Demonic (2021) | Film Review

Demonic possession is one of those subgenres of horror that has, pardon the pun, simply been done to death. How do you freshen up an age-old setup where an unsuspecting innocent is taken over by devilish forces and forced to unleash unspeakable acts? Well, if you are director Neill Blomkamp, you inject a bit of technology into it.

Demonic follows Carly Spenser (Carly Pope), a young woman whose mother’s murder spree decades earlier has led to her modern, isolated ways. When an estranged friend informs Carly that her mother Angela (Nathalie Boltt) is comatose and currently undergoing experimental therapies inside her mind, she seeks out answers. The doctors in charge of the research (Michael J. Rogers and Terry Chen) ask Carly to take part in the study, offering her a chance to wander inside Angela’s mind, and Carly elects to finally identify the answers as to why her mother snapped. What she finds, just might lead her to the realization that her mother could be inhabited by a demonic force.

Written and directed by Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium), Demonic emerges with a clever construct: mesh a bit of The Conjuring with Dreamscape and a pinch of Nightmare on Elm Street. There’s no denying the originality of merging sleep and dream studies with that of a comatose patient, and inject a little demonic possession, and you have a concept that is intriguing to say the least.

Working in Blomkamp’s favor is Carly Pope as his lead – an engaging actress with a genuinely relatable presence who is also capable of flipping to heightened hysterics at the drop of a hat – and the unique presentation Blomkamp choses to showcase Carly’s walkabouts inside her mother’s mind. Utilizing volumetric capture techniques to create a three-dimensional environment, Angela’s subconscious is a visually creative endeavor that allows the audience to easily distinguish between reality and dreams when Carly is wandering about searching for answers.

Working against Demonic is two-fold. First, the physical representation of the presence affecting Angela never comes across as terrifying so much as an overgrown crow costume from last year’s Halloween sale. Second, there are so many ideas at play Blomkamp’s script – the third act alone changes course several times with different plot points – that the cleverness begins to work against the script. By the end, the story has become so convoluted, it ends up tripping over itself in an attempt to wrap things up.

Neill Blomkamp is a talented writer and director who has introduced several interesting concepts into the world of cinema. While Demonic has lofty aspirations and an intriguing premise, it suffers from too many irons in the proverbial fire, stumbling at the finish line as it attempts to reclaim that promise of its initial setup.