The Devil Inside Review

In 1989, Maria Rossi committed three murders in the midst of an attempted exorcism. Twenty years later, Maria's daughter Isabella is filming a documentary about exorcisms, and hopes to uncover more about what happened to her own mother through a series of unauthorized exorcisms and a visit to the psych ward in Rome housing Maria herself, though she may have wished she stayed in America...





Well as you can tell from my last review, I've been feeling like a sadist lately and have the urge to satiate myself with atrocious cinema. And what luck! William Brent Bell's found footage film The Devil Inside might be just the film to fulfill that need. Oh Mr. Bell, I haven't forgotten about you. After all, your laughably bad 2006 horror film Stay Alive spawned an early, if not short lived, internet meme did it not?

First and foremost, let's face facts: the found footage genre is already running it's course. True, we'll get a gem like Troll Hunter once in a while, but outside of that, most of it is comprised of sequels, remakes, or "more of the same." The Devil Inside falls into the category of the latter, though it isn't derivative of better found footage films, but just better horror films in general. Shades of The Exorcist, [REC] (okay, that IS a found footage film, but bare with me), and even Evil Dead II can be found here, except with none of the soul or scares that peppered those releases. And no, I don't count having cheap jump scares as real scares these days, you should be able to induce fear without the means for that cheap tactic. Above all else though, while the film is soulless and outright eye-roll inducing with it's insistency that this could be legitimately real, it is agonizingly tedious and boring. I was struggling to even make amusing commentary while viewing it due to how uninteresting it turned out to be. Mind you, this is a film about possession and exorcism, two subjects that can still instill terror in the hearts of most people these days, so that certainly wasn't the best of signs. Chemistry between all actors and actresses present seems to be nonexistent too, as Isabella's concern for her mother felt rather forced and not genuine whatsoever, and the priests assisting her in her documentary display Wiseau-level acting at times.

When the film isn't boring you to death, it gives you some truly unintentional comedic gold. Heck, I laughed more at this than A Thousand Words, though I suppose that wasn't hard considering that the latter got approximately two chuckles out of me. Scenes of Maria having her fits on camera are too reminiscent of those "drunk and drugged out prisoners" scenes you'd find on a TRU TV special from the 2000s. A scene with a priest attempting to drown a baptized infant in holy water had me laughing instead of being shocked, but then again, I also masturbated furiously to Visitor Q, so maybe I'm to blame rather than the film.*

All of that being said, there IS one glaring problem most audiences, even those who enjoyed it, have had with the film. I feel the need to say that I can't recall the last time I've witnessed a more ridiculous or flat out INSULTING ending to any film, be it horror or not. It did the honor of taking this film out of the "bad, but mostly just forgettable" territory into the "FUCK. THIS. MOVIE." territory, and all within less than ten seconds. I'd spoil it here just to piss off those who do have any interest in spending their hard earned money on it, but I feel that by even typing it out, I may be sent into an uncontrollable rage, and that it might result in a broken keyboard. So instead, I insist that you just ask me in person or on one of those social networking sites that seem to be all the rage these days.

The Devil Inside might have been one of the first films released this year, but it also stands as one of the worst. Its an unoriginal, stupid, non-threatening, and weak attempt at horror that just continues to prove how much the American horror movie market is hurting. The film's early buzz presented it as "The film the Vatican doesn't want you to see!" and I can only guess that can be due to the Vatican having better taste than most people would believe (and this is coming from a pretty stern agnostic). I know for a fact that WBB is working on a third project in the horror field set sometime for a 2013 release, and I'll bet my entire vinyl collection that one of two things will occur prior to it's release:

-It won't be released in any month not named January or February.
-Movie studios WON'T advertise it as "From the Director of The Devil Inside."































































*No, I didn't really wank it to Visitor Q you silly billies. Cigarette Burns on the other hand...