Hollywood escaped its box-office devils, at least for seven days, with a low-cost horror movie that got the new year with an amazingly vigorous beginning.

Despite the threats to Hollywood producers (and a harshly separated response from the viewers), the $1 million worth movie - The Devil Inside - hunted $34.5 million based on the Hollywood.com estimates.

The first appearance hit two times more than analysts' expectation and helped push the first weekend of 2012 close to 30% more than the same weekend in the previous year. Closing figures are revealed on Monday.

The unnamed horror movie went beyond huge-name holdovers - a remarkable achievement considering that a lot of fans agreed with columnists that the less expensive film was an absolute stinker.

Roughly 19% of the viewers rated the movie with an 'F', according to the survey conducted from CinemaScore. Rottentomatoes.com showed that merely 57% of the total viewers claimed that they enjoyed it, a stumpy score knowing that paying viewers seldom rate a film lower than 60%.

Critics were bitter: Just 7% gave thumbs-up to the picture according to Rottentomatoes.com.

Paramount Pictures, distributor, said that the film keeps on carrying a polarizing image. The release of the movie recognizes that viewers are disturbed, yet loving it.

Whatever the bottom line is, adults including older teens and those at their 20's who had wanted to see something different from the holiday family movies, caused the high profits of the film right after the midnight screenings.

Tim Briody of Boxofficeprophets.com said that it was the first shocker of 2012, adding "it seems that everyone has seen 'The Devil Inside.'"

The known rates of several critics cannot possibly affect the movie's grosses since horror films are conducting business on the first weekend. A fake documentary revealed that the Devil's might result to a sequel, although nothing has been officially declared.