Half the room loving it and half hating it beats everyone feeling nothing.

A split response means the work has a position, and a position necessarily excludes some people. Universal mild approval usually indicates that nothing was risked, since anything specific enough to be loved is specific enough to be disliked. Absence of objection is not the same as success.

When you get a strong negative reaction, check whether a strong positive one came from somewhere else. If it did, you probably found something. If nobody felt anything either way, that is the result worth worrying about.