The Devil Inside

Scary films are a relatively new phenomena for me, it has only been in the last two years that I have watched the classic scary films such as The Exorcist and The Thing and surprisingly I really enjoyed them and the feeling of being scared.

The trailer for The Devil Inside was really good and looked genuinely creepy. Oh how appearances can be deceiving...

The story is based on three murders that took place in 1989 by Maria Rossi (Suzan Crowley) whilst an exorcism was being performed on her. Her daughter, Isabella (Fernanda Andrade) only finds out this some twenty years later and starts to investigate why this happened.

Her investigation takes her to a Catholic psychiatric hospital in Rome where her mother resides (although it is never explained why Rossi was transferred there) and after meeting with her, she is profoundly disturbed by what she finds. 

Afterwards she meets two priests who specialise in exorcism. Ben (Simon Quarterman) and David (Evan Helmeth) are prepared to exorcise Maria to see if they can rid her of her demons.

Before they can do this, they decide to show Isabella what a real exorcism consists of and the person being exorcised mentions Isabella and her situation several times.

We then to the exorcism which David is beginning to be very concerned about doing as priests cannot perform exorcisms without permission from the Church. However, Ben convinces him that it is the right thing to do and the exorcism goes ahead with severe consequences.

I can honestly say that there is nothing good about this film, so lets just move on to the bad things:

1. Hidden footage/shaky camera - filmmakers, this is the worst possible way to show a film. It is not clever, it is just very annoying, particularly when it is done so badly as in this  case.

2. The acting - They spent far too much money on the rubbish cameras to spend it on actors who can actually ACT.

3. The best films have a coherent and engaging story - this had neither.

4. The ending of the film can almost make or break a film - please ensure your next film actually has one.

5. Make sure the marketing of a film makes sense - The posters for this film feature someone who is in the film for less than half a second and isn't even a proper character.

6. Scary films should be scary - This was laughably bad with absolutely no scares at all.

Verdict: If there is one film that could easily be prosecuted for breaching the Trades Description Act, it is this one... 

The Raven

Now, those who listen to the BBC's flagship film review programme (Kermode & Mayo's Film Review) will know that I am a huge fan of John Cusack and that I am the co-creator of the 'Cusackathon'.

So, when a Cusack film is about to be released, there is an element of trepidation. Is this going to be a classic such as High Fidelity or Max? Or is it going to be 2012 or Hot Tub Time Machine? Unfortunately, it's not good...

The film centres on Edgar Allen Poe (Cusack) and the last five days of his life which go from elation to despair to the downright unbelievable.

Professionally, Poe is finding it increasingly difficult to get his work published as his editor reveals that the public only like Poe's gory tales. Personally, however his life is taking a turn for the better as he becomes engaged to Emily (Alice Eve). This is despite her father, Colonel Hamilton, (Brendan Gleeson) strong reservations about Poe's suitability.

While this is going on, there are a number of gruesome murders taking place, the detective in charge, Inspector Fields (Luke Evans) initially thinks that the murders are linked to Poe. He soon realises that the murders are based on murders that Poe has described in his stories. It then becomes clear that the killer is working his way towards harming someone close to Poe to get to Poe. In order to prevent this from happening, Fields and Poe have to work together to work out the murderer's next move.

Although this is a fictionalised account of the last five days of Poe's life, it is just an absurd story, told in a really boring way. Cusack looked distinctly uninterested and as though he is just going through the motions. Evans and Gleeson were good, but not even they could do much with the dire and clunky script.

Visually it looked good, but that did little to save this film.

Verdict: Given that I have been a fan of Cusack since Say Anything, I quite frankly deserve to see a little less of this and other garbage such as 2012 and more Max and High Fidelity. Cusack - get a better agent who can get you into better films...