THE DEVIL INSIDE (USA 2011) *
Directed by William Brent Bell

At the close of promo screenings, there is always applause no matter how bad the movie is.  For the case of THE DEVIL INSIDE, the new devil possession film, there was unanimous booing.

The initial film setting is 1989, 20 years before the action takes place.  Emergency responders received a 9-1-1 call from Maria Rossi (Suzan Crowley) confessing that she had brutally killed three people. Now, her daughter Isabella (Fernanda Andrade) seeks to understand the truth about what happened that night.  That is the purpose of the whole film why everything else happens though it is never clear the reason she has waited so long to find out what happened.  She travels to the Centrino Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Italy where her mother has been locked away to determine if her mother is mentally ill or demonically possessed. When she recruits two young exorcists (Simon Quarterman and Evan Helmuth) to cure her mom using unconventional methods combining both science and religion, they come face-to-face with pure evil in the form of four powerful demons possessing Maria.

The niche of the film is a possession by 4 demons.  As the ads say, many have been possessed by one, this is the case where one has been possessed by many.  Not that director Bell has done anything about this niche, except but emphasize the fact a couple of times and nothing else.  THE DEVIL INSIDE has no plot or character development and a non-existent storyline.  The only thing it has are shock moments during the possession sequences but these alone are not enough to generate any interest in the movie.  But one must admit that the actress, Crowley playing mother does have a creepy look about her.  The result is one slow long boring ride of a cheap horror flick though it lasts only 87 minutes.

Though the possession segments are scary, nothing seen in the film have not been done before especially in THE EXORCIST.  There is blasphemy (though the priest is always swearing even when not exorcising), bodies flung at the walls, body distortion and mutilation, foul language but only missing is the customary green bile vomiting.  The grainy shots with low resolution create frightening images which because of the reduced pixels make faces look as if distorted by outside forces.

Another problem is that the film works on the pseudo documentary premise that audiences are so familiar with already with films like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY films.  The fiction film is done in grainy doc style that is supposed to depict real events.  THE DEVIL INSIDE has a fictitious character, Michael (Ionut Grama)shoot all the scenes as if all the incidents occurring are real.  This becomes totally ridiculous when at the end of the film, the titles read that more information can be obtained from the site: wwwrossifiles.com The filmmakers must think the audience really stupid!  But not stupid enough to boo and jeer off the titles at the end of the screening!