3/5
I needed some background noise and couldn't find anything on TV, so I ended up throwing this up on Netflix. I ended up watching the whole thing, which is a testament to how decent it is. It's a low-budget B-movie, but it started out interesting enough and never lost the intrigue. I never had a place where I felt like the movie lost me enough for me to turn my head....
Formulaic, generic, and predictable as all hell...but executed well.
So what is it? To me, it feels like
Demon Knight (1995) meets...honestly, just Demon Knight in a town instead of trapped in a hotel...
The demon doesn't talk so no Billy Zane approximate, and it mostly looks like a human but with blackened eyes, but it has a very similar overall story and tone.
A demon that possesses the person that killed it's last host is tracked down by the Demon Hunter (Dolph Lungren) who last captured (And subsequently lost) it. They don't focus on the lore of this shyt at all...he just explains what the thing is, how he captured it before, and him and an FBI agent go to work. There is another twist or two but it's mostly not important.
If you don't understand the premise, the HOOK is that this thing possesses someone and starts killing people. When other people subsequently kill it (And it's host) in self-defense, the demon simply jumps to that person. The director utilizes this for both SUSPENSE and COMEDIC effect. A lot of dumb-ass townspeople shooting each other in the face, and then immediately becoming possessed before they are shot in the face, and the cycle continues. I've actually told you enough for you to figure out how they kill it, I thought it was a clever enough idea....
The visuals are GOOD. I emphasize that because of how surprised I was. This is low-budget but you can tell it wasn't made cheaply. It's kitschy as all hell (Blood everywhere, a useless sex scene with red-light district lighting, kids getting shot....
etc) but it's never uninspired.
Dolph does well here. Doesn't overstep his bounds...just mostly coast on his natural charisma but that was ALL that was needed for this part. He's kind of sarcastic, doesn't take it too seriously (Neither the character nor the actor), is very "matter of fact" about the situation. He's that, "I've been doing this shyt my whole life and kind of don't give a fukk anymore" character and I liked it. They even give him a whore to fukk early on and a signature weapon.
His lady co-star isn't as good but is rarely ever the sole focus in a scene so it's no bother. Nobody else has enough screentime to really talk about...except for maybe the demon itself, which is played by multiple people, and usually pretty effectively imo.
I've said way too much for a movie like this, tbh....
TL; DR : Give it a try if you don't mind low-budget yet competent B-movie horror. People that like other netflix horror movies like say...
Ava's Possession or
Deathgasm will like this as well. It has that kind of tone. Self-aware horror/light-comedy that actually manages to take itself just seriously enough to keep you actually caring about what happens (You care about
what happens,
not the
characters).
I honestly "backgrounded" this a few weeks ago but it lost my interest early on...did I fukk up?
