The Devil Inside is off to a scary-good start at the box office.

Paramount's R-rated horror film grossed $2 million at 1,400 locations at midnight showings Thursday night. With that take, The Devil Inside has already doubled its production budget of $1 million -- and is now in good position to claim the #1 spot at the weekend box office.

The results are even more impressive when compared with last month's opening-night performance of Sherlock Holmes 2: A Game of Shadows. The Warner Bros. movie, which had a production budget of $125 million, opened with $1.25 million at 1,650 midnight shows December 15.

Paramount has been heavily promoting The Devil Inside. The studio has estimated that the movie -- which has a 7 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes -- will make $8 million in box-office receipts. Rival studio estimates, however, have the film opening at between $12 million and $16 million. BoxOffice.com predicts it could take in as much as $23 million.

The Devil Inside, the only new movie opening in wide release this weekend, is about a woman whose mother has brutally killed three people. Twenty years later, she travels to Italy, where her mother has been committed to a hospital for the criminally insane. There, the young woman convinces two young exorcists to cure her mother -- but they find four powerful demons.

The movie has no established stars and was written by William Brent Bell and Matthew Peterman, with Bell directing and Peterman producing.