Devil Seed

Just another routine possession movie. Noting really groundbreaking. Was really wanting a good supernatural movie. This wasn't it. It killed some time though. And every so often a good possession movie does come out and surprise us. Nothing will ever top the Exorcist IMO but I have enjoyed several including recent ones like Deliver Us from Evil, The Devil Inside. The Exorcism of Emily Rose, A Haunting in Connecticut, amongst others including older classics This just doesn't come close to any of them. Yu can pass by this one unless like me you want to kill time watching am OK possession film. Just don't expect much.

I wasn't really expecting much, but this film did a good job. The topic, like most scary movies, has been done to death already. All Exorcism movies basically rip off--- I mean, "are inspired by" the Exorcist. They don't seem to venture into real world claims about the topic much, they just take what they know from watching other films. It's a missed opportunity, but it is what it is. Here it is handled pretty well. Three woman are living together, two are set up as close friends, and two are set up us rivals. The main character is a virgin, which means the demon just hanging around (it must have gotten bored waiting 50 years) wants to possess her most. Which I don't really get as far as real world logic, but, again, the trope is true to film logic. They handle it well. Her anguish makes it seem more likely at first that it is just mental illness, and it works when you think about the implications of losing your mind like that. When she goes full on demonic it's a dramatic contrast to her normal innocent behavior. All the men in the film are set up as losers, but it's not about the men. The film also has that weird logic about nudity that is prevalent where one scene seems to have skin very briefly for no reason and others, based upon what's transpiring in the film, would make a lot more sense to show nudity but are framed meticulously so that they don't. There are a couple of scenes later that aren't prolonged but aren't unrealistically short either. Overall, it's still kind of mild, at least for these kind of movies. Sill, if you like demonic possession films, this is slightly better than average. If you still have the itch after watching the classics, it makes a decent diversion.

Watching this film, I was constantly struck by the way the director inserted himself into the project with such a loud thud.

Playing camera and light tricks that seem designed only to showboat his technique, what is really revealed is an object lesson in the old phrase "Knowing just enough to get oneself in trouble." I can only hope that with the passage of time, the director/writer/editor/Svengali behind this wet splat comes to be humiliated by how amateurish he once was as he's grown into creating valid works.

Plotwise, NO new ground is covered here. Not a centimeter of fresh ideas, but a fairly sizable contribution to teen-boy gratification fantasies wherein pretty girls say the c-word and a bleach blonde gives generously to the public nipple fund and the heroine is ...naturally, a virgin. Completely gratuitous gazongas (In the shower, of course!) is a sign someone has lost focus. This film doesn't ever seem to have bothered so much as looking for its reading glasses.

To get performances this poor on film requires determination in casting, extraordinary bad-luck or a George Lucas level micro-managerial determination to suck any kind of reality out of the otherwise human-shaped beings verbalizing and mugging on the beleaguered screen. Add to that a series of times where you can literally speak the dialogue before the characters do, and you have a morbid product to foist upon people who could have otherwise put that hour and a half of their fleeting lives into anything and found it more worthwhile.

The question of why it was made has been tossed out in a few reviews and while it seems like a bit of a mystery, I don't think it is at all. The answer lies in the opening of this review. It was a vanity piece created by a would-be auteur without talent or technique enough to assemble a film worth watching. I just hope he's able to grow using this film as experience. Another film this bad and Ewe Boll is going to be hiring hit people to come after this guy for working his stretch of sidewalk.

Best recommendation is for 12 year-old boys who've never heard of horror films before. THAT would be a happy group. Anyone else is going to find themselves checking their phones during most of this digital face-palm.

"The Devil In Me" (Not Devil Seed, more on that later) is a cliché ridden, hilarious mess, and the only way I can come to terms with it is by compiling one of my infamous lists. So, here goes...

1. Why is the victim of these atrocities always 'The new girl in town?'

2. Why is the only one doing nude scenes the bimbo with the boob job with a bit part?

3. Why would you break into a psychics for a 60 dollar reading after a heavy night out drinking?

4. Why is it the initial SHOCK when you hear a noise turns out to be nothing, but it always followed by the REAL SCARE?

5. Why bother possessing someone you're raping so she'll give birth to THE ANTICHRIST?

6. Why is it so convenient that the school councellor's father turns out to be A BLOOMIN' EXORCIST?!

7. Why can a demonic spirit in flight be stopped by A SHOWER CURTAIN?!

8. Why is this marketed as a horror when it should be a comedy? (18 you say?! BWHAHAHAHAHAHA etc)

9. Why bother changing the name of the film in the UK? (Might have been better if they'd changed the director, writer, actors, caterers...)

10. Why, in this genre, do the credits ALWAYS begin with an appalling loud cacophony of noise by a metal band you've never heard of?

I'm sure there are more, many more, but I'm off now to take some paracetamol and have a lie down. I've just got time for perhaps the most important question of them all: 11. Why was this ever made?! 4/10

Thing that I can truly give this movie is that it at least isn't being like your average horror movie, in which a girl gets possessed by the devil. It does some new stuff and takes some good approaches to its subject. Well, in its first half at least. The second half of the movie unfortunately is far more clichéd and 'borrows' from several other well known genre movies. The more the movie progresses, the worser it gets.

The movie is only about 90 minutes short but it still feels way too long. It stretches things out, which cause the movie to get a bit tiresome after a while. OK, we get it! She is possessed, now get back to the story and tell us why and how it can be undone. It stalls for as long as possible and unfortunately there also isn't a good payoff to any of it.

It's all a real shame, since I actually was quite into the movie at first. I liked that it wasn't being like a typical modern horror-flick, involving teenagers. It seemed to take a far more clever and classy approach, despite its low-budget. Guess they forget about the script though, or perhaps they thought that half a good and originally written story would be enough to make a great genre movie out of.

It's weird how the movie successfully seems to avoid all of the genre clichés at first but then suddenly starts using every cliché out of the book and begins doing stuff that we have all seen before in different and far better genre movies. Yes, it doesn't look like it at first but in the end this movie is being nothing more than just another "The Exorcist" wannabe and knockoff.

The movie also becomes a totally unlikely one after a while, when its story starts doing some stupid things. Some of the events that happen in this movie are so unlikely and silly that they start taking away some of the suspension of disbelief. This especially goes for its very ending.

Still a good and original enough movie in some ways but in the end it's being nothing more than just another cheap and lazy "The Exorcist" ripoff.

5/10

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