Rating of
2/4
The Dark Lord Must Be Spinning in His Grave
Chris Kavan - wrote on 10/05/16
At least it's nice to see Sarah Hyland branching out from her Modern Family. It's too bad that Satanic is, by and far, another generic horror film that offers up only a few, true moments of terror but ultimately can't be saved from otherwise mediocrity.
It doesn't help that the first part of the film plays out the world's most boring "horror" road trip. Chloe (Hyland) her boyfriend with the sweet van, David (Steven Krueger), and her goth cousin Elise (Clara Mamet) and her wise-cracking boyfriend Seth (Justin Chon) are on an occult tour of L.A. They rent a room in which a woman committed suicide in a satanic manner, visit the unholy church of Anton LaVey, the home of a Manson murder and a shop selling dark wares. It is at this shop they come upon something interesting, as a back room filled with eyeballs and intestines hints this bald-headed guy (Anthony Carrigan) might be the real deal - too bad he's also an upstanding a-hole. Instead of leaving well enough alone and heading off to Coachella, they decide to follow the freak. This leads them down a dark road to a ratty house where they witness a young woman (Sophie Dalah) disrobe before being held at knife point. Before things escalate, the four make their presence known, disrupt this ritual and run for their lives when a shotgun is produced.
This setup takes way too long for my taste. None of the characters are that well established (bland personalities and, no background defined) and so when the girl they rescued, Alice, turns out to be not-so-innocent and things start to get weird, it's hard to feel that bad for them. There are moments here and there that are good - a ceiling full of cutlery, a pool of dead birds and a finale that manages to be pretty good - but overall it never grabbed my full attention. Even the big twist at the end I predicted far ahead of time and thus the impact was lost.
All in all, this is a great Halloween movie for tween girls - they will be satisfied and probably scream and giggle profusely. For horror aficionados, however, it's not going to leave much of an impression.
