"The Amityville Horror" returned from the dead with a vengeance, with the gory update of the 1970s fright flick taking in $23.3 million to top the weekend box office.

The previous weekend's No. 1 movie, the African desert adventure "Sahara," slipped to second place with $13.1 million, lifting its 10-day total to $36.4 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

"The Amityville Horror" stars Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George as a couple tormented by visions and voices in their new home, the scene of a grisly mass murder a year earlier.

The movie is the latest in a parade of successful horror remakes. With a built-in audience looking for scares and a string of hits such as "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "The Grudge" and "Dawn of the Dead," horror movies have become almost a sure-thing in Hollywood.

Horror movies also typically cost far less than other big studio films, whose average budgets top $60 million. "The Amityville Horror" grossed more than its $19 million budget in just the first weekend.

"The Amityville Horror" received mostly bad reviews, yet the under-25 crowd that makes up the genre's core audience rarely heeds the critics.