So, once again, my optimistic world view is crushed. Last time, I guessed, against conventional wisdom but a bit cautiously, that audiences would take an apparently so-so action film with some good dialog and (mostly) good actors, if not good acting, over an almost certainly weak entry in the ongoing spate of PG-13 horror films that no one over thirteen seems to like.

I was wrong, oh, so wrong. As the good folks at Box Office Mojo demonstrate, “Prom Night” seriously outperformed the last non-pre-screened horror film, “The Ruins” and grabbed up some $22.7 million over the weekend, perhaps partially aided by the unseasonably hot weather out here on the west to some degree. In any case, audiences didn’t seem to hold a spate of recent PG-13 horror remakes against “Prom Night” — presumably because it wasn’t based on a Japanese ghost story from the last few years, but an R-rated American slasher film from when Jamie Lee Curtis was playing teenagers.

“Street Kings,” on the other hand, soaked up an anemic $12 million, just barely edging out “21,” which continues to perform so well at a healthy $11 million that I feel not quite insane in my suggestion that it actually had a shot at winning this rather lame weekend. At least “21″ appears to have an interesting story, so the world might not be ending, even if the weather makes it feel as if it is.

“Smart People,” as expected did pretty blah (or perhaps “bleah”) business, with a rather sad $4.2 million in just over 1,100 theaters.

As for the indies, the drama “The Visitor” opened strong with a $22,000 per screen average in four theaters. The senior-centric comedic documentary “Young@Heart” opened with a reasonably spry, if not quite exuberant, $13,000 average in the same number of theaters.

Kind of an uninspiring week all around, but next week promises to be a bit more fun, with a buzzworthy new release from the Judd Apatow gag-factory and with a cinematic summit meeting of martial arts titans Jet Li and Jackie Chan. Let’s hope there’s not a whole lot of CGI action. I don’t think martial arts fans are wanting another “Bullet Proof Monk.”