We had the trailer for Diabolic the other day, and everyone was arguing where the font from the poster was from. We landed on the same font as American Horror Story, before that conversation strikes up again.
I asked for a screener of Diabolic, and watched it over the weekend, so here’s my review.
The movie stars Elizabeth Cullen, John Kim, Mia Challis, Luca Asta Sardelis, and Terence Crawford. Daniel J. Phillips directs, and wrote alongside Mike Harding and Ticia Madsen.
The Story
The story is described as a ‘religious horror’:
A woman’s hope for a miracle cure turns into a nightmare when she confronts the vengeful spirit of a cursed witch, determined to claim her as a vessel for her evil power.
We open on what seems like a baptism; however, it’s more like a punishment. A young lady is being held underwater, being ‘baptised’ in people’s names. One of the names causes a problem, as poor Elise becomes possessed.
Years later, Elise is still having issues, like waking up trying to dig through dirt, as if she’s looking for something. Her boyfriend, John (Kim), knows she needs help and sends her off to a psychiatrist.
It turns out, she has little memory of it, but she was once part of a religious, I’m going to use the word, cult, called the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints. The psychiatrist says she needs to go back there and find out what happened, through drugs provided by the FLDS.
Her, John and friend Clara (Sardelis) head to FLDS and start taking the drugs. This brings back a lot of the repressed memories of Elise, and that’s all of the story I’ll spoil.
The Cast
Most of the cast of Diabolic are all new to me. However, everyone does a good enough job in the movie.
Obviously, like with most horrors, the female main character is the focus, and Cullen plays Elise well. Sadly, Elise goes through a lot in the movie, from mind-bending drugs and possession, so it’s not an easy role.
The only cast member who wasn’t great was Kim. He had starred in things like Neighbours and The Librarians; however, in Diabolic, he’s just not good. There are times he really takes you out of the movie.
The Story
It turns out, the story of Diabolic is ‘based on true events’. One of the writers, Madsen, was in the Mormon Church. She was excommunicated and rejected by the community.
The reason for her excommunication was that she was gay. In the movie, Elise has feelings for a fellow female church member. When this all comes out, she is then ‘baptised’, as in the opening of the movie.
When this happens, she also gets possessed. I found this a bit of a tenuous link between the two. I think this movie would have been better to focus on being kicked out of a church or the possession thing.
Combining the two didn’t really work for me, as far as I could tell, the possession wouldn’t have made a difference with the lesbian thing; it felt a little shoehorned in. That’s just me, though; you might get different mileage.
Overall
I never like to break down movies too much, and I don’t like to spoil the story, which I’m not going to do with Diabolic. The other thing about me is that I watch and review a lot of horror. It ranges from incredibly scary stuff to things that are laudably bad.
Diabolic is neither end of the scale. The photography is very good, in fact, some of it is excellent. There are some really interesting shots that I have not seen before.
The downside is that I wasn’t really all that invested in the story. It was good enough, but just not great.
Also, I had the impression that Diabolic was set in the early days of the settlers of America. Nope, it’s all modern-day, all set in the countryside where mobile phones don’t work. This is a minor gripe, though.
Sadly, Diabolic just another horror that I had to sit through. I can’t say I remember much about it, and it’s not like I would return to it again. I do always appreciate the effort that goes into making a movie like this, but for me, the story is the most crucial aspect, which doesn’t need a lot of technical skills or good acting, just good writing. The writing here was a little confused.
It gets 2 stars out of 5 from me; it’s well made and nicely directed, but the story isn’t solid enough to be enjoyable. Some of the acting lets it down as well.
Diabolic is on VoD.
