With a new Neill Blomkamp feature comes a sense of trepidation. His debut, District 9, still holds up as a lightning-in-a-bottle harmony of social commentary and gory sci-fi thrills. Yet his other features since have tried, and failed, to capture that same magic, with diminishing returns. It’s telling that arguably his best work since his debut has been his Oats Studios shorts, where plot was secondary to Blomkamp’s talent for striking imagery and cinematic violence. One would hope those traits would carry over to his latest film, but Demonic seems dedicated to disappointment: an attempt at sci-fi/possession horror that doesn’t seem to understand how to be scary, how to do pacing or how to deliver pay-off.
Like all of Blomkamp’s projects, there’s an intriguing kernel of a concept within Demonic. The director’s first foray into horror follows Carly (Carly Pope), a young woman with dark memories and trauma related to her institutionalized mother, Angela (Nathalie Boltt). Their caustic relationship becomes a gateway into Demonic’s central hook, as a research group recruits Carly to enter the mind of a comatose Angela using virtual simulation technology. Per the movie’s title, it doesn’t take long for supernatural terror to emerge, bridging digital glitchscape, reality and Carly’s haunted past through demonic presence. When Vatican specs-op forces enter the picture, the stage seems set for an action-horror conflict calibrated to Blomkamp’s strengths.
But that kernel and potential only ever remains as such, because Demonic feels like a dozen steps back from even the director’s own Oats shorts. Despite Pope’s best efforts, any dramatic potential between mother and daughter becomes engulfed by tired demon-possession tropes, and repetitive confrontations barely evolve their dynamic of angry confusion and listless cryptic warnings. Taking place in a glitchy game-engine-esque simulation doesn’t add any bite to the drama either; in fact, aside from one visually arresting moment, Blomkamp barely capitalizes on the anything-is-possible potential of the movie’s virtual memory-scape. The entire movie seems engineered in reverse, as if he created elaborate window dressing to justify a neat visual effect, only to do absolutely nothing unique or memorable with the conceit.
That sums up the entire film. Tech-infused occult horror? Heavily armed Vatican black-ops? Those interesting beats go nowhere. The latter is such an inconsequential incongruous tease —to the point of their main action beat happening entirely offscreen — that one wonders if their inclusion was an Oats Studio short awkwardly recycled into the script. If Demonic at least managed to be creepy or tense, those failings might be forgivable, but Blomkamp can’t even pace the film well, let alone maintain a modicum of suspense. The narrative is still dumping exposition nearly an hour into a 100-minute runtime, while its attempts at horror don’t extend beyond excess of flashing lights, contorting bodies and a barely visible crow demon flailing in the shadows. The deflating scares are truly baffling considering the intensity and memorable imagery of his Oats shorts like Zygote and Firebase. The budgetary shackles of Demonic are painfully apparent, ending an already plodding film with an anticlimactic finale that scuttles any interesting aspects for the most generic and underwhelming demon confrontation possible.
Continuing the trend of disappointing Blomkamp features, Demonic can’t even offer neat action or striking horror visuals to compensate. At its middling best, this is an elaborate tech-reel for its simulation centerpiece that eventually remembers it needs to also tell a story. At worst, Demonic is the director’s weakest, most frustrating, messiest film yet.
Photo courtesy of IFC Midnight
The post Demonic appeared first on Spectrum Culture.