Who needs critics? Maybe studios do

Well, you can blame everything from overhyped Internet interest to the title to people just not being much in the mood for airborne fright films in these terrorism-troubled times for Snakes on a Plane's disappointing box office debut.
But let me suggest one thing that wider evidence seems to indicate might have earned the Sam Jackson cult item a few million more bucks - and a lot more respect: they should've screened the mother#%@&*! thing for critics.
SoaP got a majority of positive reviews after it opened late last Thursday night. They just couldn't be printed in time to make the Friday newspapers, where both critical OKs and the very mention of the movie would likely have had the same effect it does on most films: convince thousands of fence-sitters that it was worth spending their money on.
Some fright films released earlier this year that did have the courage to let critics preview them, such as Hostel and The Hills Have Eyes, enjoyed better opening weekend attendance than the uber-promoted SoaP did. Admittedly others, like the acclaimed Slither, did not, and unpress-screened horrors such as Underworld:Evolution and When a Stranger Calls opened a little better than any of the movies mentioned above.
But evidence is accumulating that even the supposedly critic-proof segment of the moviegoing public is getting the message that, if there ain't reviews on opening Friday, the movie's gotta suck. The Duff sisters disaster Material Girls had a pitiful opening of under $5 million this weekend; it wasn't shown to critics. The previous weekend's Zoom and Pulse also suffered embarrassing debuts without benefit of reviews, good or bad. Step Up, on the other hand, made a surprisingly strong, $20 million-plus bow over the August 11 weekend (about $5 million more than SoaP did a week later); it wasn't exactly a critics' darling, but anyone who wanted to could read a review of it on opening day.
Of course, many other factors influence these recent results; Step Up, for instance, was heavily promoted on MySpace, which makes the Soap-related cries of R.I.P. for Internet movie marketing seem a bit premature. But one thing is looking more and more plausible: the idea that movies of a certain genre or aimed at an undiscerning target audience don't need reviews is just what it has always been, a marketing fad that's destined to fade.