The Devil Inside

It's nice to know that the movies are still trying to teach us valuable lessons. Case in point, The Devil Inside - It teaches us the very important lesson that if someone you know is possessed by the Devil, it is not a smart idea to tear them away from the hospital they're currently confined in, throw them in the backseat of your car completely unguarded and unprotected, and then drive recklessly down a busy street with your back turned to said possessed person. What's that? You say that sounds incredibly stupid and completely implausible? That's okay. The rest of the movie is kind of the same way.

The Devil Inside is another one of those micro-budget horror films that are done in the style of a documentary, much like The Blair Witch Project or the Paranormal Activity films. It's easy to see the appeal of these movies to a studio head - They cost next to nothing to make, so even if they flop, there's really no damage done. Just drum up an aggressive Internet and television ad campaign, and you're guaranteed at least one good weekend. Sometimes these kind of movies can be clever and fun. More often, they're banal and uninspired, as is the case here. There's not a single original moment or decent scare in the film's brief 85 minutes. Really, the only good things that can be said about it is that it's not aggressively awful, and it's over before you know it.

As the film opens, we see random news and police footage talking about a woman named Maria Rossi (Suzan Crowley), who murdered three people from her church group in the basement of her home back in 1989. 20 years later, Maria's now-adult daughter, Isabella (Fernanda Andrade), learns from her father the truth of what happened that night - That the people who died were trying to perform an exorcism on her mother. This inspires Isabella to take a trip to Italy, to learn about exorcisms and to visit her mother, who is residing at a mental hospital there. She brings along a documentary filmmaker named Michael (Ionut Grama) to chronicle her trip and her discoveries. While visiting the Vatican, Isabella gets to sit in on an exorcism class, which apparently allows people to just walk in from off the street whenever they want. Oh, and if you listen to the professor's lecture very closely, you might hear him foreshadow some upcoming plot points!

While attending the lecture, Isabella befriends two priests named Ben (Simon Quarterman) and David (Evan Helmuth). They have a hobby, which is to perform illegal and unsanctioned exorcisms on people that the church has given up on. It's a good thing too, as when Isabella visits her mom at the hospital, it seems she's still possessed by whatever caused her to kill those people 20 years ago. She enlists the aid of Ben and David to help her mother. What happens next will be familiar territory to anyone who has seen The Exorcist, or the dozens of cheap knock offs it's inspired. We get people speaking in tongues, booming demonic voices on the soundtrack, and possessed bodies twisting and writhing themselves into unnatural positions. What we don't get is an explanation as to why we're supposed to care about anything that we're watching.

Maybe I missed it, but I don't remember hearing why Isabella brought a cameraman along with her in the first place. And what is her relationship to Michael the cameraman? Did they know each other beforehand, or did she hire him? Even the most minimalist of character motivations are skipped over in The Devil Inside. Instead, we get a whole lot of set up, which ultimately leads to a lot of missed opportunities. The mother and daughter relationship could have built up some genuine drama, but Isabella frequently seems unconcerned about her mother's condition, and it ends up playing a minor role in the overall story. The movie tries to fool us into thinking there's character development by having the main characters talk directly to the camera in recorded "confessional" segments. These scenes don't flesh out the characters in the slightest, however, making me wonder why the filmmakers left them in.

The Devil Inside is pretty much what you would expect for the first major theatrical release of the year - It's not that memorable, and not inspired in anyway. But, it's being backed by an expensive ad campaign, so it's certain to make money. Anyone looking for a movie this weekend would be wise to look and see if any of the smaller December movies that are slowly expanding through January are playing in their local area. If they are, skip this movie. If they're not, skip this movie anyway. There's bound to be something playing that's better.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

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