The Devil Inside was made on a $1 million budget and went on to score a huge box office return. A few films over the years have opened on similar micro-budgets and gone on to make massive profits, whilst being at the very least good films. For example, The Blair Witch Project, Saw, Insidious – all made for similar amounts and all very highly rated by critics and fans within the genre. The Devil Inside however doesn’t deserve to be in such company. I tried to look past the fact that the found footage and exorcism films seem to have been done to death in recent years, and give the film the chance to try stand out on its own. Well, it does stand out but unfortunately not for very good reasons.
The film follows a young woman named Isabella Rossi on a quest to Rome to try and find some answers about her mothers possible demonic possession. Her mother Maria Rossi committed a triple murder during an exorcism performed on her twenty years earlier. The Catholic Church became involved, and she has since been in a Catholic psychiatric hospital in Rome. Once Isabella arrives in Rome she follows two priests working outside of the Church who perform a series of exorcisms.
It just felt like everything the film did has been done a thousand times before and much better. It offered nothing new, just the standard demonic possessions with some strange contortions and bone breaking noises thrown in for some cheap scare moments. The film isn’t overly graphic, and in my opinion the best parts of the film are when the director actually shows some action whether it be during an exorcism or the standoff towards the end of the film.
The acting is average at best, there are no recognisable stars hence the budget, but this doesn’t always equal a bad film, some of the best films contain no recognisable stars, but nothing acting wise could save this film sadly. I think there were a few good ideas but they were just poorly executed.
As for the ending……..its literally as though the director ran out of time and didn’t bother with one. My guess is due to the massive financial success of this film we will get a sequel. Whether that answers any questions remains to be seen. I’ll be happy if they just make a better all round movie and try and find something new rather than re-hash bits from every previous exorcism film.
I also gave this 3 stars on my site……..I really should lower that score as the film clearly must win this Shitfest competition. Yet to re-score it, I’ll have to re-watch it. If this film wins I will do just that, but otherwise every copy of it should bundled up and sent to the Desert Island with BRIAN.
