Darkness, second-time director Jaume Balaguero's English-language chiller, burst onto Spanish screens this weekend, taking in an impressive three-day box office gross of Euros 1.16m.

The Miramax-backed $12m horror film from Barcelona-based Filmax's genre label Fantastic Factory opened Friday on 276 copies. Darkness made its world premiere October 3 as the inaugural film for the Sitges International Film Festival of Catalonia, Spain.

Darkness' opening weekend performance beats those of both Pedro Almodovar's Talk To Her (Hable Con Ella) and Emilio Martinez Lazaro's The Other Side Of The Bed (El Otro Lado De La Cama), Spain's two top-grossing domestic releases thus far in 2002. Talk To Her opened in March on 276 screens to $971,187, while The Other Side Of The Bed opened in July on 200 copies to the tune of Euros 532,399.

However, the Euros 1.16m figure provided by Filmax trails the opening weekend gross of fellow Miramax-backed Spanish horror film The Others by almost Euros 2.5m. It also places it outside the all-time top 100 opening weekend releases in Spain, a list which only includes two other Spanish titles besides The Others.

Darkness, Balaguero's follow-up to his multiple award-winning debut film The Nameless (Los Sin Nombre), stars Anna Paquin, Lena Olin, Iain Glen and Stephen Enquist in the tale of an American family which moves into a seemingly haunted house in Catalonia.