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"The Devil" Bears Nada

"The Devil Inside" is a tired exorcism yarn that exploits the increasingly shopworn faux documentary horror trope. While a spare, low-budget filmmaking approach can render genuine chills, in this case the product is underwritten, poorly acted, and questionably edited. The resulting story is hard to follow, and in any case there's no reason to invest in the characters enough to care what is happening to them or why.

The film focuses on Isabella (Fernanda Andrade), whose mother apparently killed a couple of priests during a botched exorcism when Isabella was a child. Having agreed to be the subject of a documentary on possession and exorcism, Isabella travels to Italy, followed by a cameraman, and seeks out her mother who has been confined to an asylum there since the crime. A brief visit convinces Isabella that her mother is still possessed, and she seeks assistance at a local school for exorcists (really?) that seems to be a) somehow affiliated with the Catholic church, and b) open to the public, despite the film's early assertion that exorcism is completely disavowed under church doctrine and that church representatives refuse to discuss the rite.

This is just one of the various leaps in logic that seem to have been woven into "The Devil Inside" at script level. Isabella's motives are clear from the start, but other characters such as the two exorcism students (Simon Quarterman, Evan Helmuth) she enlists to help her are less compelling. Mr. Quarterman's Ben mentions a family history with exorcism and shoehorns his grudge against the church into various conversations, while Mr. Helmuth, as David, is apparently an "ordained exorcist" - again, despite the church's disavowal of exorcism. David grows increasingly fretful throughout the proceedings - which do consist of a couple of exorcisms - that he will lose his job because of his actions. What? In looking back over this film, it seems entirely possible that the script was written in another language and then poorly translated into English before being pushed into production. However, while that may explain some of the film's shortcomings, it does not excuse them.

With the exception of Ms. Andrade, whose performance provides a calm center in a film that probably doesn't deserve one, the rest of the actors appear to be participating in a group improv acting exercise where one's performance has no relation to what anyone else is doing, and each only manages to advance the story by default. Overall, there is nothing in "The Devil Inside" that is new, unique, or interesting. Even the exorcism scenes appear to have been researched by repeated viewings of "The Exorcist", which deservedly remains the benchmark in its subgenre, as well as being one of the defining horror films of the modern era. Chances are excellent that viewers sitting through "The Devil Inside" have already seen "The Exorcist", so what is the point of this dull and amateurish retread? The filmmakers themselves probably can't even come up with a justification - unless, perhaps, it's that the devil made them do it.