I watched "Devil Inside" without seeing the trailer. From the first frame, it already tells us that it would play out like a documentary about Exorcisms, unauthorized by the Catholic Church. Aha! Another found-footage film in the tradition of "Blair Witch" and "Paranormal Activity."
Like those other two aforementioned films, the build up of the action was very slow. This film follows Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade) as she investigates how to help her mother Maria (Suzan Crowley), who had been locked in a mental institution in Italy after she killed three religious personnel who were apparently in the process of exorcising her.
The first 30 minutes or so were spent as a rather pedantic discussion about exorcism. When the investigator goes with a young exorcist Fr. Ben (Simon Quarterman) to an actual exorcism, that is when the film becomes interesting. The team encounters Maria only by the first hour already. The last 15 minutes were an unexpectedly bizarre turn of events which unfortunately end as soon as they were built up.
I don't know how to rate this film. Maybe there is only so much that can be done about exorcism in film, and there had certainly been so many such movies already, almost every year. "The Devil Inside" at least tries to be different with a serious documentary approach to the events. It is not as bad as scathing reviews would have you believe. These bad reviews may actually be good for you as they would temper your expectations, and make you like this film more. And no, they did not play the INXS song here.
No comments:
Post a Comment