Devil in the Flesh

We've seen it all before -- the troubled, love-struck psychopath who develops a deadly obsession with her hunky high-school teacher. She likes him, he rebuffs her, she kills some people, yada-yada-yada...

Rose McGowan is a hottie. No doubt about that. But even her sleaze-pot sexual energy can't save this dud (the fact that she isn't naked in the film doesn't help either). Within thirty minutes, you know what's happening and how the film is going to be resolved (even worse, you don't really CARE).

If you're in the mood for a student-teacher stalker flick, skip this one and pick up "The Crush" instead.

Ever since the phenomenally weird "The Doom Generation" I've had a wicked crush on Rose McGowan. Her natural bad-girl charisma and sexily shaped chin make her one of the most enticing actresses of her generation. Her starring in "Dearly Devoted" was therefore the sole reason I had for checking out the film, as you can already derive from the DVD-cover that it's a standard, by-the-numbers and rehashed nineties thriller. With its main theme of "dangerously seductive teenage femme fatale", "Dearly Devoted" is similar to "Poison Ivy" (starring Drew Barrymore) and "Wild Things" (starring Denise Richards) and almost identical to "The Crush" (starring Alicia Silverstone). Following the suspicious death of Debbie Strand's mother and her lover in a fire, the seemingly confused teenage girl is put under the custody of her strictly Catholic grandmother. At her new school, Debbie doesn't make a whole lot of friends, but she does fall in love with the hunky literature teacher Peter Rinaldi. It quickly becomes obvious that Debbie isn't your average high school girl, but an obsessive and deranged psychopath who kills in order to get what she wants. "Dearly Devoted" is identical to "The Crush" because the male protagonists go through exactly the same hell. They attempt to befriend their jailbait admirers and narrowly resist all the sexual allusions, but when they actually physically reject them down, both their private as professional lives turn into a living nightmare. "Dearly Devoted" is predictable and not at all suspenseful, but at least it's never boring and the female eye-candy compensates for the unoriginality. The twist-in-the-end is not exactly groundbreaking, neither, but at least it managed to trick me for a minute or so. Rose McGowan was 25 years old for this role in which she depicts an underage schoolgirl, but that's alright, because she looks terrific in all those skimpy outfits. Apparently there's also a sequel, but it doesn't star Rose.

My buddy Oscar has been on my butt for months to get me to watch this film... and I protested saying it looked stupid. Well, I finally saw it. It wasn't that bad, but it was stupid. I'd give it one star. Rose McGowan (Jawbreaker, Phantoms, Scream) plays a psycho-teen who is basically a poorly written Norman Bates. It's basically a bad POISON IVY rip-off, without the nudity and sex to keep it halfway interesting ;) The violence is far more graphic, too, making this one a candidate for the "slasher film" genre. It's predictable throughout. I'd love to say that McGowan does well in the role, but at times she appears over-the-top and hammy, so I can't even give her credit for great acting. I've seen countless B-movies which were far better and had better actors. This one looks like a bad attempt to cash in on McGowen's somewhat celebrity -- or her connection to Marilyn Mansun. Stupid.

It's too bad, too. Actor Alex McCarthur (Kiss the Girls, Conspiracy, Ladykiller) has been in a long list of B-films, and does great. He was good in this one, too... but he couldn't save it.

Okay, so the plot was fairly standard, but this film still worked for me, thanks in large part to Rose McGowan. She did a terrific job in this movie, and actually, she practically carries this film single-handedly. To be fair, scenes with the detectives and her grandmother were among the best in the movie, but make no mistake about it, this is Rose's film. This film is also filled with lots of silly humor, but unlike most thrillers, the jokes actually work in this movie. You have to give the filmmakers some credit too, because they took a tired story, and they kept the predictable storyline, and yet, they made a good movie.

If you've seen more than a handful of thrillers, you will almost certainly have seen this plot line before; it's just the basic stalker theme only set in a school. This idea has been used in many movies previously, and was also the main theme in the excellent 'Wild Things' that was also released in 1998. Devil in the Flesh is a very low key film and actually feels like a TV movie at times; yet despite this, it does at least manage to stay entertaining enough for it's ninety minute duration, which is quite an achievement when you consider how unoriginal it is. The plot focuses on a young girl named Debbie Strand. After her parent's house burns down in mysterious circumstances, she is sent to live in a different town with her religious grandmother. She also has to start a new school and gets that same locker every new girl in American school gets (the sticky one that needs a man to come over and punch it). Anyway, it's not long before she starts to develop a crush on hunky English teacher Mr Rinaldi, and she'll stop at nothing to get what she wants.

I have to admit that I have a track record of enjoying low key thrillers like this one, and for what it's worth; Devil in the Flesh is not too bad. It does suffer from a poor script that fails to flesh out it's central characters properly and doesn't contribute a logical narrative, so at times the film just seems to jump from one thing to next without a lot of cohesion. There's also a fair few clichés on display too, which is somewhat annoying and tiresome. On the plus side, the acting is rather good. Rose McGowan was one of my main reason for tuning in and she does the bitchy weird chick thing very well. Starring opposite is Alex McArthur as her crush who also performs well in his role as well as well as Peg Shirley as the overbearing grandmother. The plot moves along at a steady pace for the first half and gets going properly in the second, albeit a bit too fast at times. There's a twist towards the end which is both highly predictable and very unbelievable. Overall, this is a long way from brilliant; but it has a few good elements and there's worse films of this ilk out there.