Demonic

Sometimes I wonder which is worse: to be a fan of a team that is consistently good but always lets you down, or to be a fan of a team that is consistently bad. I'm a Notre Dame fan, and under Brian Kelly, they were always good enough to beat bad-to-OK teams, but would lose to good teams. Marcus Freeman has provided a lot more hope, and with that, has come bigger heartbreak. Contrast that with, let's say, the Cleveland Browns, who seem to be destined to the basement of the standings. For a good team, you get higher highs, but lower lows. With a bad team, you don't get the excitement, but the lows are expected, so you don't feel the gut punches; you become numb to it. I'm also a White Sox fan, and no matter how horrifically bad they are, I'll always have 2005. Browns fans... well... you know what? Let's talk about...

Demonic (2015)

We open this movie with a bloody crime scene. A detective, Mark Lewis, played by Frank Grillo, Brock Rumlow from the MCU, gets called out to an old plantation-looking house that was the scene of another mass murder decades ago. While going through the house, he finds one survivor who tries to run for it before he's subdued. Mark then calls the psychologist, Elizabeth, with whom he was supposed to have a date, and has her come out to talk with the suspect, John. From there, the movie pieces itself together from the interrogation and the investigation. Much like Mark, we're clueless as to what happened, and the information gets revealed to us at the same time it does the characters.

A group of ghost hunters is doing a seance in the house where a group that was doing the same thing ended in a lot of bloodshed, but with one survivor. John has a connection to the original group. He's hesitant at first to go along with it, but his psychiatrist urges him to go so he can put the unexplained trauma behind him. Little by little, we learn more about what happened hours and decades before as John tries to remember what exactly took place while police look for the two unaccounted-for people.

The first thing that stood out to me is that John is played by Dustin Milligan, or Ted from "Schitt's Creek." A fantastic show that President Baby used to call "Kid's Creek" before unfortunately realizing the real title. The other thing I noticed is, the character set up as the antagonist, Bryan, is played by Scott Mechlowicz, Scott from EuroTrip. Milligan is good in the role, but Mechlowicz's character is pretty one-note and is set up as a butt from the moment you meet him. The actor does his best with the role, but he's not given much to work with.

I was hoping for something that would get under my skin and scare me, but I was left wanting. I was intrigued by the trailer, and possession stories get to me easily and it was produced by James Wan! For the most part, I've liked or loved all of his work. It's not bad by any means, but I was saddened because nothing has really gotten to me so far this morning, and I wanted something that would scare me.

I did like it, though. I enjoyed Mark and Elizabeth's banter. Mark is your typical detective you see in movies; he comes upon a crime scene and makes some snap judgments and quickly comes to a conclusion, and is hard to shake from it. He's seen enough evil that it doesn't need paranormal explanations; the evil lives inside people. Elizabeth, however, is more open-minded and willing to hear the guy out. Mark brings her in hopes that Elizabeth will break through his charade and get him to confess, but Elizabeth seems to understand pretty quickly that what's going on isn't your normal crime scene.

While the movie starts with the blood already drying, we get flashbacks of the story that show us how we got to this point. Maybe it's a me thing, but I couldn't really connect with most of them because I already saw that all but three get brutally murdered. It's a shame too because the movie had Aaron Yoo, who, although I've only seen him in two things, was one of the best things about the Friday the 13th remake and Disturbia.

Like I said earlier, I was hoping for something scarier, but we get to the point where things hit the fan, the story is mostly told through the cameras set up around the house or handhelds some people are carrying. So we see a lot of shadow, the back of the killer and hectic camera movements as the person carrying it is running from the evil trying to kill them. I understand why they did it; they don't want to give the reveal away too early, but it prevents you from seeing the scary stuff going on. There's no tension because there's no stalking; it just happens and leaves you wishing you could see more.

Speaking of the reveal, it's one of the first things I guessed after it first started, but the movie desperately tries to misdirect you. I don't want to give away too much, but my biggest problem with the movie involves the biggest misdirection. It stinks because it's probably the coolest and most tense scene in the entire movie. It involves a standoff at a gas station, a police radio and John still handcuffed at the house. It's a pretty awesome scene and immediately grabbed my attention, but as we got to the reveal, it was dashed because nothing leading up to it made any sense. When you stop to think about it for more than a second, the reason all of that happened was simply because the writer wanted it to happen. After the reveal, none of it made any sense within the context of the movie. I even went on Reddit to see if anybody had an explanation or an enthusiastic fanboy doing some mental gymnastics to justify it, but I came up empty.

The acting is good. Milligan will always be Ted to me, but he's able to disappear into this role that I was able to see him as John. The other characters in the ghost hunter group are interchangeable. There's one point where a character is doing the Blair Witch shot, an extreme close-up on the face where they talk to the camera, but I had no idea who it was because they all blend together. I loved Brillo's Mark, though. He was funny as the no-nonsense cop who had next to no belief in anything supernatural or understanding of electronics. My favorite line is when the tech guys are trying to get the footage off the cameras, and he asks why they're in the freezer. They tell him it helps with restoring data. He doesn't believe it, but lets them do their thing, warning if they damage it, "There's going to be more murders." I laughed.

The ending is kind of meh, and it seems like it was being set up for a sequel, but considering I had never heard of this movie, despite the fact that it was a James Wan production, it probably doesn't bode well for its future. It's inoffensive and is intriguing enough, mainly because of the banter between Mark and Elizabeth. Those two are the best parts of a movie, I would probably rate a bit higher if I didn't go in expecting and hoping for more.

6.5 Dr. Chainsaws!