The Devil Inside (2012)

The Devil Inside (2012)

The Devil Inside is just one of a number of recent films that are taking advantage of the “found footage” style of shooting.  The Blair Witch Project successfully did it back in 1999, and Cannibal Holocaust did it even earlier (1980) but both of those films were ground breaking in both shooting style and storytelling.  A lot of people actually thought these films were real (The Devil Inside won’t be fooling anybody).  Paranormal Activity brought back this hand held shooting style in 2009 and since then a multitude of other directors have jumped on the bandwagon and adopted this style of filming. 

The way overused found film style of shooting is the first knock on The Devil Inside.  The second is the fact that it also hopped on a growingly unoriginal trend of possession movies.  This film had so many similarities to The Rite that after watching them both, I couldn’t even separate one from the other, except that one wasn’t a steaming pile of trash.  The Devil Inside has an unoriginal, boring and ultimately disappointing storyline.  The film itself has little to no merit, and I’m not even sure if it deserves to have a review written about it, but I’m bored as shit so I’ll do my best to convey my biased thoughts on the film.

The Plot

Basically one boring, somewhat sexy woman named Isabella Rossi wishes to find out the truth about her mother Maria who left when Isabella was a little girl.  Maria, it turns out, murdered three people and was sentenced to intense psychiatric evaluation.  The medical professionals decided, with good reason, that Maria was dangerously mentally ill and needed to be kept under constant surveillance and heavily drugged.  They proceed to move her to Rome for some reason.  Isabella, now all grown up, decides to visit her mother and see if she’s all better.  She also brings her friend, a filmmaker, to help her document the expedition.  After a brief, albeit creepy visit with Mommy, Isabella decides that her Mom is likely possessed.

Gee what gave it away?

Isabella enlists the help of two priests to assess her with her mother.  These priests do illegal exorcisms without the churches consent because fuck authority.  The priests decide to warm Isabella up to the idea of exorcism by taking her for sort of a “bring a dumb bitch to work” day.  The girl who the priests have scheduled an exorcism for is an impressive contortionist.  She deserves to be in a much better film than this.

Somebody read the Kama Sutra

The priests literally ask the demon politely to leave the girl’s body, and it does!  But not before threatening to suck the priest’s cocks, as of course is tradition in possession films.  Why do all demons have to be gay?  After this exorcism goes so smoothly, Isabella can’t fathom any way that her mother’s exorcism will go differently.  The film continues to go nowhere and takes a few confusing twists and turns, then ends abruptly.

My Take

  This film at least attempts incorporate a couple new and innovative ideas, and they all failed miserably.  They used what they referred to as a “Pupil cam” literally a camera that measures the possessed parties pupil dilation.  My problem with this was that the pupil cam was never centered directly on the eyes so the reading would be inaccurate right.  Stupid,pointless idea. 

The story line is extremely dull, and offered nothing we’ve never seen before.  The plot rehashed the same old, “she has a mental illness” says the authorities, “no she is possessed” says the priests.  It’s the same old gaff we’re used to.  The only time I actually felt any sense of fear was in the beginning when Isabella visits her mom in the mental hospital for the first time.  That was when I was still entertaining the idea that she was suffering from a severe mental illness, which would have been entirely more frightening and unpredictable.  Why can’t there be a movie where the “possessed party” is actually just a Paranoid Schizophrenic, or suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder?  The idiotic priests can still kidnap them and perform an exorcism, which obviously won’t work, and they end up unleashing a complete psychopath upon the Vatican.  Possessions are fake and mental illness is real.  A movie portraying someone who is mentally ill and dangerous would be ten times as scary as any possession movie because it could happen to someone you know.   I’m more frightened of old people with dementia than anything I saw in this film.

The main priest looks like a twat and I assumed an immediate hatred towards him.  The second priest is somewhat likable, but unbelievable because of his medical background.  Who the fuck quits being a doctor to become a priest? 

For your health ya Dingus!

It’s retarded, and likely only included in the film to make it seem like the priests know what they are doing and aren’t just a couple of clueless dickheads.  Isabella is boring and the actress definitely slept with somebody to get this part.  None of the characters are compelling at all, and towards the end I gave approximately zero fucks about who lived and who died.  The only redeeming part of this movie is when one of the priests tries to drown a baby named John Thomas (British people refer to their dicks as John Thomas).  Freud would have a hayday psychoanalyzing that.

The Verdict

Watching this movie a second time really tested me, and I hated every minute of it.  It’s unfortunate because this movie has some similarities to another film that I really liked (The Last Exorcism).  Too many similarities in fact.  It was as though The last Exorcism and The Rite had a bastard baby, which they dropped on its head everyday for a couple months, than finally got around to naming it The Devil Inside.

3/10