Isabella Rossi played by Fernanda Andrade decides to create a documentary to find the answers to what happened to her mother 20 years earlier. Her mother was convicted of murdering two priests and a nun in 1989 and then taken to a mental hospital in Italy. Isabella recruits the help of her friend Michael played by Ionut Grama who is a filmmaker. They document the trip from the states to Italy where Isabella sees her mother for the first time and tries to understand the events of the past. The Devil Inside is another in a long line of hand-cam cinematography. It is also another in a long line of exorcism movies. We see the same possession themes; profanity, contortion of bodies, knowing unknowable information about people in the room, and speaking in tongues. Unlike some of its predecessors, The Devil Inside fails to create suspense and fear. The story drags in points and the ending is rushed. They missed several chances to build up to an intense and terrifying climax to the story.
The script (written by William Brent Bell and Matthew Peterman) is thin, not well thought out, and mediocre at best. There is very little character development. I found it difficult to connect to the characters because you don’t learn anything about them until the end, and then you only learn very little.
This movie is another attempt to scare us at the idea of possession but it falls flat. The Devil Inside brings nothing new to the exorcism genre and this reviewer found it to be actually quite boring. I’ll be rewatching The Exorcist to remind myself how scary an exorcism movie is supposed to be.
