The Devil Inside

What is it about? In 1989, Maria Rossi (Suzan Crowley) murdered three people in the process of having an exorcism performed on her. She is then whisked off away to Rome by the Catholic Church in order to help her. Her daughter Isabella (Fernanda Andrade) wants to find out what happened to her, so she goes off to Rome with her director friend Michael (Ionut Grama). While there, they meet up with two local priests named David and Ben (Evan Helmuth and Simon Quarterman) who want to help them cure Maria's mother, but must do it without the church's consent considering how they are on exorcisms.

The good: The Devil Inside actually gets off to a good start. The opening scene of the aftermath of Maria's killing spree is quite chilling. You don't see how she killed the three people which lets your imagination run wild as to how she did it, adding some fright to the scene. I'm glad they didn't show these murders occur onscreen. It really does look like an official crime scene that you would see on the news. Chilling.

Suzan Crowley's short, but effective performance as Maria will leave a mark as well. Though she doesn't get a ton of screen time, she dominates the scenes that she is given. The creepiest scene in the movie is due to her performance when dealing with Isabella in the hospital.

The Devil Inside is quite a short movie actually. Running a time of 87 minutes is something I greatly appreciate. In fact, I would almost say that I wish it was a bit longer. Though I will save those complaints for the part of this review where I bitch my ass off about what sucked in this movie.

The bad: The performances are a big problem in this movie. Every single other performance besides Crowley's is absolutely flat. Scenery outshines and is more captivating then anything these actors are giving in this movie. The performances are half-assed and the screenplay is flat. You really don't give a shit if any of these people live or die.

Despite airing a lot of demonic scenes on the preview, The Devil Inside is actually quite slow. About 3-4 exorcism scenes occur, and granted I did appreciate those, the rest of the movie is ridiculously boring. Nothing happens except bland commentary on the camera as if this were an episode of Real World where the cast came back from the dead. It's not interesting in the least when someone isn't twisting their head around or chanting "Connect the cuts".

THAT FUCKING ENDING. OMFG. LAZIEST ENDING EVER. Sorry about that. But literally, I can almost guarantee that no other movie in 2012 will end worse than this one. It starts getting interesting as the climax raises but then it drops. It would be as if a rollercoaster would be winding up on the biggest hill possible only to reverse slowly and take the riders back to the exit. What a waste of a potentially good finale. It just...ends. Talk about dead.

The lowdown: The Devil Inside is a big disappointment. It has some cool scenes and has one good performance but that's not enough to overcome the lack of originality, interest, excitement and ESPECIALLY a good finale. This movie deals with the spirits ironically enough, that is how I would recommend you to watch this movie. With a good spirit or two that generally follows you around like a puppy after consuming as much alcohol as possible.

2/4