Don't climb the walls to see Devil Inside

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a really good exorcism movie. Almost 40 years to be exact. That’s when The Exorcist came out, and it’s the benchmark that all others have striven for and failed to reach or even surpass in their attempts.

On the other hand, it’s only been about a year-and-a-half since I saw the last exorcism movie, and it was dreadful in many ways. The Last Exorcism was a fake documentary about an evangelical minister who wanted a film crew to immortalize his ‘last exorcism’. Of course, things went awry and what they filmed was more horrifying than expected, especially in the shaky camera work.

That’s about all I remember of that one and it’s about the same as what I expect to remember of The Devil Inside too, although a steadicam is thankfully employed here. This new release is still in the cinĂ©ma vĂ©ritĂ© realm, a pseudo documentary with a hint of found footage. It has an interesting structure that uses all of these elements: part fiction, part non-fiction, or at least that’s what we are led to believe. They should all be called second person horror movies, because they try to involve you, the viewer.

A young woman named Isabella (Fernanda Andrade) has a documentarian follow her from the United States to Italy as she tries to track down her mother, Maria (Suzan Crowley). When Isabella was six, Maria killed three people who were trying to perform an exorcism on her. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and committed to a psychiatric hospital. For some reason, she was then transferred to a similar facility near the Vatican. It seems that the Roman Catholic Church had a strong interest in her case but could do nothing to help her.

There, Isabella tries to get the medical establishment to tell her if her mother is psychotic or possessed. She wants to know if demon possession is hereditary. Does she have dissociative identity disorder or spirit possession syndrome? That’s a good question to ask if you have an evil parent too.

A couple of exorcist trainees called pastor scientists join her in her cause and they figure that demons are definitely involved and that they should just do the devil’s work themselves. Bad idea. Things go awry once more, including transference. Go figure. It’s a good thing that the guy with the camera is there to capture all of the action.

That action, if that’s what you call it, is just what you’d expect if you’ve seen The Exorcist, The Last Exorcism or last year’s The Rite. There’s nothing new to offer here. People speak in tongues, crawl up the walls, fight with preternatural strength and then do or suffer various forms of brutal and excruciating torture.

Is that really what you want to watch, audience? That’s exactly what you’ll get. It’s disturbing at its mildest and nauseating at its worst. Even the commercials shouldn’t be on TV for children to watch.

While I liked the story and structure that flips between Big Brother diary room confessions and scenes ‘as seen through the eyes of the cameraman’, the acting here is hit and miss. Crowley is brilliant, flipping through personalities of multiple demons and throwing out various accents and languages like a professional impressionist. Apart from her, the best acting involved such extreme contortionism that I can only assume it was a prerequisite for some of the actors to be super-bendy, while acting ability was secondary, if that.

The Devil Inside is supposed to be the next Paranormal Activity, filmed for cheap with big returns, and easy sequels. Dear viewer, it’s up to you to stop the insanity. Just don’t pay any attention.