Demonic
Year: 2021
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Starring: Nathalie Boltt, Carly Pope, Kandyse McClure & Chris William Martin
Runtime: 104 mins
BBFC: 18
Published: 04/08/23
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Starring: Nathalie Boltt, Carly Pope, Kandyse McClure & Chris William Martin
Runtime: 104 mins
BBFC: 18
Published: 04/08/23
Neill Blomkamp’s feature film output has been a bit hit or miss. The massive success of his debut feature, District 9, gave Blomkamp carte blanche to do basically whatever he wanted and big studios were trying to sign him on to do all kinds of projects with them. Elysium kind of flopped, but it didn’t affect Blomkamp’s reputation too much, and even when Chappie failed to recapture that spark of Blomkamp’s debut, he managed to retain this moniker of being one of the most exciting new directors in Hollywood. Not much is known about his fourth feature, a much lower budget affair (just a measly $1.5 million), shot during the COVID-19 pandemic, and released directly to Amazon Prime. It seemed to have slipped under everyone’s radar, and Blomkamp has continued to retain this title of being an incredible filmmaker…but Demonic is not only Blomkamp’s worst film, but it’s one of the worst horror films I’ve seen in many years.
Carly (Carly Pope) is the daughter of a mass murderer. Many years ago, Carly’s mother, Angela (Nathalie Bolt) killed twenty people by burning down a care home and poisoning members of a local church, and ever since, Carly has been trying to rebuild her life and run away from her mother’s legacy.
But when she is contacted by Therapol, a private healthcare research company, who claim to have Angela in their care whilst she is in a coma, and they’d like Carly to partake in a medical trial which may allow them to speak with Angela.
Placed in a kind of virtual reality, Carly reunites with her mother to scold her for the pain she caused. But Carly soon realises that her mother’s heinous actions may not have been her own, and Carly becomes the target of a demon who’s in search of a new human vessel to carry out its murderous sacrifices.
Carly (Carly Pope) is the daughter of a mass murderer. Many years ago, Carly’s mother, Angela (Nathalie Bolt) killed twenty people by burning down a care home and poisoning members of a local church, and ever since, Carly has been trying to rebuild her life and run away from her mother’s legacy.
But when she is contacted by Therapol, a private healthcare research company, who claim to have Angela in their care whilst she is in a coma, and they’d like Carly to partake in a medical trial which may allow them to speak with Angela.
Placed in a kind of virtual reality, Carly reunites with her mother to scold her for the pain she caused. But Carly soon realises that her mother’s heinous actions may not have been her own, and Carly becomes the target of a demon who’s in search of a new human vessel to carry out its murderous sacrifices.
I think that’s the best way to describe Demonic’s story, because to be perfectly honest I’m not really sure what the film was entirely about. Similar to Blomkamp’s other films, the concept is interesting, a demon that acts like a computer virus within this program that connects the consciousness of Carly and her mother. But that’s about as far as the good ideas go with Demonic.
Fundamentally, Demonic is not in the slightest bit scary. There are very few sequences where Blomkamp even brings the horror to the forefront, and those rare times he does they often hilariously fail to be even remotely creepy, let alone actually scary. There was maybe one jumpscare in the whole film (which is fine by me because I hate jumpscares anyway) which was so obviously telegraphed and poorly done that I’d be surprised if it managed to make ever the jitteriest of people jump. I’m also unsure how Blomkamp managed to make a film about demonic possession and yet it almost never feels like a horror film.
I understand that the budget was very small, but it looks horrendously cheap. Poorly shot and edited together, there’s not an awful lot of depth to the picture, the music feels like it’s all come from a generic royalty free library, and the performances are all laughably bad.
The choice to make the virtual world where Carly and Angela reunite to look like a low budget videogame was certainly a choice. It almost appears cel-shaded, but it actually looks a lot more like when textures haven’t loaded in yet. Everything’s kind of smooth looking, and the lighting doesn’t look like it exists as a part of that world. I think this was done to clearly indicate that you’re not in the real world, but I feel like there are much better ways that Blomkamp could have done this.
Where Elysium and Chappie were good concepts with some less than inspired execution, Demonic is just a complete write off. How Blomkamp is able to maintain his reputation as a promising ‘new’ director when he’s now done four feature films and three of them have been somewhere between average to rubbish. Demonic is insultingly bad, worse than some student film projects I have seen. What a monumental waste of time and money.
Fundamentally, Demonic is not in the slightest bit scary. There are very few sequences where Blomkamp even brings the horror to the forefront, and those rare times he does they often hilariously fail to be even remotely creepy, let alone actually scary. There was maybe one jumpscare in the whole film (which is fine by me because I hate jumpscares anyway) which was so obviously telegraphed and poorly done that I’d be surprised if it managed to make ever the jitteriest of people jump. I’m also unsure how Blomkamp managed to make a film about demonic possession and yet it almost never feels like a horror film.
I understand that the budget was very small, but it looks horrendously cheap. Poorly shot and edited together, there’s not an awful lot of depth to the picture, the music feels like it’s all come from a generic royalty free library, and the performances are all laughably bad.
The choice to make the virtual world where Carly and Angela reunite to look like a low budget videogame was certainly a choice. It almost appears cel-shaded, but it actually looks a lot more like when textures haven’t loaded in yet. Everything’s kind of smooth looking, and the lighting doesn’t look like it exists as a part of that world. I think this was done to clearly indicate that you’re not in the real world, but I feel like there are much better ways that Blomkamp could have done this.
Where Elysium and Chappie were good concepts with some less than inspired execution, Demonic is just a complete write off. How Blomkamp is able to maintain his reputation as a promising ‘new’ director when he’s now done four feature films and three of them have been somewhere between average to rubbish. Demonic is insultingly bad, worse than some student film projects I have seen. What a monumental waste of time and money.