4/5
Written by Luke Barnes
Summary
Carly, Carly Pope, has to meet her mum after years of cutting her out after she committed a series of murders. As she enters her mum’s mind, literally, she begins to see things were far darker and more supernatural than they first appeared. A battle for Carly’s soul soon follows.
For full disclosure here, I am a big fan of Neill Blomkamp so bare that in mind throughout this review.
After Chappie, which I have a soft spot for, but a lot of people didn’t like, Neill Blomkamp had a lot of bad luck. Both his Alien and Robocop projects were passed on and it wasn’t clear what was next for the director. However, then I saw the first trailer for this and knew he was back.
There is a lot of demonic possession films out there, I have seen, and reviewed for this blog tons and tons of them. After a point all of these films start to feel similar and you start looking for something new and different enough to bring you back to the genre again, this film did that. Whether it is the black ops army of priests hunting demons, or the new tech that allows said priests and others to venture into the mind of the possessed to fight demons in cyberspace, there are a lot of new ideas here and they mostly work.
Moreover, I enjoyed that the demon looked distinctly different from what we usually see in these type of films, which is either a human with glowing eyes or a red skinned horned entity. I thought the look of the demon with the bird head was distinct enough to be memorable and crucially scary.
In terms of scares this isn’t the scariest film in the world, but it did give me a few good scares throughout.
Overall, it is nice to see Blomkamp back in the game and bringing something new to the genre.
Pros.
The demon costume design
The new tech focus
The army of black ops exorcists
A few good scares
Cons.
It could do with being scarier
A few pacing issues
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Another Millennial Reviewer 