Late Night Blogging: Found Footage

Cult Movie Review: The Devil Inside (2012)

Director William Brent Bell’s The Devil Inside (2012) is another “found footage” horror film of recent vintage, and one that has met with -- big surprise here -- widespread critical and audience derision. 

And yet plainly, The Devil Inside is not a profoundly bad movie in the way that The Apparition (2012) is, for example.

In fact, much of the Bell film is intriguing, involving, and well-acted. 

In addition, this horror film intelligently addresses its fascinating subject matter -- the apparently similar natures of mental illness and demonic possession in terms of “brain functioning”-- right up until its emotionally unsatisfying and borderline craven valedictory moment.

I’m a stalwart defender of found footage horror films…at least the good ones.  I’ve come to the conclusion that most mainstream critics simply don’t like the form, just as they also never liked the slasher format, or the torture porn format, and have thus tuned out even the better examples of the sub-genre.   These reviewers aren’t taking each example of the found-footage film on its own merits, in other words, but instead lumping ‘em all together as “bad,” a priori.

And indeed, there are plenty of superior found footage movies out there (again, The Blair Witch Project [1999], [REC] [2007] and Cloverfield [2008] leap to mind), but at least The Devil Inside doesn’t make some of the (apparently crowd-pleasing) mistakes of the Paranormal Activityseries in terms of spoon-feeding the audience information.  I suppose I enjoyed the film on that basis alone.  It doesn’t talk down to you.

Even The Devil Inside’s unsatisfactory ending is borderline defensible, after a fashion, on the basis of the found-footage template and structure, even if the denouement fails to satisfy intellectually and on human terms. 

In short, The Devil Inside is a good deal more accomplished than most critics claimed argued, though not a film without some considerable flaws, as I’ll acknowledge and enumerate below.

 “In all my years in the Church, I’ve seen the Devil more often than I’ve seen God.”

The Devil Insideopens with a 911 recording from a murderer in the year 1989.  Housewife Maria Rossi (Suzan Crowley) confesses to the murder of three clergy (two priests and a nun) in her home, and is quickly taken into custody by the police. 

In 2009, Maria’s grown daughter, Isabella (Fernanda Andrade) teams up with a filmmaker, Michael Shaeffer (Ionut Grama) to make a documentary about her mother’s case. 

In particular, Isabella worries that madness is in her genes and that it is “just a matter of time” before she goes insane like her mother did.

Isabella and Michael travel to Rome and the Vatican, where Isabella attends a Catholic class on the subject of exorcism.  Although the Church denies that Maria is demonically possessed, two excitable young priests, Father David (Evan Helmuth) and Father Ben (Simon Quarterman) agree to help Isabella understand the rite of exorcism by allowing her to film their illicit, non-sanctioned exorcisms.

At the site of the first exorcism -- in a  creepy basement -- David warns Michael to keep Isabella behind him, an oblique reference to “transference,” the capacity of a demon to leap from one body to another.

Then, after examining Maria at the Centrino Hospital, Ben and David unadvisedly rush into an exorcism of Isabella’s mother, and determine that four separate demonic entities may be residing inside her. 

Finally, after the exorcism apparently releases Maria from torment and possession, David, Michael, Ben and Isabella each begin to act strangely…belligerently.  During a routine baptism, Father David attempts to drown a baby.  Then, upon returning home to his apartment, he kills himself…

When Isabella begins to seize and undergo unnatural contortions, Ben and Michael rush her to the nearest hospital, wondering if the evil inside Maria has spread to them.

“Is it in my genes?”

Bell’s 2012 horror film seems to suffer from two primary and not inconsiderable flaws. The first is the film’s widely-despised and inconclusive ending, and the second involves some third-act “reality TV confessional”-style hemming-and-hawing that plays more like housemate bickering on Big Brother than legitimate character interaction, at least given the film’s setting and situation.

First, let’s dissect the ending.  

The movie reaches a kind of crescendo of madness in a speeding car and then…it stops.  It just stops. Nothing gets resolved and nothing gets fixed.  There's no closure. The film cuts to black, and a URL is thrown-up (though not literally vomited...) onto black screen.  The broadcasting of a URL so quickly -- instead of following the end credits, for instance -- plays as insulting to an audience still engaged in the narrative and characters.  The joke “too soon” comes to mind.  The marketing ploy -- go to this web site to learn more! -- plays as slick advertisement.

Yet, much of the wide-spread criticism of The Devil Inside’s ending qualifies as sort of damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t thinking.  I’ve read dozens of reviews of found footage films in which critics complain vociferously about characters in said films “filming everything,” even beyond sense and their own survival instinct.  I agree, it can seem contrived if done poorly.  The standard, blanket refrain in the REC movies, for instance, is that "the people deserve to know what's happening!"  Therefore, the camera-person keeps filming.  It can get...silly.

So along comes a movie -- The Devil Inside -- that exploits the form of the “found footage”-style and comes to a final, irrevocable stop at a catastrophic but logical point…a point when nobody could rightly continue filming the story. 

So do the same critics applaud the filmmakers for adhering rigorously to “realism" in their chosen format?

Of course, not.  Instead, they complain that the movie has no formalized or conventional ending.

While I can understand the complaints about the ending seeming like a marketing ploy (with the sudden, poorly-timed broadcasting of a URL on the screen), I would ask for some degree of consistency of argument on the part of the critics.  You can’t complain all the time that the form of found footage is contrived, and then also turn around complain when a found footage film attempts to overcome that contrivance logically.

I actually found the second problem I named above more irksome: the reality TV aspects of the narrative.  

I’ve seen many found footage films of late -- as the reviews on this blog attest -- and many of the films feature relatively weak or diffident acting.  I was impressed in The Devil Inside, however with Crowley, Quartman, and Helmuth, particularly.  

But at one point during the third act, the main characters go before the camera and in talking-head confessional style, begin to bitch about their friends.  I get, of course, the idea that they are becoming argumentative and disruptive because of latent demonic possession/transference (!), but a decade of bad reality programming doesn’t allow the moment to play successfully in that vein.  It’s all very Big Brother-esque, and not in a good way, either.  These moments, especially with Michael on camera being contrary for no particular or apparent reason, nearly sink the film’s last act.

On the plus side, however, The Devil Inside features two point-blank scenes of exorcism which are harrowing and horrific in the extreme.  The first scene occurs in a dark, dank basement and is, in a word, unforgettable.  The setting is grim and scary, and the physical effects -- including a moment of prodigious vaginal bleeding -- will shock you.  

The second exorcism occurs in the Centrino Medical Facility (in Rome) and is effectively shot, if not quite as startling as the first scene.

Also worthy of mention here is actress Suzan Crowley, who gives a kudos-worthy, utterly unglamorous performance as the possibly-possessed, possibly mentally-ill character, Maria Rossi.  There’s a scene early in the film wherein Maria’s daughter, Isabella (Fernanda Andrade) visits the sick woman in the Centrino sanitarium, and Crowley crafts a moment of spiraling madness that proves quite powerful.  

In this “interview” scene there are no Exorcist-style pyrotechnics or Emily Rose-type make-up effects to fall back on, but Crowley -- alternately docile and tempestuous -- puts a fine point on the movie’s central debate: pinpointing the line between psychiatric disorder and demonic possession.  The actress gives a truly accomplished and three-dimensional performance in a way that is, in some fashion, scarier than the scenes featuring a contortionist.  When you look at Crowley's Rossi, you see a very sick, very deranged, very dangerous person, whatever the specifics of her ailment.  Crowley imbues all her scenes with a strong sense of unpredictability, and that unpredictability creates anxiety in the viewer.

I also appreciated how the film spells out the four qualifications for recognizing demonic possession, and how the young priests use cutting-edge science to help them make a diagnosis, ultimately.  Much of what happens in the film’s last act involves the fulfillment (and subversion) of the four stated qualifications.   Furthermore, I admired the way the film took Isabella's  personal quest from one of self-discovery to one of self-fulfilling prophecy.   I’ll confess, I found these touches clever enough  to keep me engaged and interested.

If you love horror films and found footage horror films, and if -- God bless you – you followed me through my positive review of Apollo 18 (2011) and agreed with my conclusions, then The Devil Inside may be right up your alley.

Ask JKM a Question #60: Found Footage Horror Film Recommendations?

A reader and frequent commenter, woodchuckgod, writes:

“While I certainly enjoy good film (horror and otherwise), I've always had a bit of a mental block about "found-footage" fare -- and as such, I can't honestly say that I recall watching even one that featured it.   

So given that this sub-genre is bound to have both good and bad examples - where's a good place to start?  What are some of the finer examples of the form?”

Woodchuckgod, that’s a terrific question, especially since I’ve been covering a lot of found footage horror movies in recent weeks.

I enjoy found-footage films tremendously for what they do offer, and it’s also fair to note at this juncture what they don’t (frequently) offer.

Found-footage films essentially accent or augment the experiential aspect of horror.  The action feels very spontaneous, like it is happening to you.  The first-person subjective camera and often hand-held approach forge a kind of immediacy that traditional film simply can’t.  This is cinema-verite on steroids in other words.

The found-footage format has a number of drawbacks too.  

The first and perhaps most significant limitation is that found footage films can’t make full use of many aspects of the film grammar lexicon because they are locked immutably into that P.O.V. perspective. 

This means that, in some sense, found footage films eschew the traditional artistry we associate with great horror films, all in the name of immediacy and urgency.  How you rate that trade-off in approach is largely a personal matter, I would suggest.

Another way to put this: A traditional film, with the capacity to freely use a variety of compositions and angles, is like an orchestra playing.  A found-footage film is like one instrument playing alone, instead.  In the latter case, the effect can still be quite beautiful.

Second, found footage films, if done poorly, boast a problem with the believability factor. Unless a director is especially canny or the central situation especially compelling, there comes a point in the worst found footage films when you begin to question why an imperiled person feels compelled to film absolutely everything that occurs.  It doesn’t ring true with what we know of human behavior in crisis situations.  At some point, recording an event becomes much less important than ensuring personal survival.

Another limitation involves cutting.  A found footage film with a camera as our active and engaged “eye” in a crisis is our only perspective, unless there is more than one camera available.  This limitation requires some good writing, because you can’t realistically or easily change to another group of characters, or another location.  Accordingly, found footage movies are largely about sustaining suspense, and heightening suspense in what I call “pressure cooker” situations.

My favorite and most highly-recommended found-footage film is also one of the earliest and the most controversial: 1999’s The Blair Witch Project.  I tend to think it’s a perfect place to start any kind of study or survey of the sub-genre because few films have accomplished more, creatively-speaking with the format. 

In short, The Blair Witch Project finds a way both to include the immediate, urgent aspects of its first person perspective at the same time that it finds a way to function artistically. 

When you break it down, The Blair Witch Project is a movie about how we see, and the filters or barriers we erect between us and the rest of the world.  Even a camera -- an eye essentially -- can only capture what it captures, if you’ll excuse my wording. Audiences (foolishly) complained about The Blair Witch Project because they don’t see the Witch in the film and, in fact, don’t know if a witch is present at all.

Of course, that’s the point of the film. 

Just because you have a camera in record mode doesn’t mean that it is going to see what is “there.”  

So the movie becomes a meditation on perception and judgment, and the ways that the presence of a camera can protect us, trick us, and delude us, even.  I think this idea has come much more into focus since 9/11.

The Blair Witch Project is also exceptionally clever because two of its three main characters carry cameras, which allow for frequent switches in viewpoint, perspective and visualization.

Likewise, the film doesn’t’ always show “everything” that happens.  At various points the camera only is activated after a major event has happened, and that approach seems to reflect life much more closely than, for instance, Paranormal Activity, where ghostly events occur center frame, and in extreme close-up JUST SO YOU DON’T MISS ANYTHING.

Another brilliant found-footage film that I might similarly recommend as a starting point is [REC] (2007), a foreign language horror film concerning a TV news anchor and camera man trapped in an apartment building during the beginning, crucial hours of a zombie apocalypse. 

The film boasts subtitles, of course, but the situation it diagrams is universal, so there’s no problem, really, with a language barrier.  The whole feeling of the film is of being trapped -- like a rat in a cage -- and trying to survive against seemingly impossible odds and continuously escalating odds.  I don’t argue the movie is as self-reflexive or genuinely artistic as The Blair Witch Projectis, but it is a good, scary, straightforward introduction to the form of found footage.

If you fear the side-effect of vertigo -- which is actually a big deal for many prospective viewers -- it might be best to start with a film that employs limited or sporadic found-footage techniques first.  Lovely Molly (2012), from one of The Blair Witch Project directors would be a prime candidate if that’s the way you decide to go.

So, I recommend The Blair Witch Project and [REC]first and foremost, though Cloverfield (2008) offers a fresh and ingenious take on old movie monster aesthetics.

Please let us know which film you decide to start with, and how it goes for you.  I know I’m curious about it….

Don’t forget to e-mail me your questions at Muirbusiness@yahoo.com.