Demonic (2015)

That was an excellent one.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Blistering performances.

I see reviews here from people who saw this in the theater. If I saw it in the theater, and paid actual money for it, I'd probably give it a 5 as well. But I watched it on Netflix while doing my hobby. For that it's perfectly fun. It's not a great horror movie. It relies on pretty predictable jump scares and quick shots of creepy things. You can see the "twist" coming from a mile away. But it's not terrible. It's acted well-enough, has decent pacing, and the production quality is good.If you're like me and have watched pretty much every other horror movie on Netflix, then you'll probably enjoy it well enough. If you want a great horror movie, though, then you'll want to keep looking.

Moving into a legendary house, a group of paranormal investigators attempts to cleanse a legendary haunting while the police investigation looking into their actions try to find out the truth, and once it all comes together they realize the truth about what happened and try to stop it.For the most part, this one wasn't as bad as it could've been. A lot of what makes this one work is the fact that the initial story and setup of the house itself has a lot of stellar history involved. Not only given the newspaper articles that go into detail about what happened, but the opening attack featuring the police investigation of the accident gives this a solid opening that not only gets this going nicely but gives a rather strong foundation to this one which is nicely carried out by the dual story lines running throughout the rest of the film. With the flashback feature allowing this one to run the investigation angle at the end of the happenings while having their encounters shown alongside this, there's a lot of fun to be found. The setup of the troop inside the house where slowly things become quite extraordinary and managing some subtle spooks with the video evidence turning up the moving objects on the walls or broken light sources that fail to work properly moments after working start this off rather nicely, while the concurrent investigation piecing everything together solidifies their activities nicely by being as wrong-headed in their resolutions as they eventually end up being. Since the flashbacks have everything which includes objects bursting into flame, sending people flying across the room or suffering from actual physical trauma gives this a lot of room to play with throughout here as well as the seance sequence which sets into motion the final half which has some rather fun times here. These here make this one a lot of fun although it does have some pretty big flaws to it. The film's biggest problem is the fact that there's just not a whole lot of interesting elements present as this one goes through the rigors of the familiar haunted house tropes frequently, giving this a routine appearance for the most part. There's a rather familiar feeling here that makes the film feel routine here with the way the concurrent investigations are handled which are all apart of the way the police investigation is handled, making for a rather familiar time throughout here since this one force along plenty of familiar elements due to this feature. Likewise, the idea of the multiple finales makes no sense and tends to drag this one on endlessly since there's a lot of rather strong ways this one could've ended yet the fact that there are just all these twists piled on makes no sense as for why they're all included here. These features here bring this one down somewhat.Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

Ignore the convoluted plot and the history of the narrative, and you have just another haunted house movie where silly young kids who think they are the next big thing get killed off one by one by someone who may be possessed.But add the acting chops of Grillo and Bello, and it takes the film from the mundane into something that is a little bit better than it has the right to be.So to cut a mundane story short, someone believes that a certain house is calling them, so a rag tag team is assembled and plan to do a seance to awake the spirits in the house.There is an element of found footage meeting Rashomon, but that's where the similarities to that film end. We go back and forth to the footage that was filmed, and the interrogation between one of the characters and Bello's Psychologist.And that's it really, we have the obligatory jump scares, people walking around dark corridors looking scared, and an ending that tries to emulate The Usual Suspects.Grillo and Bello are fine making the most of a poor script, but you couldn't care less about the selfish kids who try to summon the spirits.It could have been something quite entertaining, as the story does have potential, but it's executed poorly.

When I choose new Horror films to watch, I usually rely on IMDb posters and synopsis, followed by the video trailer (and sometimes based on proximity, in the list of "users also liked" found on pages of films I've enjoyed). So it was a very pleasant surprise for me to see the name James Wan (a.k.a the Wan and only!), master artist of modern Horror-Thriller, in the opening credits. With numerous triumphs to his name (Saw, Insidious, Dead Silence, and The Possession for instance), James Wan is to me no less than a brand name, guaranteeing top quality modern Horror mixed with suspense and just the right amount of drama. However, in this case - I must sadly say that the film didn't remotely resemble the level I've learnt to expect from Wan. Probably because he was a producer here, not in charge of story or direction.The first obvious characteristic made known is that it's somewhat of a combination between narration and found footage. A detective reaches a murder scene in a house infamous for similar murders 20 years ago, relating heavily to the occult. As the sole suspect is interrogated, he recaps the occurrences of the past few hours, or at least what he remembers. Simultaneously, the police technicians manage to salvage the footage of the cameras placed in the house, and together both testimonies slowly uncover the story. As a Horror fan who really doesn't like found-footage "mockumentaries" - I must say this combination was very well done!As for the acting, those of us who've seen Eurotrip were in for a nice little Easter egg, with Scott Mechlowicz playing the role of blunt antagonist Brian. After seeing him as the comic romantic, his skills in portraying the condescending patronizing ex-boyfriend were pleasantly surprising, the proof of acting talent! Other than that, I found the entire cast to be very good, with no-one standing out in particular.Now for the lesser parts... For starters, the story followed the all too familiar pattern of "youngsters performing seance, things go wrong, enter possession?". The exposition bringing said youngsters together and the overall conclusion of events were the only things resembling originality, with the conclusion part even less so as it's been done in other films. The build up lasts most of the film and does a good job in being compelling and creating suspense, but leads to an anticlimactic and somewhat disappointing ending. It feels like preparing the audience for a major twist, which turns out to be all too obvious and predictable (whenever the adjectives "anticlimactic", "obvious" and "predictable" are used to describe the twist and ending - disappointment is eminent).It's difficult for me to remain objective when the ending is a let down, but all in all I must say Demonic is quite a fun experience. I believe James Wan had no business participating in a mediocre production, but not all things mediocre are necessarily bad. I enjoyed the film pretty much until the ending, and I guess it's worth trying if you're a fan of this particular sub-genre.