It must be January. The shitty exorcist movies are in bloom.
The Devil Inside treats its audience with the kind of contempt reserved for mass murderers, a brazen affront to any expectations we might have for our hard-earned entertainment buck. I felt it most keenly during the ending – a metaphorical middle finger that sent the teenage crowd I saw it with into a frenzy of boos and catcalls – but in truth it arrived much earlier than that. Nothing about this movie betrays any ambition or creativity. It just plugs in the clichés of writhing contortionists being doused with holy water by dour priests, trusting that we either haven’t seen The Exorcist or don’t care how brazenly it can be ripped off. The filmmakers add a conceit from the terrific The Fallen for spice, proving the axiom that most bad movies simply cobble together pieces of their betters like a magpie building a nest. The Devil Inside is dull, derivative and built on a foundation of unfiltered bullshit, and yet it still demands to be taken seriously. Good luck with that.
The real problem, of course, is that it can’t escape the shadow of William Friedkin’s classic, a vision so definitive that we haven’t needed any embellishments for almost forty years. The Devil Inside trucks out the same visual imagery we expect – the maddened patient, the antiseptic hospitals, the trappings of Catholicism intended to vanquish the demon – as well as a half-assed effort to engage in that earlier movie’s metaphysical debate. In an age of science and enlightenment, how is one to differentiate genuine demonic possession from simple insanity? Jason Miller’s doubting Thomas in The Exorcist made a perfect fulcrum for that meditation. The Devil Inside answers with a goofy pair of renegade priests, who scoff at the Vatican’s policy on exorcisms and work to save those they feel have been let down by the system. They play like rejects from a bad cop show, with the Vatican replacing city hall as the “corrupt bureaucracy” against which they rage.
Then a case comes along that promises to get them the evidence they need to be taken seriously. A young American woman (Fernanda Andrade) arrives in Rome enquiring after her mother, consigned to a Church-controlled asylum after murdering three people in 1989. Evidence suggests that the woman was possessed, and her daughter has brought a documentary film crew along to record their meeting. This gives director William Brent Bell a chance to click off as many found-footage clichés as he can: keeping the budget down while subjecting us to another tedious array of shaky-cam perspectives that were old before The Blair Witch Project has a chance to count its profits. They deliver a few shots of Paris Hilton raccoon eyes to goose up the scares, as well as cheap shocks like pets jumping out at us from unexpected angles. Such carnival barker tactics appear in the early scenes as a way of holding the line until The Devil Inside figures out what it wants to do. It never does.
Instead, it regurgitates the expected Rosaries-and-pea-soup nonsense, plying hysterical overacting in an effort to hide its shopworn nature. You can drive a Mack truck through some of the plot holes – like why a pair of priests who could be excommunicated for their work would happily let a camera crew follow them around – but that assumes tighter logic could somehow improve this mess. We stand witness to two acts stuck permanently in neutral, then limp forward in the hopes of big finish. That’s when the floor completely gives out from under it: cutting us off right when it finds some kind of point worth making.
Something about this kind of material continues to speak to people – judging by the Thursday-night crowds they have a big hit on their hands – but even the dimmest audience-goer knows when they’re being sold a bill of goods. The Devil Inside has modest ambitions that it can’t even begin to meet, trapped by its own self-regard and a reliance on the now-threadbare conventions of countless better films. The opening title card brags about the Catholic Church’s opposition to the film; in truth, I bet the Church never even noticed, and why should it? Trash like this needs to be forgotten as quickly as possible.
Huh...figures say that about 86% of the WORLD'S population is superstitious and nonsensical then. I'm Agnostic, so not entirely religous, but I'm not dense enough to discount possibilites.
For the record, at one time "science" said that mud gave birth to toads. Never be arrogant enough to think we understand everything just because it's 2012.
Anyway, I had no plans to see this movie anyway, so nice review, Rob.
No but when shown good evidence to the contrary, science can change its mind....
And science is constantly doing that as we learn more things, Dodgyb2001...totally wasn't out to discount science, just pointing out that it's no more perfect or constant than the majority's concept of God.
You are funny doublerdiner. I have had no desire to see this at all.
Could you imagine what the world would be like if in 1611 Science claim "This is how the world is!" and we blindly followed that to this day? I am glad Science is ever changing.
Science is truth. Religion is blind truth. Big difference. One is constantly changing in it's search for truth. The other only changes when the public demands it.
I haven't seen any positive reviews yet...
I was really hoping this one was gonna be a winner.
However the kind of science that thinks mud could give birth to toads is not the kind of modern scientific method we have now. If our current methods of scientific discovery were applied back in mud-toad days that sort of conclusion would never have been reached. So when comparing modern science to that sort of stupid "science" they aren't really any more similar than the "science" of intelligent design and reality.
But I agree with you that we don't know EVERYTHING. And I also agree that possibilities should not be discounted outright. PROBABILITIES, however...Well, it's POSSIBLE that religious nonsense is correct. However it is so incredibly IMPROBABLE as to make it nearly insane to give it even the most infinitesimal moment of consideration.
So I do disagree about science's perfection vs. perfection of the concept of God. Because one is built around things like evidence, reason, reality, facts and truth and the other is made up fairy tales. Some things are subjective, but does anyone really argue that it is favorable or closer to perfection to believe in obviously made up silliness as opposed to observing reality and being honest and truthful about those observations? Which is closer to perfection, understanding the world and reality around us or some all-powerful entity that got some lady pregnant and killed the kid and now helps Tim Tebow score touchdowns? I'm not so sure that science and this God character stand on equal ground in the perfection arena...
But alas, this movie looks SO cheesey!!!
PS-Thanks Mossy!
Doubler diner is being polite. There is absolutely no way that the silly faerie tale nonsense that you'd find in any ancient religious text has any basis in fact. Most of these tales were passed along orally for several decades before anything was even written down. Of course then the already dubious accounts were translated through dead languages, edited to suit religious & political leadership agendas, rewritten, mistranslated again & then completely misused, misunderstood & manipulated through the ages. Given recent scientific research into the reliability of memory, these stories were garbled nonsense before chisel was put to stone or quill put to parchment. A kindergarten game of telephone aptly demonstrates the way an unreliable chain of custody can completely distort a given piece of information. Any relevant data that made it through the ages unscathed generally boils down to common sense & common human decency. The goodness of the individual being is inherent to the individual, & is in no way dependent upon an outside metaphysical force or supernatural phenomenon.
Science evolves & reexamines itself & is in a continuous state of refinement, as humans learn more about the nature of the world & the universe, whereas religion is an abstraction at best. There is zero factual evidence to support 99% of religious claims. They're just ideas, they're man made & usually are usually contradictory.
First clue...it wasn't screened for the critics. Second clue...it is an exorcist movie. Third clue...released the first week of January. If that doesn't stop you...you are clueless.
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"Between science and religion..."
Is nothing. The two don't actually mix. One is made up nonsense and superstition and the other is SCIENCE!
This movie LOOKED terrible, I feel bad for Rob for actually having to watch it.