Devils Stay

The movie follows the usual exorcism movie rules, unfortunately it does so in an extremely sluggish manner. The cultural influences may play a part here, but it was very tedious in the long run. I still watched it to the end because I wanted to know how they resolved it.

The movie had some nice images to offer, but that was about it. The trailer was scarier than the final movie. In terms of quality and acting, it was okay. Unfortunately, the role of the father, who hovered between madness and grief, was a little too annoying in some shots.

All in all, not necessarily entertaining but perhaps worth a try for fans of exorcism films.

Following his daughter's death, a heart specialist doubts the claim that she's really dead and sets out to prove that she's still alive even after the fatal heart attack from a grueling exorcism felled her, but as the priest tries to save her finds the grieving father unable to trust his claims.

Overall, this has quite a lot to like about it. Among the main positive attributes is a strong and engaging story that sets up a far more heartbreaking feature than expected. Initially exposed to everything through the aftermath of the exorcist and the consequences around what happened to the daughter, as the experience left her dead, backtracking a bit to understand how we got there is quite intriguing. Offering a strong build-up of the family dynamic between her and her father that helps to understand not just his grief at everything, but the motivation to let the event play out as it does with their past involving how she got possessed and what went through the exorcism itself. This is aided along nicely not just with the impressive work to showcase the grieving family coming to terms with everything but also the follow-up inquisition on the priest who performed the fateful exorcism that killed her to see what went wrong, allowing for a great setup involving the different family dynamic at play but also getting a chance at building up a solid supernatural presence. As this gets explored, the more overt supernatural references in the film manage to build an immensely intriguing feature. The steadfast belief that she is still alive causes no shortage of hauntings based on her father's inability to grasp what's going on, leading to demented freak-outs trying to convince others she's not truly dead. Being based on standard hallucinations and visions of the body performing unnatural features for something it shouldn't be doing while dead, the idea is extrapolated quite nicely with the build-up focusing on the father overcoming the guilt of himself possibly having killed her with the heart transplant he performed on her while the later scenes featuring more traditional tropes of the genre work quite nicely. With the encounters featuring the possessed individuals going through the usual manner of setpieces, including speaking in tongues, levitating, growing veins across the body, or displaying unnatural scratches that are usually associated with the genre, there are some fun aspects here that hold it up quite nicely. There aren't too many drawbacks here, but they do have an impact. The main issue is the extremely chaotic storyline that might do well at integrating several fine features, but also manages to be quite complex for its own good. The main concept of grief over what happened to the daughter, causing him to act out the way he does, is fine enough, but the way the priests' backstory, dealing with demons or other possessed individuals, tormenting him, doesn't serve much purpose, as it's mostly abandoned for long stretches. Even his possession is brought up and used as a motivating factor, but then gets dropped, which makes the inclusion pointless, quite like a subset of Russian immigrants who practice Satanic worship that's used as a possible cause for everything. The main ideas here work incredibly well, but there's way too much going on for what's happening in the film. As well, the expected and traditional tropes of the genre are out in full force, from the priest with the troubled past, the hysterical family member going to extremes to prove something to doubtiers, and swarms of animals appearing that signify supernatural possession that are mostly retreads of numerous other entries making the film come off like a routine example of the genre's formula. These all manage to bring it down somewhat.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.