I Trapped The Devil (2019)
Genre: Horror/Drama
Who’s In It: Scott Poythress, AJ Bowen, Susan Burke
Who Directed It: Josh Lobo
Plot: A man descends into paranoia after trapping what he believes to be the devil in his basement, but things take a dark turn when his family unexpectedly arrive for Christmas.
Running Time: 82 Minutes
IMDB Score: 4.8
Metascore: 47
Why I Watched It: Honestly saw one good review for it, and it was on sale on iTunes, sometimes I’m that easy.
How I Watched It: iTunes got it for .99 cents but then forgot to watch in it the 30 days so rented it again for .99, I know please be kind to me.
Random Thoughts: I make jokes about my film selection but I actively go out and try to find smaller genre films, honestly it’s what I like to do. I’m at a lost how many film fans just watch the big Hollywood Films, I watch most of them too but I love variety and I love smaller films in not only scale but also scope. You see a film like this and you know someone had to really care about it and wanted to tell this story, also don’t ever thing a small budget means a bad film.
What I Liked: This film is carried by the acting, it’s a three hander and really it’s more driven by character than plot. This is an actor movie, all three get something to do Burke maybe gets the short end but she good here as well.
This is a film where you can see they didn’t have a lot of time or money, they had one location and three actors, I give everyone credit for getting it made and for the most part it’s not a bad film it’s flawed but watchable.
It’s hard to call this a horror film maybe more of a psychological drama, really it’s an s he or isn’t in film, his the lead crazy or does he have the Devil or at least a Demon trapped. On that level it works, the film doesn’t do a lot of scary stuff they build tension and there were two things I would call creepy but mostly this is a character based film with lots of talk.
I do think some of it worked and it did make you thing, they do a good job of kind of making you uneasy, whatever is going on is weird and you get a sense that this is not going to end well.
What I Didn’t Like: It’s boring, I could say slow to be kinder but it’s both Even at 82 minutes it’s long, once we get the set up the film just goes round and round and the odd thing here is that the mystery of is he crazy or not comes pretty clear pretty soon. You kind of just wait for something to happen and nothing does till the very end. Also of course a person does a very dumb thing to give us that ending.
On one level the film does do what it wants but I think this is a short film at best you hit your beats and then reveal here at 82 minutes it hits it’s one note and goes on and then repeats. It had one idea and that’s it, if it could have opened up more and explored what was trapped it might have worked better. Also it’s a very darkly light and very sober film.
My biggest pet peeve of course they don’t answer any questions, a lot is just left and we have to figure it out but of course we can’t cause we weren’t given enough information. They make it vague on purpose and I get that but it’s too vague and it becomes frustrating.
Final Thoughts: I admire the idea and the acting but it just falls flat for me.
Rating: 4/10
