Le Diable pour alibi

The first 3/4 of the show was made like a movie, including some scar factors, it was like watching the conjuring movie that was amateurish. Ed warren actor had a cast that looked exactly like him, which was a plus. The acting was pretty ok and watchable. Pacing was pretty much here and there with some unintended funny scenes and sound effects.

The truths included what actually happened from a third perspective, which was something that has never been shown elsewhere(not that I know of). People who believed in the original story would probably hate it.

Overall I had a good lunch watching this.

I am house sitting for a week, flicking through the horror films on Netflix I have already seen most of them but this feature length documentary caught my eye for something to watch. With a running time of about 80 minutes it felt ideal for a watch before going to bed. It certainly didn't give me nightmares though! This concerns the apparently true story back in 1980 where 11 year old David Glatzel becomes possessed by a demon whilst he is helping his big sister movie into her new home(!). Her boyfriend Arne then becomes possessed and kills his landlord. During the trial his defence sought to prove him innocent based upon him being possessed by a demon. He was convicted of first degree manslaughter. Famous (or should that be infamous?) paranormal investigators Ed and his wife Lorraine Warren helped with the case. The film includes real sound recordings that they made of David but to me they sound far from convincing. David and his brothers Alan and Carl are each filmed talking about the case over 40 years later. David is convinced that he really was possessed, Carl says that it was a hoax and he's certainly get my vote for who to believe. If you are interested in the paranormal or the Warrens and their legacy (The Conjuring movies etc) then it is worth a watch. If like me you are sceptical of such matters then chances are it will only re-enforce your disbelief in the paranormal.

There seems to be 2 divided sets of opinion on this documentary. It mainly comes down to preconceptions regarding the reality of the supernatural. Conformation bias will have some people getting near the end, hearing the oldest brother's recollection of events and concluding 'it was all a big lie from the start' and consider the first ¾ of the documentary a waste of time.

Those people who do believe in the supernatural or have had personal experience with the supernatural will find the first ¾ of the documentary a fascinating account of demonic influence and possession.

There's really no conclusive evidence for either viewpoint as we can only base our opinions on what has been described by the those who were there and the audio recordings that were made. The viewer will decide who they believe is the most trustworthy in their retelling of events. Who they consider trustworthy will most likely be the party who mirrors the viewer's own worldview most closely.

There's more than one story line being covered. It's really tough to pin this down because you can go in any direction. It's presented in a documentary format but with competing themes. There's the possession of the child, which takes up most of the movie. A supernatural investigative couple that "helps" the family and basically steals their story and gets rich through book and movie deals. Leaving the family with nothing. Then we get to the "meat" of the movie. The actual murder trial, which unfortunately has the least amount of screen time devoted to it. This last 20 minutes or so is the most cohesive in terms of common sense rooted in objective reality. In a nutshell, there was a lot of drinking involved, one of them got blackout drunk and things happened. Then tried to claim he was possessed. If that were true, there'd be an awful lot of possession cases.

Overall, the movie is heavily slanted towards the supernatural. Was anything proven? No. You either believe in this or you don't.

It was a very interesting and beautiful documentary. I really enjoyed watching it. When you watch it, you think you're watching a documentary, but you think you're watching a horror movie. In my opinion, this is the first documentary that brought the world of summoning into question. I want to say that this documentary was one of the beautiful supernatural documentaries that I saw. I wish they would make a documentary about the rest of the Summoning series so that the world would be more aware of supernatural events and realize that demons and demons exist just as we do. And finally, if you think that there are no demons and that the movies that start with a lie to make more money, watch this documentary, that all these movies are not like this, and some of the movies and series are really true stories.