"The Devil's Gift" is a low budget, maybe even an amateur horror film, inspired by King's story "The Monkey." Girl of single-parenting father brings monkey-doll as a present for his son birthday. It turns out that in a monkey resides a murderous demon which is impossible to get rid of. When I saw the IMDb rating of 2.4, I was thinking whether to give it a chance at all, but I was dead set to see all the films inspired by Stephen King and not to skip anything. The first half hour is a real agony. The film shows an idyllic life in the suburbs and everything is bright and cheerful and the atmosphere is like in some Disney comedy for little children. In addition, the film is so cheap that it is difficult to classify it as B production. Rather somewhere in the range from X to Z. Literally nothing happens, not even introduction to characters so we can empathize with them later. So virtually redundant unprovoked half an hour. I was at the very edge of giving up on it when the movie finally caught my attention, until finally, I was sitting at the edge of my chair, and even stood up to go and turn the lights on. The story is great, and the film manages to be very creepy and even scary, despite the fact it is happening during the day and despite the complete absence of almost all elements typical of horror. There is no darkness, no surprises, no monsters, no gore. Even despite the terrible production. The end is quite predictable, but the fact that I knew what was going to happen did not spoil my experience at all. I was rather eager to see if I was right, and when the prediction came true, I rejoiced as a child. People resent the lack of nudity, violence, and gore typical of the B horrors of the '80s, but these objections are unfounded, since those elements do not fit into this story. Basically, the only really significant drawbacks are idling in the first half of the movie and poor production. With a decent budget, it might have been a great episode of some horror series, like "Twilight Zone" or "Tales from the Darkside". With better production and run-time between 30 and 45 minutes, this would be a strong eight, maybe more, but this way I rate it five out of ten, more for effort than objective quality.
5/10
5/10