2012 Review #11: The Devil Inside

The Devil Inside

Rated R

1 Hour 23 Minutes

Starring

Fernanda Andrade

Simon Quarterman

Evan Helmuth

Ionut Grama

Suzan Crowley

Story

In Italy, a woman becomes involved in a series of unauthorized exorcisms during her mission to discover what happened to her mother, who allegedly murdered three people during her own exorcism.

Rotten Tomatoes Score

7%

"The Devil Inside is a cheap, choppy unscary mess, featuring one of the worst endings in recent memory."

My Grade

D-

It feels like we have been bombarded with Exorcism movies as of late. Movies like 'The Rite', 'The Last Exorcism', and now 'The Devil Inside'. Personally, I thought 'The Last Exorcism' was a great movie with a really shitty ending. A few years ago, 'The Exorcism of Emily Rose' came out and that too was a solid flick. These movies usually claim to be based off true stories which usually they are not. I'm not denying that can't be real, because I'm one who believes in this sort of thing. I'm saying that typically when Hollywood says it's based on a true story or true events...it's not. It's a ploy to make more people intrigued and in the seats.

Anyway, 'The Devil Inside' also has the added benefit of being in found footage/documentary style which has also been shoved down our throats a lot lately. I don't mind the gimmick at all, but here it seems kind of pointless. This could have been done with standard filming. The hand held camera just wasn't a good story device for this particular film. The story in general is pretty damn sloppy and all over the place. I wasn't sure if the main story was about Maria Rossi, or if it was about the potential demon inside of her, or if it was about the film crew. I wasn't sure where the central point was while watching this movie unfold. The mother is only in about 2 scenes, so she hardly has that much of an impact in the story anyway.

As far as 'demons' go, this one was just bad. Usually demons in these types of movies play a more pivotal role, they will typically have a much larger voice in the overall plot, but this one had nothing going for it. There wasn't any background give to us or what it's motives were or why we should even give a crap about it or any other character in the movie. We also have the storyline about the Catholic Church and how they have their exorcism classes to their priests and how there are many cases of possessed people that go untouched. We have seen and heard all of this before in these typed of flicks. The Devil Inside offered nothing new to the genre, and all the recycled stuff was done poorly.

There is a big issue over the ending. Rotten Tomatoes called it one of the worst film endings in recent memory. I wouldn't say THE WORST, but it certainly was not good. First off, it ends really abruptly and gives us no payoff or closure or explanation or anything. It just ends, and does so with a bang. The last act of the movie reminded me of the movie "Fallen" with Denzel Washington many years ago. The last act of this movie shows this demon transferring from body to body. But anyway, it leaves us with absolutely nothing. Making the rest of the movie completely and utterly pointless. We don't know what happened to the mother, and we can only assume what happens to rest of the cast given the last few moments. It was a pretty terrible way to end the movie. Then some stupid fake website pops up leading you to a site where you can learn more about the Maria Rossi case. Lame. This whole movie was lame. It gave nothing fresh or original to an already over used film genre. Oh well, it's behind me now. Oh yeah...it was not scary in the least.