If you've seen a couple of thousand films in your life, you know one of the worst films ever made when you see it. Here's looking at you, The Devil Inside, a complete abomination and nothing short of a poor excuse of a movie. It makes me sad to see even a minority of good reviews for it, because it seems to indicate that mediocrity is the new good. If this is not bad, sweet Moses, what is?
The concept and the plot is a rehash of a rehash of a rehash. It's a found footage film - because that's original! - which begins as a mockumentary about a girl whose mother once killed three people during an exorcism, and ended up in a mental hospital in Rome. Now she wants to "understand what happened" - why bother making it more complicated than that, huh? - so she goes to see her mother who seems to be taken out of a Monty Python skit, banging her head against the walls of her institutional room as if this would be scary and not a piece of absurdist humor.
The Vatican has apparently seminars on exorcism and demons to young priests (?!) and on one of these she meets two guys moonlighting exorcisms, that is exorcisms without Church approval. Are they gonna get the demon out of her mother? Might it escape her body and possess one of the others? Will the film end, just like that? Should all the plot threads turn out to only have been the result of amateurish negligence? Should everything be unintentionally comical? Will anything work at all?
The big problem is the use of the found footage concept. I'm a big fan of this sub genre and the point of these films is that they are authentic, credible, that the audience at some level manages to be convinced that the material is genuine. As soon as we get a reason to fall outside of the film, and watch it as mere fiction, the movie is done for. Many found footage films fail because of the discipline it actually takes from the film makers to make a successful found footage film. But The Devil Inside is on a whole other level of bad.
Had the script been the basis for a standard horror movie it would have been like a worse Exorcism Of Emily Rose or any other exorcist film. It had not been good, because the movie lacks any overall quality: the plot is one hundred percent formula, the dialogs are all with no exceptions clichés that are so tired they become nonsensical and void of all believability, and the movie scandalously ignores any kinds of realism and reality. All that said, had it been a "straight" movie it still wouldn't have been such a howler as this one is.
Sure, already in The Exorcist (in 1971, mind you!) we found out that the Church practically don't perform exorcisms any longer, so the idea that the clergy in Rome are given instructions in the subject in 2012 is shockingly stupid. But in a normal movie, you could have said: Yes, but what about the cinematography? How is it directed?
One can not do such things with The Devil Inside, and that's exactly why it has been made. It seems as if the found footage-trend has given "filmmakers" the idea that you don't have to make any effort in anything to make a buck on a movie. This movie lacks any sign of ambition or talent, any meaning or logic, any motivation for even having been made. The girl in the movie wants to meet her mother. Why is that? She has a demon in her. Why? She meets two would be-exorcists? Yeah? Why is this interesting and exciting? It's not original, so where's the other twist?
Directing-wise this movie is worthless, and the acting is absolutely abysmal, taken straight from Overacting 101 for Amateurs. In the very first scene when the girl in the lead role sits and talks about her childhood, we understand that we are watching an amateur actress who pretends that she is part of a documentary. It is not directed in a way to suggest authenicism, it looks more like a cheap American TV- commercial for condoms. After those fateful first seconds - seconds! - of the film it proceeds to one meaningless cliché after another that throws up loose ends everywhere. I won't even go into the ending.
I do not know how they were thinking when they made this movie, but every little effort - like a story, motivating a plot, ending included - seems to have been too much for everyone involved. Or is it so that those who made this movie is just a bunch of drones who discovered that they can cash in by going to Rome with a DV camera and film some stuff. If so, then this movie a little black Armageddon-cloud in the sky of movies. We finally hit the absolute rock bottom in creativity.
The few positive reviews of this movie are unfortunate. Even if you can see beyond the found footage-format - which the film butchers, thereby rendering it meaningless - and perhaps see one or two qualities in one or two tired and old and unconvincing effects, I feel these reviews are still written by people who are way too content with very, very little. This movie is an essential zero star movie. It is a film no one should have to pay to see - and anyone who checks it out should only do so in interest of seeing one of the worst and most worthless things ever produced as an excuse for a film. That should not be misunderstood as a compliment, or a recommendation.
The concept and the plot is a rehash of a rehash of a rehash. It's a found footage film - because that's original! - which begins as a mockumentary about a girl whose mother once killed three people during an exorcism, and ended up in a mental hospital in Rome. Now she wants to "understand what happened" - why bother making it more complicated than that, huh? - so she goes to see her mother who seems to be taken out of a Monty Python skit, banging her head against the walls of her institutional room as if this would be scary and not a piece of absurdist humor.
The Vatican has apparently seminars on exorcism and demons to young priests (?!) and on one of these she meets two guys moonlighting exorcisms, that is exorcisms without Church approval. Are they gonna get the demon out of her mother? Might it escape her body and possess one of the others? Will the film end, just like that? Should all the plot threads turn out to only have been the result of amateurish negligence? Should everything be unintentionally comical? Will anything work at all?
The big problem is the use of the found footage concept. I'm a big fan of this sub genre and the point of these films is that they are authentic, credible, that the audience at some level manages to be convinced that the material is genuine. As soon as we get a reason to fall outside of the film, and watch it as mere fiction, the movie is done for. Many found footage films fail because of the discipline it actually takes from the film makers to make a successful found footage film. But The Devil Inside is on a whole other level of bad.
Had the script been the basis for a standard horror movie it would have been like a worse Exorcism Of Emily Rose or any other exorcist film. It had not been good, because the movie lacks any overall quality: the plot is one hundred percent formula, the dialogs are all with no exceptions clichés that are so tired they become nonsensical and void of all believability, and the movie scandalously ignores any kinds of realism and reality. All that said, had it been a "straight" movie it still wouldn't have been such a howler as this one is.
Sure, already in The Exorcist (in 1971, mind you!) we found out that the Church practically don't perform exorcisms any longer, so the idea that the clergy in Rome are given instructions in the subject in 2012 is shockingly stupid. But in a normal movie, you could have said: Yes, but what about the cinematography? How is it directed?
One can not do such things with The Devil Inside, and that's exactly why it has been made. It seems as if the found footage-trend has given "filmmakers" the idea that you don't have to make any effort in anything to make a buck on a movie. This movie lacks any sign of ambition or talent, any meaning or logic, any motivation for even having been made. The girl in the movie wants to meet her mother. Why is that? She has a demon in her. Why? She meets two would be-exorcists? Yeah? Why is this interesting and exciting? It's not original, so where's the other twist?
Directing-wise this movie is worthless, and the acting is absolutely abysmal, taken straight from Overacting 101 for Amateurs. In the very first scene when the girl in the lead role sits and talks about her childhood, we understand that we are watching an amateur actress who pretends that she is part of a documentary. It is not directed in a way to suggest authenicism, it looks more like a cheap American TV- commercial for condoms. After those fateful first seconds - seconds! - of the film it proceeds to one meaningless cliché after another that throws up loose ends everywhere. I won't even go into the ending.
I do not know how they were thinking when they made this movie, but every little effort - like a story, motivating a plot, ending included - seems to have been too much for everyone involved. Or is it so that those who made this movie is just a bunch of drones who discovered that they can cash in by going to Rome with a DV camera and film some stuff. If so, then this movie a little black Armageddon-cloud in the sky of movies. We finally hit the absolute rock bottom in creativity.
The few positive reviews of this movie are unfortunate. Even if you can see beyond the found footage-format - which the film butchers, thereby rendering it meaningless - and perhaps see one or two qualities in one or two tired and old and unconvincing effects, I feel these reviews are still written by people who are way too content with very, very little. This movie is an essential zero star movie. It is a film no one should have to pay to see - and anyone who checks it out should only do so in interest of seeing one of the worst and most worthless things ever produced as an excuse for a film. That should not be misunderstood as a compliment, or a recommendation.
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