The Devil Inside
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Tagline: No Soul Is Safe
Without wishing to disrespect the movie industry, it’s safe to say that early January is often the place to find films being tucked away by studios who know that there’s no point expecting them to find a significant audience amidst the Christmas blockbusters and late Oscar hopefuls.
And this week perfectly proves the point. The Devil Inside sees director William Brent Bell take a page out of Paranormal Activity‘s playbook, by being a horror movie that purports to follow a family using handheld and security camera videos to give a sense of real-life events. And those events relate back to 1989, when emergency responders received a 911 call from Maria Rossi (Suzan Crowley) confessing that she had killed three people. Twenty years on, her daughter Isabella (Fernanda Andrade) tries to figure out the truth about what really went down on that infamous night.
Mainstream critics aren’t exactly altogether keen to share their views. But the horror community seems to be on board. According to Dread Central, “The Devil Inside is home to moments that will shock, scare, disturb, and leave you gasping. It’s a trip to the dark side that’s well worth taking.” And Artist Direct, while awarding the movie 4.5 stars out of 5, is possibly (or not) coming across as sarcastic by labelling it “the first must-see film of 2012.” Thus far, it’s pretty much the only film of 2012.
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Beneath the Darkness
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Our next must-miss candidate of the week is Beneath the Darkness, which stars Dennis Quaid as Ely Vaughn, a mortician in the small town of Smithville, Texas. Death also pervades this film as ever since his wife died two years earlier, the locals have been spreading stories of supernatural goings on at Ely’s mansion (which, naturally, doubles up as a funeral home).
And when his high school friends Travis (Tony Oller), Abby (Aimee Teegarden), Brian (Stephen Lunsford) and Danny (Devon Werkheiser) decide to investigate, they are, of course, shocked to discover a long-hidden secret. Ely is not what he seems.
It sure sounds hackneyed and you’d do well to find a critic who would disagree. “Doesn’t even have the pulse-pounding excitement of a second-tier Scooby-Doo mystery,” writes The Village Voice, getting in an early claim for zinger of the year. Slant was equally unimpressed: “Overly expository dialogue abounds, as do questionable filmmaking choices and plenty of stupidly unconvincing actions taken on the part of the film’s characters.” By the sounds of it, Dennis Quaid may never quite recover from being involved in this kind of darkness.
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NewsFeed’s Flicks Pick: We’re honestly not trying to cop out here but if ever there was a weekend to catch up on those holiday movies you didn’t get around to seeing, this is it.