El juego del diablo

Oh dear, this was painful to watch, in so many ways.

First off, let me say, I liked the premise of this film. A killer app!

Shame that's all it has going for it, the writers and directors, Abel and Burlee Vang, missed so many opportunities to create a good horror film here and were lax with what they had.

The directors don't even try to build any tension or create any kind of atmosphere. They rely too heavily on crescendos to make the audience jump. When I say heavily it was at every chance they had - somebody reaches for a shoulder (BA BAA), a shadow passes by (BA BAA), a door opens (BA BAA), a camera pans (BA BAA), a gnat farts (BA BAA) - and all turned up to 11. Hey, Guys! It's the volume that makes people jump NOT your story.

Then there's the apps name; "Mr Bedeviled"; I take it the college students aren't taking English are they(?) Or they would be a little more cautious in using the app. Then there's the fact that it auto- installs on their phones. I don't know about you but if something auto- installed on my phone I would be instantly reflashing my phone back to factory presets.

Another thing I found tardy was the stolen ideas. The scene where granny does "The Grudge" is sad but extremely funny; I'm smiling now just thinking about it. If I were the Vang's I'd be most embarrassed at their demon who is a pathetic caricature of The Joker, this was really dismaying to see. I can understand why they just kept showing the smiling mouth the full effect is unintentionally hilarious and the make- up is the poorest I've seen.

However, the actors do a passable job with their characters and cope with the bad script in their stride. They at least worked for their money.

I hope somebody takes the idea of this story and decides to do it justice as this could be one hell of a story and one hell of a movie. At the moment it's just hell.

Bedeviled is the latest in a long line of cyber horrors featuring the standard young hot cast as they become besieged by a supernatural force spawning from a mobile phone application.

Now though this hardly sounds like the best of premises it actually works, it's just not handled very well at all.

Shortly in I thought that our antagonist had the potential to be a new much needed horror icon. He looks the part, he sounds the part and his method of killing is interesting and with room for some unique moments.

The writers took the ball and ran with it, sadly they fumbled and dropped it at least half a dozen times en route to the line.

With the right writers and a competent director this could be salvaged and made into a decent franchise, but I won't hold my breath quite yet.

I'm not saying that Bedeviled is bad, it's just not what it could have been.

I gave this one a chance because the trailer made it look like it had a creepy Nightmare on Elm Street vibe (which turned out to be more of an "It" vibe). Overall the film is meh; a movie made by folks who only know life from other C grade films. Cases in point; the group of high school friends don't talk, or act, like high-schoolers (all the females, including the extras in the brief classroom shots, were cast from the "hot girl" casting pool and non of them look younger than early twenties); with two or three brief exceptions these kids practically live in a bubble - none of them have parents, or siblings, or know anyone else at school except each other since they don't interact with anybody or have outside interests and certainly no jobs (they live in super fancy homes yet none of them even have maids, or gardeners in the absence of parents); they know they're being stalked through their phones by an evil app but still continue to go home to their dark, empty houses and stay connected thru their phones. Oh and isn't it lucky that amongst the group there just so happens to be a studly computer genius who can figure everything out for them - possibly even completing the work of a renowned deceased scientist - and yet the evil computer app who knows everything about them doesn't even deal with that threat. If those kind of unbelievable, unrealistic, and totally synthetic behaviors and situations never bother you then you might enjoy this flick. There's one or two decent little sequences (I like the evil teddy bear) and they obviously spent all their budget on some cool effects instead of the necessary re-writes to make the film anything more than barely tolerable. And they saved money by not hiring good actors also. But it seems like all they simply wanted to do was make a movie just like other movies, regardless if those were good or bad.

Sigh... it's almost not really worth the effort to write a review for this film, BUT... at this time there are only 3 reviews here and there are a few specifics that I thought it would be good to mention about the movie that might help some people decide whether they should bother watching it or not.

First and foremost, with a LOT of other Horror movies, especially with a young cast like this one has, you usually have to endure some pretty painful, cringe-worthy 'acting' So, in most cases that would put me off right away. But, that actually is one thing about this film that surprisingly is not too bad compared to most. Most of the young people here, depending of course on the lines they are given, do a fairly decent job of putting their characters across without too many detracting mannerisms. Not GREAT, but slightly above average.

Next, the two brothers who directed and wrote this clearly have a real affection for this kind of Retro Horror story, one that as others here have mentioned, has been done a LOT of times before. The concept that is, not so much the specific source of the Evil Bad Guy. In all honestly, the movie really just doesn't have that terribly much going for it, but the film makers really seem to make an effort to infuse scary, suspenseful visuals and sounds and appear to be TRYING at least to put things together and craft something that comes across as somewhat scary in an old-fashioned kind of way.

I think that if they had taken out a lot of the 'Drama' and perhaps focused more on the research the guy was doing to combat this entity and given that part more depth and background, that might have given the film more weight and substance. As it was, even though that was I feel one of the more interesting parts of the story, they sadly just kind of blew past it and therefore in my lowly and wretched opinion ended up with a last act that was very weak. Seriously, it was pretty bad. The last little tag scene I guess is okay, but I genuinely got the impression that these guys just didn't quite know how to end the story in an effective way.

I kind of liked the creepy, Old-School creature and at least their EFFORTS to try to make it scary. Another thing that was also very surprising to me and is something that usually really drives me up a wall with these types of Horror films, is that the sound design was actually handled quite well (despite what one reviewer here stated, but I think he was referring to the loud jump-scares, not the overall sound design) Usually what they do, and it indeed totally drives me insane (well, MORE insane) is that they usually in a very 'Amateur Hour' kind of way boost EVERY damn sound to super high, unnatural levels. Pouring water into a glass, shuffling papers on a desk, jangling keys, etc... Horrible... But in this case, all the accompanying sounds like footsteps, how the voices were miked, and incidental sounds were actually quite natural sounding and refreshingly lower in the mix, which is NOT the case in a lot of other Horror films. So, for their side-stepping that common and EXTREMELY annoying mistake, I was very thankful.

Basically, what I am trying to say here is that there really isn't a whole lot to get excited about. There honestly just isn't that much too the film. The last act is very weak and leaves you feeling like, 'That's it...??!' But, other than that, I suppose what I'm trying to get across is that there aren't TOO many obvious, stupid things that overtly annoy or detract from the overall story, so you can kind of just sit back and still enjoy it a little.

Think Stephen King's 'IT', but WITHOUT the deeper characterizations and hefty back story. We're talking 'IT' (lite)... VERY lite...

Not really a very strong recommendation I know... I was probably a little TOO generous giving this a '6' rating, but I am SO bloody used to having to put up with all these other horribly irritating things in most films, that I guess I was just surprised and happy that at least they avoided the most common and obnoxious stuff that you usually see...

This flick has a nice plot (not original but fun) and some really gorgeous young actresses (the main reason to watch this).

Sadly there are way more negatives than positives. Sound design is terrible. I really hate the old trick of popping up the volume 1000% when someone screams. Also, this kind of movie needed way way...way more SFX. All you get in this are homemade quality SGI, and quite few at that (The SGI in the final scene are especially bad).

This flick is for a fun night with friends, a few laughs, and watch preferably while playing a board game or something. Enjoy...