The Devils

Brandon and Matt and I had our regular scary movie night at Matt’s place this week!

Usually we hem and haw for a while about what movie we should watch, but Matt had one queued up for us: The Devils was available on The Criterion Channel.

This movie wasn’t scary - it made you feel repulsed by humanity - but it was good and engrossing. As soon as it ended, I said “This felt like a play, not a movie,” because there were so many well-developed (and well-acted) characters. Everyone had a back story and well-understood motivations. It played with my emotions, too: the main character was despicable in the beginning and won my support by the end.

My only problems were that some aspects felt disjointed: there was a middle section that felt out of place with the rest of the story (a character takes a strange ethereal horse ride for a while) and some comic relief characters felt grotesque in contrast to some of the horrific scenes. And I guess I felt they put too much in the story: it’s based on true events, but not all needed to be in the film.

Recommended if you like the idea of a religious history horror film.