Demonic

It's cautiously compiled, competent work-for-hire, but the wild swings and grand designs of this film-maker's earlier output are sorely missed.

Stealing a trick from Tarsem Singh's The Cell (2000). Blomkamp's film uses zones constructed from the detritus of the unconscious as a way of giving cinematic form - sight and sound - to otherwise internal struggles and states.

Demonic feels like a film made by someone who's scared of his own ideas and his own limitations.

The deeper that Blomkamp digs into his pixel-thin premise, the more glaring it becomes that Demonic lacks the genre fundamentals required to support any sort of broader mythology.

With a minuscule 10-person cast, and a smattering of well-placed VFX work, Demonic feels like someone crowbarred a V8 into a VW Beetle and handed the keys to a champion racer.

Clunks and gasps along, chugging off the fumes of better movies.

“Demonic” is yet another miss for a once promising filmmaker.

With stilted acting and grueling plot mechanics that promise excitement which never comes, viewers might struggle to even make it to the film’s third act.

A return to a set of horror genre stereotypes that tries to reinvent demonic possessions without success. [Full review in Spanish]

Demonic feels nervous, restrained somehow as if from a first-time filmmaker uncertain of his craft. The script, cast, and direction are all cautiously flat, rendering the final result blandly forgettable.