Shookum Hills

'The Devil Below' is also known as 'Shookum Hills'. Like many other horror films, this one starts off interesting and mysterious, and then plummets to all too familiar, cliched ground.

The sub-standard visual effects makes it hard to believe 'The Devil Below' was made in 2021. Even some 80's films incorporating demons or devils have better monster effects. The film's first half was eerie and ominous, but I must admit I never really cared about any of the stereotypical characters. Alicia Sanz tried so hard to act all macho as the film's heroin Arianne, but I didn't really buy it. And as for Schuttmann (Will Patton) who saves the day, this character was only there when he was needed. He didn't really contribute much to the film, despite him harboring a grudge against the creatures.

The film gave me a sense of 'Silent Hill' vs 'The Descent', only not nearly as good as any of these. The last few minutes are also too weird, and badly photographed.

Would I watch it again? No.

I wanted to like this movie, but it was just ok. The acting is solid and some great atmospheric moments. The story is not all too original but still intriguing. Where the movie fails for me is in two spots. First, yes I know it is mostly at night, but parts are just too dark for the human eye. Second, the whole film is based around the monsters that we hardly get to see enough of. Worth a watch but keep your expectations low.

It might have been a good film but I will never know, it was filmed in stygian darkness, who was doing what to who and why will remain a mystery, as I could not make out what was going on, and why did they not call in the US Army to deal with whatever it was? filming great parts of films in darkness seems to be a trend lately, does it save money on sets? or Lighting? I don't know but it is tiresome.

Too dark and not in a good way, even in daytime setting I couldn't see a thing, I've no idea what was going on as the screen just seemed to be in total darkness. I can understand most of these things happen at night but even the daytime stuff seemed to be dark, I thought at first there was a Shaddow on my screen.

Didn't keep me interested enough to watch it all the way through, boring story, boring cast and I couldn't see what was going on.

Something is down there in the ground, and with dishonest causes for being there where the ground smokes and the mud is warm, really rams this group of five.

but as in every 3rd monster movie the monster is barely visible, a blurry outline and a flysnappersflowers mouth piece is the only you can see.and apart from loads of groans and growels, and dissapearing mighty men that should have a CO detector instead of a CO2 detector. the guiding ''lola'' caracter seems like and sound like a toomb raider caracter, and the continous darkness keeps the secrets very well hidden till you cant figure out whats what. so productionwise it has many glitches, and a very troublesome daylight logistic nightmare. the darkfilming is so bad, so what is in the dark stays secretly there in the dark forever.

so go out and find yourself an abandoned coal mine pit and make a copycat outta this.you just have to be cruel and sinister and dumbfoundly curious in the acts, its really nothing more.

it started of with a 6, ended up with a weak 4 thinks the grumpy old man. its a shallow story, poor caracter development and the filming is a nightmare