Nightcrawler and Ouija neck and neck at US box office

Jake Gyllenhaal plays intense ambulance-chasing cameraman Louis Bloom in Nightcrawler

Crime thriller Nightcrawler and horror film Ouija shared the honours at North American box offices at Halloween, with both films taking $10.9m (£6.8m).

The weekend takings for Nightcrawler, which stars Jake Gyllenhaal as an ambulance-chasing freelance cameraman, were ahead by just $8,700 (£5,400) according to studio estimates.

However the two films could swap places once the final takings are confirmed.

Ouija is based on the board game used by some to try and contact the dead.

The low-budget supernatural horror was last week's number one and is games company Hasbro's first venture into the film industry.

In Ouija a group of teenagers use the board to try and contact their friend who died in a car accident

Brad Pitt's World War Two film Fury was in third place with an estimated $9.1m (£5.7m), while Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike's thriller Gone Girl was still performing well in fourth place, four weeks after its release.

Director David Fincher's take on Gillian Flynn's best-selling book took $8.8m (£5.5m) over the weekend, while animated adventure The Book of Life was in fifth place with $8.3m (£5.2).

With Halloween a big celebration in the US and Canada, analysts said box office earnings suffered from people out celebrating and trick or treating.

"The scariest thing about this weekend was that Halloween fell on a Friday," said Paul Dergarabedian of box office tracker Rentrak.

He said it "hit the box-office fairly hard, with the day down around 40% from Friday a year ago".