The Demon

The Demon is as thoroughly unimpressive as the title is generic. It follows two stories. One is about a girl who is abducted from her home. When the police are ineffective the family calls in a psychic who begins looking for answers in that psychic way. His revelations lead to more tragedy which erupts in a conflict between him and the mother of the missing girl.

The other story is about two preschool teacher cousins. One thinks she is being stalked while the other begins dating a rich playboy. The only connection between this and the other story is that the stalker is presumably the same guy that kidnapped the girl (though I must emphasize “presumably”). Otherwise they might as well be different movies altogether, and in fact, don't really feel like they are part of the same plot.

The stalker portion does at least have some excitement as one girl confronts the villain, but the other story, the kidnapping, feels completely inconsequential. The lead into the mother / psychic conflict is incredibly weak. We go from the psychic reproducing drawings he's done to a scene that still makes no sense to me even after knowing the ending (so I won't try to describe it) to an out-of-the-blue scene of tragedy to the conflict I mentioned that is far more extreme than any of the supposed build-up warrants. Besides having little satisfying build-up there is absolutely no follow-up at all. It in no way plays into the stalker story, there are no consequences, and it left me with an “OK, so what?” feeling.

The story seems to try to accomplish what The X Files did with Donnie Pfaster. They try to blur the lines between the villain's humanity and him being a demon. He exists in shadows, he has claws, he seems to be able to vanish from sight. Yet while Donnie sends a chill up my spine with two outstanding episodes dealing with him, this guy here has no presence.

Most of the movie is dull. There is no flow between the scenes due in part to the choppy editing, partially to the terrible scene setup, and partially to the disconnect between the two stories it tells.

Even though the stalker story does have some excitement towards the end, the final scene seems unnaturally truncated. Whereas in the other story there was no buildup, this time we've built up to something that falls off.

Cameron Mitchell is the only name I recognized in the movie. He does a decent job with the role of the psychic. No one else is particularly good. The mother is perhaps the weakest, but others are not much better. That makes it all the harder to get drawn in.

MORALITY:

There is a little violence, but not a lot of blood. The killer likes to strangle people with plastic bags which we see happen a few times.

There is some sexuality and a few nude scenes with a couple of those being lengthy.

There is so little strong language I barely noticed it.

SPIRITUALITY:

The film wants us to question the nature of the villain. Is he a demon or influenced by one? Is he just so evil that he exudes a demonic air? With a more biblical spin on it I might ask when does the fallen nature of man give way to true demonic-laden evil? This is an interesting concept if done well, but The Demon fails to accomplish anything meaningful.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Essentially this is a bad movie that is hard to watch because of the weak quality (I'll detail that more in the buying guide). If it either did a better job with its presentation or didn't take itself so seriously it might be worth checking out, but I say don't bother.

#TheDemon