The Irrefutable Truth About Demons

I have seen the DVD version of this movie which includes interviews, trailers and other interesting stuff. It is the director himself that sates this is a low budget b-movie. It took no more than 6 weeks to get the whole thing completed. This should be enough to get rid of the major complaints about the 'not so' special fx. Anyway the movie shows nothing new about the plot and nothing new about the characters but all of the actors took their roles seriously, offering good acting performances, especially Karl Urban and Katie Wolf. Photography is gloomy and dark as it has to be, there are plenty of fast and violent action scenes and a lot of occult symbolisms that make this movie a good product (in its genre, of course).

Available at Blockbuster as "The Truth About Demons" (guess Joe Consumer can't handle words like "Irrefutable"), this New Zealand-lensed horror pic is quite an unheralded gem. Sometimes succumbs to cliches (how many times can someone sneak up on the hero?!), but contains its fair share of shocking, disturbing images and gruesome moments in a tricky, intelligently plotted script leading up to a good final shock at the end. Writer/director Glenn Standring is a talent to watch...

I surely can appreciate a bloodless/violent less horror film as The Ring, The Eye, Pulse (the Oriental originals) or The Six Sense, but to be frank, the best examples (and the most remembered classics) are the violent blood feast like Dead or Alive (Jackson), Phantasm (Cascarelli), Exorcist, Evil Dead (1 and 2), later made Oriental with Evil Dead Trap or the legendaries GIALLOS of the 70s and 80s.

Those classics, accumulate blood and body parts, dark aisles, knives and other penetrating objects, violence and sex. The most common elements, was the dark and quite relieving humor involved (often product of their own excess).

The Irrefutable Truth about Demons match that class B style with a class D budget never used better.

The story is more complex and ambiguous than it seems. An anthropologist doctor, whose brother committed suicide after being involved with a Satanic cult, receive a threatening video and later is kidnapped by cult members and attacked by DEMONS. He managed to escape, but his closest friends are killed. A mysterious girl came to his aide, but he refuses to accept her explanations. There is a twist; the guy is also a depressive drug addict. His fuzzy touch with reality make him (and us) doubt about what happening is real or just one of his trips.

During the one night everything happens; the suspense is kept to the max, using decent special efects, excellent use of sounds and background voices, moving shadows and cockroaches (and other insects). Even when the blood is not so much, one scene involving those disgusting insects will probably upset you. Particularly, when you realize that NO SPECIAL EFFECTS WERE INVOLVED.

The end of the movie is not on par with the rest, but there is a final unexpected twist.

A highly recommendable movie that never made an American release but is far, far better than almost every horror flick last year.

If you like your low budget horror-fests check this one right out.

The cast seems quite slim and of what characters do exist, they seem to spend their time running around streets and areas in dead of night and in places which we would probably never visit ourselves at that time of night, so it's night to see them on film and get that deep dark gritty feeling without actually having to be there.

Just the way it should be for an atmospheric horror.

Obviously made on a low budget, a mixture of Satanism, the esoteric, murder and of course demons as the title suggests, but after the initial slowish pace of the first 20-30 mins, there's plenty to keep the viewer on edge for the rest of the movie.

Definitely a must-watch for B-movie fans.

There was something about the movie that made me think it was Australian. Actually, I had a feeling it was New Zealand - but I didn't want to think that something this unexciting could drag itself onto television, let alone a video that is a New Zealand production. Congratulations are in order for the film crew; just as I was warming up to interesting films like Stickmen, you drain all my hopes of New Zealand ranking highly in the movie industry with well-made cinematic experiences.

I watched this movie without any interest in it at all and was the only one in the room with my friends completely unphased from what I was seeing. Altogether I found it rather beaten to death with predictability (well, apart from the last five minutes) and bitch-slapped with a few well-exercised cliche's.

Personally, I found it boring but then again, it could be just me.