DEMONIC and EXTRATERRESTRIAL: A DOUBLE BILL OF OTHER-WORLDLY HORROR FILM REVIEWS BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
DEMONIC. (2015) ALSO KNOWN AS 'HOUSE OF HORROR.' CO-PRODUCED BY JAMES WAN. STARRING FRANK GRILLO, MARIA BELLO, DUSTIN MILLIGAN AND CODY HORN.
EXTRATERRESTRIAL. (2014) ALSO KNOWN AS 'THE VISITORS.' DIRECTED BY COLIN MINIHAN. WRITTEN AND CREATED BY THE VICIOUS BROTHERS. STARRING BRITTANY ALLEN, FREDDIE STROMA, JESSE MOSS, MELANIE PAPALIA, ANJA SAVCIC, GIL BELLOWS AND MICHAEL IRONSIDE.
I was expecting way more from DEMONIC, as it's a subject I love and it was produced by a certain James Wan, the wunderkind behind the INSIDIOUS franchise, THE CONJURING franchise and the two excellent ANNABELLE movies, both of which I was fortunate enough to be gifted with this Crimbo, heh-heh-heh.
Instead, it's kind of a run-of-the-mill only mildly spooky tale about a bunch of mostly unlikeable college students who are interested in the supernatural. They venture into a local haunted-slash-murder house to film any paranormal activity that might be happening there and hold a seance to commune with any spirits.
The house was the location for- you guessed it- a load of grisly murders that took place a couple of decades ago, so the students are expecting their poncy extra-sensitive supernatural-sound- picker-upper dealies to be going absolutely doo-lally. Like, you know, whatever, you guys...
Their story is told in a series of flashbacks as a handsome hard-ass cop (Frank Grillo, BEYOND SKYLINE where he also plays a handsome hard-ass cop!) and a lady psychologist try to piece together the events that occur when things go horrifically awry for our current bunch of ghost-hunters.
They're trying to summon the spirits of the people who died in the house twenty-something years ago so, naturally, shit is gonna go badly wrong. That's what you usually get for sticking your nose in dangerous stuff that's none of your business.
But one of the ghost-hunters knows more than (s)he's letting on. Seems as if (s)he has a personal connection to the murder house and the murders themselves, but (s)he ain't telling. (S)He is gonna guard his/her secret as jealously as a woman living in a post-apocalyptic world who's just found out where the last single guy on Earth is living...
This could be bad news for the cop and the shrink trying to get to the bottom of things, but by this point I didn't give a flying f**k who'd done what to whom. lol. It's a flat, emotionless film devoid of atmosphere and I didn't honestly care about any of the characters, the ghost-hunters themselves, that is. Frank Grillo as the cop is cute but even he can't save this turkey...
EXTRATERRESTRIAL (the tagline here: THEY DON'T COME IN PEACE...) starts out as just another cabin-in-the-woods film, featuring a nice girl called April, her boyfriend (and would-be fiancé) Kyle and a trio of pretty God-awful friends whom you fondly and fervently hope will be killed first and painfully, haha.
They're staying in April's Mum's cabin in an isolated part of the 'Murican countryside. They intend to booze it up, have loads of sex and smoke a lot of weed, especially after they meet Travis, an old family friend of April's who grows his own, lol. So far so good.
They've even had the warning from the local Sheriff to keep their noses clean and not cause him any trouble while they're in his neck of the woods, so to speak. The no-good college students don't particularly intend to get into any trouble, but then a spaceship lands practically in their back-yard and it looks like trouble has come to them, and how...
Everything that happens from this point on is gripping and genuinely terrifying. The
creepy aliens do actually live up to peoples' expectations of them. They do abduct people, people have gone missing from the area over the years, including the Sheriff's own wife.
They do perform horrible medical-type experiments on helpless, frightened people, and they might even gang-rape the women. At the very least, they probe them intimately. Some people they throw back when they're done with them. Others they keep. Others they kill.
And they do perform the infamous anal probe on men for which they're notorious, as we see in one genuinely funny scene in which a real a**h*** gets his comeuppance. They do it brutally and clinically. They're as devoid of empathy and human feeling as we've ever expected them to be.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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