The Sudbury Devil

Movies made by YouTubers are often horrible garbage. Most are made just to be a cash cows while a few others are made with genuine interest. Unfortunately for either case, they often times serve more to make an audience cringe than to entertain. However, Andrew Rakich's "The Sudbury Devil" completely flips this narrative.

This movie is excellent with great acting, cinematography, and directing. The dedication to historic period dress, dialogue, and setting must be praised as one of the best representations of the period. It is up there with the "The Witch." The special effects or practical effects are amazing with extremely realistic gore. It cannot be understated how amazing this movie is on such a low budget (according to the Indiegogo campaign, this movie had a budget of $4,453).

As for negatives, my major gripe is that this movie needs subtitles. Fans of his channel might be able to understand dialogue clearly but there is a language barrier in understanding 17th century English dialogue for the average viewer. Subtitles would help in this regard. Some other minor nitpicks are that the visual effects sometimes look out of place and poorly composited. Another issue is that some scenes sometimes last too long specifically ones of the erotic nature.

I should mention that this movie has explicit sex, nudity, and gore. If you are reviled by such bawdiness I would avoid this movie.

This movie is loaded with themes. Showcasing the disturbing Puritan ideology and the hypocrisy of its followers. The audience confronts the disturbing reality of how the colonization and creation of cities like Boston are built through the genocide and repression of indigenous people, racial minorities, and other so called "sinners." At least that is how I interpreted it.

In conclusion, this film is not without its flaws. However, it remains an excellent piece of media that shows that one does not need a lot to produce a great movie. It defies the typical expectations of so called "Youtuber Movies." I highly recommend especially for the Halloween season!

This had been on my watchlist for a while, but I don't have any recollection of adding it, so it must've been witchcraft.

I love folk horror. I love all those weird superstitions and local legends that manifest themselves in these movies. I love the weirdness and the unpredictability. Yet, there's a truth to them. There's a mid-19th century French book called Satanism & Witchcraft, which argued that witchcraft was adopted by women, because the feudal society gave them no other options for gaining any kind of control over their own lives. While the contents of the book is just garbage, this argument does have a certain proto-feminist appeal to it.

Now, I don't know if Rakich is aware of this book, but the film makes a similar case. Feudalism might not exist in this world anymore, but the driving force behind it, Christianity, does and is still as harmful as ever. On paper, the witch might be the antagonist here, but it is hard to see her as the villain.

On the other hand, our protagonist, Fletcher, might try to play the part of a man of god, he is definitely not the hero. He does not seem comfortable with what they are doing from the beginning, but it takes a long time before we are told why and that's great.

All in all, this doesn't quite rise to the pantheon of folk horror, but is very close. The microbudget does sometimes show, but you can also argue that it gives the movie character. There are some points where the movie, which feels more like psychological horror, looks like a cheaply made slasher and it doesn't really work, but overall that's a small complaint.

First off, This movie is not good. The cinematography looks nice, and that is pretty much it.

I'm not biased by politics and I will actually explain the faults in this movie.

Directing: Oh god what can I even say, It's just the most flat boring Directing I've ever seen, "Inspired" by Robert Eggers, Andrew Rakich just does his best Impression of a Robert Eggers movie, but he's only ever seen screenshots of 'the lighthouse'.

It's just intensified continuity but it holds on shots longer, it barely ever frames dialogue with more than 1 character in the shot and there is ZERO blocking.

Here's a little tip that every good filmmaker knows, For a shot to be visually interesting, it either has to be spectacular (Big beautiful spectacle) which this movie fails at, or have movement.

Movement of actors, Movement of the camera, it doesn't really matter, but when you do a 30 second long shot with no movement whatsoever of a mundane subject, It's just BORING.

Directing overview: Stop doing other director's styles, you're supposed to do your own. And stop taking the audience for granted, There are better things I can do with my time than watching this.

Writing: For writing I will do 3 categories: Dialogue, Characters, And plot/story/structure.

Dialogue: I understand they should speak Old English but you still need to make it clear and interesting, It doesn't matter if it's "More historically accurate" for them to speak how they do, but between the boring directing and the boring Dialogue, you can guess how the movie feels. And not to mention that the dialogue is just so empty and bland with NO depth or subtext behind it, if characters just say what they mean all the time (like this) then the dialogue is bad.

Characters: The characters all just feel like cardboard cutouts of how you'd describe them in one word (Christian, Evil, Weird, etc.) with NONE of them having ANY actual depth. Now this is related to dialogue but just listen, If you want to test whether or not your Characters / Dialogue works: imagine a blind viewer watching the movie, without being told what character is saying what, Will they still be able to tell who's who by the dialogue? If not (like this movie) then rewrite your script and give personality to your characters.

Plot/Structure: Just a generic plot, really just nothing special.

Extra Writing Category (Another reason this movie sucks): The School of Resentment.

If you don't know what the school of resentment film theory is, go google it real quick but it's pretty simple, Movies and Cinema is slowly being transformed into political messages, they only make movies to state their Political opinions, they barely care for the actual art of making a movie or it's story, They just want to give their opinions. This movie suffers from this, STRONGLY, the entire movie Is just Overly political, and If you don't believe me, believe what the cast is saying: Said by Kendra Unique which plays Flora (The demonic woman who falls in love with Fletcher)

"Not only is it about the glory of Satan, but also freedom to be who you are. It's stepping out boldly against this white, Christian colonialist society and saying f*** you".

It doesn't get much more political than that, and movies who are purely about politics have no place in Cinema.

Writing Overview: Overly Political, Boring 'Characters', Shallow deep dialogue and a generic story.

The "Look": This one I'll divide to Lighting, Framing, Movement and Visual Storytelling.

Lighting: Now this is one Area which I actually can praise, the lighting is simple yet quite atmospheric and pleasing to look at. The highlights are exposed a lot of the time due to the color grading (Which is ok but you don't have to Emulate film, not every movie needs to look like it was shot on film).

Framing: Yet another area which I can say some good things about, the framing is often quite nice, WHEN IT'S NOT A CLOSEUP, STOP FRAMING ALL THE DIALOUGE IN CLOSEUPS, YOU CAN USE WIDESHOTS FOR THOSE TOO!!

Movement :None, except for a shaky cam and some rare instances, you're gonna be looking at a still shot, in a non moving world, with non moving characters.

Visual storytelling: Once again, None, I don't have much to say, every shot just shows you one simple thing without ever hinting or indirectly revealing anything.

The "Look" Overview: It looks nice but It never does more than one thing at a time and often hold on shots for much too long.

Other Things:

G0re and S*x: To a point where it gets tiring to watch.

The Acting: Oh Geez, this REALLY REALLY breaks the movie, because at least if the acting was good it would be scary, but instead it's honestly just silly: The actress I mentioned earlier, Kendra Unique, Is the worst actress I've ever seen, no I'm not exaggerating, She honestly acts like a 6 year old girl who's just been told to "Act like an Evil witch" and she's only ever seen Disney movies.

The actress that plays Patience, (yes there is a character named patience) Shows NO emotion, not in a scary demonic uncanny kind of way, but it's just like her face and voice can't express any emotion other than boredom and slight confusion, she delivers her lines and that's just it.

The actor who plays Goodenow, Matthew Van Gessel, is supposed to act like a possessed man the entire movie, instead I just kind of found myself thinking he's doing an offensive impression of a ret4rded man, I don't know what I'm supposed to tell you that's just how It felt like.

All the other acting is okay, I will say Josh Popa (Awesome name) who plays Josiah, does deliver a pretty good performance, especially the Physical acting, not blocking because the Director doesn't know how to do that, but just how he constantly manages to express his character's emotions through how he stands, sits or just looks at things despite the director not giving him ANY blocking, I cannot stress this enough, NO BLOCKING.

The Horror: Damn I forgot this was a horror movie, well that's okay so did everybody else who made it, It is never ONCE scary, I don't even think they were trying.

CGI/VFK: They look bad, that's it.

Overall: An all-politics-no-story boring script with lifeless characters and a basic plot directed in the Laziest way it can be with a youtuber's fanbase that'll just eat up whatever he shits out. Looks nice though.

Don't let the fact that the movie was made by a Youtuber on a shoestring budget fool you. Most of the special effects are practical and they look good, acting and soundtrack are amazing.

Visually the movie mostly resembles Ravenous (there is even a small Easter egg reference to Ravenous in one scene, so you can tell it was a huge influence), while thematically the first thoughts come to The Witch with a sprinkle of Lords Of Salem on top.

There are a few digital effects that mostly gave me Mandy vibes, and only one looked out of place for me. Other than that, everything else is practical and shot in camera.

If you are a horror fan and if you like the movies I mentioned, you will probably like this one as well. It gets a bit trippy at times, but this fits the story just fine and doesn't feel pretentious or forced.

The movie does have some gore, but again, don't think of something extreme, but if the gore in Ravenous is something you're ok with, this will be just perfect (no cannibalism though, don't go into it expecting that).

You can expect historical depth at the same level of The Witch, from costumes to the accents, which are really well played and preformed. Same can be said for the movie soundtrack, it fits the tone perfectly.

The movie basically has only one location, the whole story is set in the forest, however, this is no Blair Witch, it is way better than that.

Objectively, this film is incredible via several metrics. For starters, its budget is used so well that you could hardly tell it was made for less than $25,000. That alone should put this film into the realm of Indie cult classics, but it's further supported by the wealth of acting talent and the well-thought-out, historically accurate script. Overall, it's a fantastic historical film that gives great insight into the mindsets of the average New Englanders during the Puritan era.

All of that being said, it's MOST DEFINITELY NOT FOR EVERYONE. Personally, I'd say I'm one of those people. The vibe of the film was, in my opinion, too occult, too sexual, too gory, and too esoteric for my taste. It's a film that's most certainly not for the under-18 crowd, but that being said, the vibe doesn't take away from the fact that it's very well made.

I finally decided to watch it after being a fan of Atun Shei Films for years, in particular his Checkmate Lincolnites series. I've been a massive fan of his for all that time, so going into the movie, I generally knew what to expect, in that I sort of knew it would probably not be a film that I loved. I was correct in that assumption. I didn't love it, but I was intrigued nonetheless.

It's not a movie for the faint of heart, and it's not a movie for the Karen crowd, but if you're looking to expand your horizons, I guarantee you that even if you don't love it, you'll at least be able to appreciate it for how impressive it is.

So while it's not the film for me, it may very well be the perfect film for you.