REVIEW: The Devil Inside

The horror genre is over saturated. There are too many films that use the hand-held, "found footage" style (see The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, The Last Exorcism and REC) and there are also plenty of religious horror films about the devil and exorcisms (see The Last Exorcism again, The Exorcist, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and The Rite).

So, what does The Devil Inside have that these films do not? Well, nothing really.

In a market that has to tread the difficultly thin line of giving us (the audience) what we want in a horror film (scares, jumps, gore - maybe - a few moments of light relief and some romance) while not being completely repetitive of what's come before it. The Devil Inside fails to really do any of this. It's not really a horror film, because it's not scary enough in the slightest, and it's not really giving us anything new (for a religious exorcism film we have body contortions, speaking in tongues and the demon tormenting the young priests through cursing at them). It's just all been done before.

The film follows young Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade) who is visiting her Mother, Maria Rossi (Suzan Crowley) at a mental institution in Rome after she has been locked away for murdering three people during an exorcism. What follows is more of a documentary than a horror film, as Isabella, her cameraman friend Michael (Ionut Grama) and two young priests practice their exorcisms rites and attempt to free Maria of the multiple demons that have possessed her.

For the first half of the film I was really losing interest. The film was marketed as a straight up horror film, promoting the creepy Mother, Maria fully in the forefront and even having one of those 'audience reaction' trailers to show us how scared people were when watching it. Well, I wasn't scared. I was bored.

I didn't want to be told all about the religious beliefs behind exorcisms. I'm not religious and I got all that I needed to know from watching The Exorcist. The idea of a mental hospital for the "religious insane" in Rome was an interesting idea, but it really wasn't developed at all. The most we got was Isabella staring out of the window at a few "crazy" inmates for about 30 seconds. I wanted to know their stories too, as well as Maria.

I've noticed too that the "hand-held" genre is a good way for studios to hide a multitude of sins in their filmmaking. The shoddy camerawork can hide a lot - bad sets, bad acting, bad costumes, bad props etc. However, the camerawork was so bad in this film at some points that I was honestly getting dizzy and feeling a bit ill. The amount of times that the camera was zooming in and out and then loosing focus was mind-blowing. Also, there was absolutely no point for this film to be found footage. At times it was just unbelievable for even the little things, which truly took away from the "real" feel of the film. One example is when Michael, the cameraman, is filming Isabella from far away as she knocks on the door of the priest's house and then it cuts to a close-up when they answer it. Another one would be the completely awkward scene when Isabella meets her Mother for the first time - the doctors at the institute leaves Isabella with her dangerous Mother alone with only a stranger holding a camera as company...

The film also fails to hide some really dire acting. Some lines can't help but feel staged (a bad thing in a found footage, "real" film), but the acting from Suzan Crowley (Maria) is pretty spot on throughout. Also, the staging of some scenes just felt awkward (I've already mentioned the tag along cameraman, but the whole idea of the exorcism school came across as a bit cheesy. Our characters enter a classroom just as the teacher mentions how demons can jump from body to body... hmmmm, is this a clue for later on in the film?!!)

However, it's not all negative. When the film gets towards it's finale and they have performed the exorcism on Maria, it really kicks it into the horror gear. There is a pretty tense (but very short) scene where one of the possessed is trapped in a bedroom upstairs and the Italian police raid the house. But, the police verge on being bumbling and idiotic - one of them looses their gun in a matter of seconds.

The final scenes with Isabella in the hospital at the end is also pretty tense. I don't want to say what happens because it will be a major spoiler, but it's pretty predictable. I guessed what would happen within the first few minutes. But, it's not too bad, because it's pretty entertaining, it's just over far too quickly.

All you need to do is do the most basic online research and you will see that a lot of people are not happy with the film's ending. In America, apparently it ends with a title card telling the audience to visit a website to fill in the blanks - how lazy is that?!! However, I didn't see this title card when watching the film in the UK. Instead, we just got a smash cut to the end credits after a rather bleak and sudden ending to the film.

So, overall the film isn't exactly what it makes itself out to be. I can't help but feel cheated from the promotional advertising of this film, because it's most definitely not a balls out horror film that it makes itself out to be.

** / *****