The Devil Inside

The opening credits of the found-footage excretion The Devil Inside include a helpful disclaimer advising us that the Vatican "did not endorse this film, nor aid in its completion," just in case we might be inclined to believe the Holy See were in the business of making schlocky horror flicks. One's heart goes out to Satan, whose involvement in the film is pretty clearly implied by the title, but who received no such disclaimer. Even he deserves better than to be associated with this dreck.

The pseudo-doc-style story centres on a young girl, Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade), whose mother, Maria (Suzan Crowley), murdered three people twenty years prior during what was later revealed to be an exorcism gone awry. Seeking to learn more about the tragedy that consumed her mother, Isabella travels to Italy, where Maria is currently housed in a Vatican-run mental hospital. The doctors prove frustratingly insensitive to her mother's affliction, causing Isabella to see out a pair of young renegade exorcists (Simon Quarterman and Evan Helmuth) for help.

Maria is one creepy bird, a frazzled cat-lady whose eyes blaze with penetrating, high-octane craziness even under heaviest of sedation. An early scene, in which Isabella meets with her near-catatonic mother and gently tries to ascertain whether her insanity is of the conventional or demonically-inspired variety, oozes tension as we wait for her whispered ramblings to explode into full-on Satanic mania. It's a terrifically fraught scene, by far the best in the film, and, sadly, the only point in which we ever come close to being scared.

The film proffers a variety of different narrative threads and chooses to resolve none of them. What happened to the English priest's uncle, or Isabella's baby? And what of that poor possessed gal with the hemorrhaging vagina? Was she ever able to get that under control? God only knows. Even crazy-eyes Maria, the film's MVP, makes an all-too-hasty exit, never to be hear from again after a half-baked exorcism attempt.

Director/co-writer William Brent Bell's clear aim is to mimic the wildly successful Paranormal Activity films, but he ignores the found-footage standard-bearer's most important precept, which is to keep the story simple, rely as little on the "actors" as possible, and pile on the cheap scares, one after another. Instead, we're handed an abundance of character details we never asked for, and which never really amount to anything, save for some choice over-acting in the third act when the devil's machinations turn everyone against each other. The film devolves into a kind of exorcism-themed Real World episode, replete with "confessionals" in which the characters tearfully air their frustrations -- as if we gave a damn. Perhaps it's a good thing we don't, because The Devil Inside concludes with what might be the least-satisfying horror ending in a decade.

Hollywood.com rated this film 1 1/2 stars.