L'Emprise du démon

"The Offering" offers a not-so-original but effective script told from a Jewish perspective. The cast gives well accomplished performances and the director's job is well done. One of the great merits of this production is its cinematography that generates a gloomy atmosphere by making the most of the filming locations. One notorious flaw is the CGI special effects that turn out to be fake in several scenes. The demon's design is very good, although in some scenes it ends up being distorted with digital touch-ups. "The Offering" is not a masterpiece, nor is it a lousy production, it is a decent film that achieves its purpose of entertaining.

The Offering (2022) takes a new shape in this terror/suspense movie with a lot of intrigue, terror, thriller, twists and turns. It begins with some intriguing words: ¨In the myths of the Middle East and Europe there is a terrifying female demon, represented in amulets, paintings and stories since the first century after Christ. It has thousands of names in various languages and religions, but it has a single terrifying tribute: The child stealer¨. This is a chilling supernatural thriller in which Evil lurks, eager to take over the children. In The Offering, the son , Arthur ( Nick Blood), of the owner -Saul (Allan Corduner)- of a Jewish funeral home goes to his father's house, along with his pregnant wife (Emily Wiseman) , to reconcile with him, and get the money necessary to pay off his debts. However, in the morque located beneath his father's house, an ancient demon hopes to take the soul of his unborn child. Things go wrong, when they discover cryptic marks, horrible demonic circles weird symbols, as well supernatural phenoma and poltergeists successively happening. No soul is safe!.

Horror fairy tale whose original title for the film was "Abyzou" , being consistently paced, and finely played by starring duo : Nick Blood and Emily Wiseman and with a lot of screems, gore , twists and turns. The Offering (2022) is a creepy, claustrophobic and scary low- budget horror movie. A twisted plot in which a marriage and the elderly father become involved into a supernatural intrigue resulting in plunging themselves deeper and deeper towards a world of impossible occurrences and equally inexplicable findings .The screenplay is mediocry written and the tension increases as long as the mystery about 'Abizou' is disclosed . The film is average but passable, the potential of the theme being wasted on some Jewish customs, the Torah, Yiddish language and other Hebrew arcana that combined with the eerie morgue events and supernatural demons could have created even an explosive result, however this falls short. Weird terror movie that's heavy on fantastic happenings and gory scenes with acceptable though completely inside production design, colorful though dark cinematography and decent but no excessive special effects, incuding gruesomely vivid guts .

It contains adequate cinematography with plenty of darkness by Lorenzo Senatore. As well as thrilling, frightening and suspenseful musical score by composer Christopher Young who's an expert on sinister atmosphere as proved in: The Tall Man, Drag Me to Hell, Sinister , Untraceable, The Uninvited, The Ghost Maker, Dominion and several others . The motion picture was regular but professionally directed by Oliver Park. This is a good director with a short but interesting career with penchant for Chillers and Horror movies. He has played, written or directed a few films with no much hits, such as: The Dare, Horizon, Strange Events (2014), Still (2017), Solar Impact (2019) ,A Night of Horror: Nightmare Radio (2019). Rating: 5.5/10. Only for horror fans. Average but passable.

This really was your average, run of the mill horror flick. Reminded me of a mix between "The Vigil" and "The Autopsy of Jane Doe". Not as good as either of those... but still successful to a degree in its own right.

I would say where this lacked the most would be in originality. The movie looked great - beautiful shots, lighting and atmosphere...the script was good, the acting was solid, the pacing was decent/kept you engaged, and yet still... it just wasn't all that enthralling.

Entertaining? Yes. It just didn't excite me all too much. Not to mention it relied a lot on jump scares. I think if they had chilled on those and focused on making it authentically creepier, finessed the storyline a bit by attempting to infuse some originality into it with less cliche horror tropes I think that would have helped immensely.

But again, this was still entertaining, just don't go into it expecting to see a modern day cinematic horror masterpiece. It's a fun, casual watch. I give this a 5.5 rounding up to a 6. Would recommend.

This isn't terrible but it's a bit like a columbo movie. The opening scene shows you what's going on and takes away all the mystery and intrigue.

I thought that was interesting and I wondered where they were going to go with it. I didn't wonder very long.

Predictable jump scares, very little suspense and an all too tropey characters including a personal bug-bear of mine; that one guy who just knows exactly what's going on and can expertly explain it all, in detail to our protagonist.

I like two things about this movie. Almost the whole movie is inside the house which gives the movie what little atmosphere there is, and I like the ending. Not the climax, not the third act, just the very end. That's about all though.

I was not impressed. The premise has potential (an ancient Jewish-kabbalistic demon is on the loose within an orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn and turns on innocent people), and the setting in an old town-house with in the basement a mortuary is atmospheric and pleasantly creepy, but that's about it. The as horrific intended effects only come from several noise-burst-induced jump-scares and creaking doors, it's not enough to make this into a satisfying horror-flick.

The story is complicated, for instance the nature and intentions of the demon are unfathomable (it was apparently summoned to bring a dead loved-one back to life, but for some reason it now kills people and even feeds on children), and the CGI of the demon itself is hardly scary, it has the surprising form of a giant moose or deer with big antlers. The constant apparition of a ghost in the form of a little girl is rather cliché, and towards the end, when the main characters have some kind of climactic show-down with te demon, things get rather repetitive and in spite of all the turmoil even tiresome. The acting of Emily Wiseman is fine, but Nick Blood goes way over the top, with his constant wide-eyed horror-filled gazes or sinking into baffled stupors.