The Devil Inside â Review by Aussie
Wow, a new review on The Hammer! Yes, it's been a very long time, and as Scott has said below, there won't be too much activity round here 'till next year. I did however just have the pleasure (well, not really) of seeing this horror movie (on DVD of course) and just wanted to share my personal thoughts about it. Oh, there will be spoilers here, but I'm guessing you've already seen this. If not, then don't worry â I'll tell you all you need to know. So here you have it: 'The Devil Inside'.
As you can see from the good ol' 'Tomatometer' up top, this is viewed by most as a pretty crap movie. That's not to say it doesn't have any good points. They are just completely outweighed by a generally shocking script, retarded (at times) acting, a storyline I'm pretty sure was constructed by a 10 year old, and just being completely direction-less. Not to mention the ending. But I'll get to that later...
Okay, so a bit of background. The story is about a woman named Maria Rossi, who was sent to a psychiatric ward in Rome, after killing three people as they performed an exorcism on her. Here we encounter the first problem. In what situation would a criminal who is a citizen of the United States be sent and accepted by an institute in a foreign country? That just doesn't happen. The film-makers try to make that part of the 'mystery' of the film, when in fact it is just part of the stupidity of the film. Maria's daughter, Isabella, goes to Italy with her friend/cameraman, Michael, to shoot a documentary on what is wrong with her mum.
Soon after arriving in Italy, she finds herself at some sort of 'exorcism class', in an attempt to work out why her mum flipped out while undergoing the exorcism. The 'exorcism class' was the first time the real 'cringe-worthy' acting came out, which was not helped by a ridiculous script which tried to make the characters sound genuine, but in reality made them sound like they were subject to some sort of heavy brain trauma, from which they never recovered. Isabella makes a couple new pals at this class, two (British?) priests named Ben and David. These characters are full of contradictions, but I won't go into detail as it's not worth the effort. But basically it's Isabella, Mike and their two new religious buddies trying to 'uncover the mystery'. Oh God...
Isabella and the gang head off to go watch the exorcism of some other crazy bitch, which is performed by Ben and David. It is successful of removing the devil inside her (see what I did there?). This gives Isabella the inspiration (?) to go perform the same procedure on her mum. Good idea Isabella! The last time she had an exorcism done to her, she brutally murdered three people! Let's see if she'll do it again, hey?! Anyway, they go perform the exorcism on the mum, she doesn't kill them (unfortunately), and we assume it all went well. Notice that I use the word 'assume'. You want to know why I chose that word? It's because they don't fucking show the mum again for the rest of the film! In fact, they don't even show her after she is cured! This is only half way through mind you. Isabella puts so much time, money and effort into curing the mum, and then never talks to her again. What the fuck?
If you were thinking the movie was substandard until this point, it now takes a turn. A bad turn. It becomes even more pointless, and basically just fucks about until it just hits the 80 minute mark, in order for it to be actually classified as a feature film. I can't be bothered describing what happens here in detail. Basically Mike starts whining about Isabella being a bitch, Isabella whines a bit about Mike for some other reason, and the priests continue to act nothing like priests. Eventually, one of the priests actually gets possessed by the devil (the twist?), though we are not properly explained how or why. He almost drowns a baby at a baptism, and eventually kills himself.
By this stage, the movie has been going for about 76 minutes, but they really want it to hit the big 80. That's why they add another twist. Isabella gets the devil inside her. No-one explains how or why. Yet again, they fuck around for a couple minutes, but once the film reaches the 80 minute goal, the film makers decided to quickly abort the film, before they opened any more holes. So how does the film actually end you ask! Well, very quickly. They all die in a car accident. Yep. That's the end. No questions are explained. All doors are left opened. The just killed them off to avoid further explanation.
Now that I have ruined the little suspense of the storyline for you, let's talk about why it was shit, but also some of it's good aspects. As I explained, it was shit because it was not thought out. The storyline was full of holes, inaccuracies, and oversights. The characters were extremely shallow, and did not appear natural in their behaviour. Questions were raised and never answered, and the second half of the movie was simply filling up time. Oh, and on another note, you remember the nun with the weird eyes you saw in the trailer (see above)? Well, she is only in the movie for a 2 second shot, and isn't even part of the movie. In fact the trailer is probably better made than the movie.
Now, as for good points, you could argue that the beginning of the film did a good job at sucking you in to the storyline, despite it's problems. I liked the fact it did take place in Italy, even though that didn't really make sense. It also had a few 'Paranormal Activity' style 'jump out of the seat' scenes, but you could always pick them coming. And it's not like that takes a lot of effort to make. This was also a handy-cam movie, which is a style I believe either totally works, or totally fails. This was on the fail side, seeing as during a few of the key scenes, Mike conveniently had to put the camera down. I'm trying to think of more positives, but I just can't.
The Devil Inside is cheap attempt of getting the same success achieved by low budget film such as 'Blair Witch Project' and 'Paranormal Activity'. It just goes to show that handy-cam low budgets still need to have a certain 'spark' to work; something 'The Devil Inside' just doesn't have. I'm done talking about this movie now. There's nothing more to say. Don't watch it unless you want to spend the time laughing at all the plot holes.
izzy806
blakekathryn
vaporwave
tangentwithtanner
jacobvanloon