MUMBAI: Vikram Bhatt’s latest Bollywood offering ‘1920: Evil Returns’ directed by Bhushan Patel starring Aftab Shivdasani, Tia Bajpai and Sharad Kelkar,has surprisingly opened quite well at the box office in its first weekend.

A horror film, which most critics have labelled as ‘inspired’ from William Friedkin’s ‘The Exorcist’ (1973), has managed to attract a large portion of cine-goers on its first day of release on November 2, as well as the following weekend.

On Friday, the film opened with a robust approximate Rs 40 million (Rs 4 crore) net.

This is highly unexpected, because the film does not star any A-Lister. Higher response for the film has been received from Northern India – Delhi, UP, Punjab, Central India. In Mumbai, it is the multiplexes which have given ‘1920 Evil Returns’ the most business.

The collections took a slight dip on Saturday, but seemed to pick up on Sunday with about 55% occupancy.

The total three day figures of the film are in the range of Rs 122.5 million (Rs 12.25 crore) net.

Vikram Bhatt who seems to love doing the horror genre as well as carrying forward his films in many sequels, has been enjoying a good streak at the box office with his last two films. His previous – ‘Raaz 3’ with Emraan Hashmi, Bipasha Basu and Esha Gupta also turned out to be quite the crowd puller.

‘1920 Evil Returns’ a quasi-sequel to Vikram Bhatt’s 2008 film ‘1920’ should hold up adequately over its first week.

However, beyond that for a film in this genre, it becomes tough to sustain. Especially given that in the coming week, i.e. Diwali, two mega releases of the year – Late Yash Chopra’s ‘Jab Tak Hai Jaan’ starring Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, Katrina Kaif and Anushka Sharma, as well as as Ajay Devgn’s ‘Son Of Sardaar’ are all set to hit the screens.