Last Exorcism ($41 million), and 2011′s Insidious ($54 million) have all proven lucrative thanks to their tiny budgets. Insidious, for example, cost just $1.5 million to make. Of course, the Paranormal Activity movies (the fourth of which was just announced this week) are the biggest success stories of this whole trend. A total of $8 million has been spent making the three “found footage” movies, yet they have earned $296.7 million domestically.

Paramount marketed The Devil Inside in much the same way the studio markets the Paranormal films. Commercials included ample shots of audiences screaming at the screen, and viewers were encouraged to use social media to chat up the film with the ”Tweet Your Scream” campaign. Indeed, all the promotional costs — certainly a much higher number than the budget — helped The Devil Inside achieve a stellar debut, but where does it go from here? Well, it falls. Fast.

Due to their overwhelmingly young audiences, who love to rush out to the theater on opening weekend, horror movies almost always open big and fall precipitously at the box office, but The Devil Inside, with its utterly terrible “F” CinemaScore grade (some issue has been raised as to whether the grade is actually an “F” or closer to the “C” range), will likely plummet even more quickly. Not that it really matters, though – the horror pic is already in the black, and it may finish with as much as $70 million.

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