Trick or Trailers: The Devil Inside (2012)

It's not easy to make a great exorcism movie, as much as filmmakers keep trying. It is, however, a good deal easier to make a great trailer for a mediocre exorcism movie.

Case in point: 2012's The Devil Inside. Man, this trailer!



Combining the found footage genre with the exorcism genre, that's a slam dunk. Not for the movie itself, that was a dud. But for the purposes of the trailer and selling an audience on the pseudo veracity of this story, it's perfect! The Last Exorcism got there first in 2010 with that particular combo but The Devil Inside sold itself far better.

The marketing of horror movies is, often times, easier for me to appreciate and admire than the movies themselves. I suppose that's just one way of saying the trailers are often better than the movies they're promoting but I genuinely love the excitement that a great trailer can generate - even if the final product is an unfulfilling one.

I saw The Devil Inside with a packed house when it premiered in January of 2012 and I still remember the chorus of angry boo's that erupted when the end credits rolled! But yet it played to full houses across the country and every single ticket got sold because the trailer and killer TV spots like this hyped the living hell out of this movie.



Some people might resent trailers that dupe them into paying good money to see movies that don't live up to the hype. But not this guy!

No, while I would certainly prefer that every horror movie with a great trailer delivered on that promise, I never feel like a trailer misled me. Life is full of disappointments, you know? That's just a given. But while movies might frequently let you down, trailers rarely do. Trailers, for me, are an experience completely unto themselves.

They instill a sense of excitement that can last for weeks or months until the movie is released. If the movie ultimately fails to pay off on that anticipation, it's almost inconsequential to me.

When I look back at a trailer like the one for The Devil Inside, my thoughts are less about how much the movie wasn't what I'd hoped it would be but rather "wasn't it fun to be so pumped for this movie?"

No matter how many times I've been burned by a lame horror movie, I've never become cynical about them. A good trailer can still put me in a giddy mood.

Anything that can do that, to lift someone's spirits, that's invaluable. Trailers...they do God's work. Even when they're selling devil movies!

With Any Luck, This'll Be The Worst Horror Movie Of 2012

It's never fun to report that the first horror movie of the year is lousy but yet that seems to be an annual tradition. January releases are notoriously bad, with the likes of The Rite (2011), Legion (2010), and One Missed Call (2008) standing as evidence to that. Now we can add The Devil Inside to that list. No doubt looking to score another Paranormal Activity-sized hit, Paramount has heavily promoted this exorcism thriller. What a shame that they couldn't have spent a little of that ad money on fixing The Devil Inside's dismal climax so that the word of mouth wouldn't be so poisonous.

For most of its running time, The Devil Inside is agreeable nonsense. Director and co-writer William Brent Bell plays it all straight-faced and faux-educational. Even if you think exorcisms and religion are a bunch of hooey, the clinical presentation that Bell goes for early on is involving and seems to show some research into the subject (Did you know that a key sign of possession is extreme pupil dialation? I didn't.).

With cameras documenting her journey, Isabella (Fernanda Andrade), travels to Rome to visit her institutionalized mother Maria (Suzan Crowley) who Isabella believes may have been possessed when she committed three murders twenty years earlier. Isabella's investigation into her mother's condition puts her in contact with Ben (Simon Quarterman) and David (Evan Helmuth), two priests who are conducting exorcisms without the church's approval. Together they attempt to discern the true nature of Maria's condition.

From this set-up, there's the potential for an eerie, ambiguous film. But Bell and co-writer Matthew Peterman aren't out to make that kind of movie. Instead they're going for all the satanic (tubular) bells and whistles they can conjure. Once the first onscreen exorcism hits, and any doubt in the supernatural goes along with it, events become more crazed and mad-cap as the movie hurtles towards what promises to be an exciting climax - but then it all abruptly comes to a (literally) crashing halt in a manner so sudden that audiences will do their own version of Linda Blair's 360 degree head spin.

The sizable audience I saw The Devil Inside with was totally on board with the movie up until its final seconds - screaming, gasping, and occasionally chuckling throughout its running time. But when the movie suddenly cut to the credits (with a helpful web address provided for anyone who wants to learn more about the case!), the unanimous outburst of disappointment was loud and immediate.

No ad campaign can keep bad word of mouth from spreading once a film is out - especially not in the age of the internet - so instead of studios putting so much money into tricking people into seeing a turkey, shouldn't they do all they can to make a movie that people can legitimately enjoy and recommend rather than just leaving them feeling suckered? I just don't get it. And the selling of the movie aside, when filmmakers bungle a horror movie so badly, I have to wonder - is it because they don't have the talent to do better, or because they don't have a feel for the genre, or is it because they have such a contempt for the audience that they don't think anyone going to see a movie like The Devil Inside has any critical faculties?

Whatever the case, The Devil Inside is a letdown. Bad horror movies don't dampen my love of the genre but they do make me feel had and that's never a good feeling. Here's hoping that with the release of The Devil Inside that the worst of 2012's horror crop is already out of the way.