In short: Demonic (2021)

Warning: there will be spoilers!

Neill Blomkamp’s pandemic-shot variation on the demonic possession flick about a woman (Carly Pope) having to confront the traumatic past about her mother’s big murder spree a couple of decades ago is a weird one. It’s full of potentially cool (and silly) plot elements like a very cheap looking mind-meld machine that lets Blomkamp use some new-fangled not-rotoscope technique for no visible artistic needs or gains, or the completely incompetent Vatican tactical exorcism squad that hides under the guise of a small town experimental medical company (or something). These things are somehow supposed to live in the same world as a serious treatment of family trauma, which again is supposed to co-exist with characters who tend to either speak in vague insinuations or awkward exposition.

The film’s plotting is a complete mess. Characters have a fifty/fifty chance of either acting completely rational for horror movie characters (like calling the police on encountering the house of a friend empty, dark and with the front door wide open) or absurdly stupid (like quickly agreeing to an experimental mind-meld procedure with one’s clinically insane mother by an incredibly sketchy company, without even telling anyone of one’s idiot decision); important plot elements are introduced at weird and awkward moments, or just introduced in a throw-away line ten minutes before they are needed. You’d think the Holy Lance kept by the Vatican for a thousand years would be a bit of a bigger thing, for example. But then, you’d also think our heroine’s changing view on her mother mind be a central point of the movie, building an actual character arc instead of getting pulled out for a scene or two for some bullshit reason only Blomkamp himself understands (perhaps). Why, one might even think that’s an element useful for a proper, dramatic ending that connects disparate elements of the plot, instead of using a Holy Lance ex machina.

On the positive side, this is certainly not as boring as its absurdly generic title. Watching Demonic, I had the impression of witnessing a fistfight between about three to five different movies of very different tones neither of them ever seems to win, Blomkamp’s script crying out for quite a bit of editing work by a professional, someone who’d provide some actual structure and form to the film’s bunch of cool and stupid ideas, and/or someone able to coherently identify and present the film’s emotional core. Our director/writer/producer obviously lacks these abilities.

Three Films Make A Post: There is a cat in the brain

Elysium (2013): One shouldn't be surprised about the critical drubbing Neill Blomkamp's neo-cyberpunk movie received by mainstream critics. It's a film far too angry about the state of the world for the bourgeois set to stomach. Particularly since it's not at all graceful about its rage and would clearly love to punch you (and possibly me, too) in the face - for good reasons.
That feeling of well-grounded yet quite consuming rage the film shares with its protagonist Matt Damon (in one of his good outings) does of course also cause its final act to turn into a full-grown violent wish fulfilment fantasy with a dash of deus ex machina but then, how else could Elysium not end in absolute bitterness? Generally, even in the real world, power doesn't sit down with the people it crushes under its boots to build a better world, so I don't know how else the film could have ended. Unless you'd argue for bitter and pessimistic, in which case you could of course kiss the money Blomkamp needed for all the pretty SF stuff on screen goodbye.

Maneater (2007): Gary Yates's SyFy Channel movie is a perfectly entertaining little film about a tiger making its new home in the woods belonging to your typical US small town, eating hunters, joggers, and other undesirables. Thanks to a very entertaining performance of Gary Busey as one of the nicest and more competent sheriffs in this sort of movie, the inclusion of a tiger-telepathic little boy sub-plot, as well as of a great white British hunter with excellent facial hair (one supposes for the screenwriter British colonial India is still a thing) it's really rather pleasant to watch. Of course, originality, etc. etc.


Ritual (2013): Original isn’t what Mickey Keating’s Ritual is about either but this quite low budget piece about an estranged couple’s troubles with some Texan cultists highly recommends itself with as clever a use of seemingly low res footage as one could wish for, an idea of Americana bordering on David Lynch, and a highly effective approach to showing its doomed protagonists stumbling ever deeper into trouble. It’s a very simple story but Keating tells his tale so well and with such a fine hand for pacing only the most churlish would mind. In fact, the simplicity of the plot and the archetypal form the film’s threats take on only help make its best scenes (and there are many) all the more nightmarish.

Three Films Make A Post: REIGN OF TERROR FROM EARTH

District 9 (2009): If it was ever needed, this is proof that a maximalist aesthetic can work perfectly when in service of the right material. Obviously, you can have social commentary, an unsympathetic protagonist, Hollywood sentimentality, bloody shoot-outs, moral ambiguity and a finale with a big damn mech on Hollywood money, and you can make it good, if you just try hard enough.

Stuff like Avatar is just not on the same level, even as pure spectacle.

 

Rocktober Blood (1984): While it starts out with ten minutes of everything loveable about the 80s Hair Metal Slasher sub-genre (perverse hair, terrible music, cheesy dialogue, cheesy everything else), this movie credited to a group of inbred cannibals calling themselves (excuse their grammar) "the Sebastian's" crawls to a halt for the next hour only to awaken again for the mandatory "massacre on stage". While I'm all for poking people to death with a microphone stand and death by guitar, even this theoretical highpoint of the cinematic art is destroyed by slow, slow, slow pacing. I'd recommend reading a book (about METAL!, of course) while watching this. That way, you can still enjoy the better parts of the film while not nodding off during the idle hour.

 

Beach of the War Gods (1973): Wang Yu writes, directs, stars and really really hates the Japanese. What a surprise.

Our "hero" and a bunch of under-characterized "patriots" protect a Chinese town against Japanese pirates. More than half of the film - as it seems the only half Wang Yu as director and writer cared about - consists of a pro-longed battle inside the town walls. The battle is stylishly shot (and ironically heavily influenced by Japanese Chambara) and brutal, but isn't as involving as it should be. Turns out that I need to be vaguely interested in characters to care if they live or die, and that Wang Yu isn't at all interested in building at least stock characters.

I prefer Wang Yu when he's either kept in check by the Shaw Brothers production machine or utterly insane. Beach is neither here or there.

 

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