Premise: A man and his wife show up to his brother's house to find that he claims he has the devil trapped in his basement.
In terms of bang for your buck, it's hard to beat making a horror movie. I Trapped the Devil is Josh Lobos' debut film. It's filmed almost entirely in a single location (one house). The entire cast is maybe 10 people. No need to even hire extras. It couldn't have been very expensive. Yet, he's still able to make a really solid horror movie.
The core idea is pretty original - what would happen is someone said they had the devil trapped in their closet? The type of movie is pretty familiar though. It's 90 minutes of people debating about if they are in a horror movie or a drama movie about mental illness. Think about it, the thing that actually makes this a horror movie is that you believe there might actually be the devil in that closet. Otherwise, if you really believed the bother trapped some random stranger in the closet, this would be just an absolute bummer of a movie about the brother's mental illness. This movie does a great job of keeping up a good baseline level of tension throughout. It keeps adding new information to tip the balance in the "devil or insane" debate one way or the other. It uses that classic horror trick of making the scariest scenes about what you can't see. And what a lovely creepy devil voice they use from behind the door. Perhaps that makes it too clear that it's actually the devil, but I'll allow it because it is so unsettling.
My biggest issue might be more of an Amazon Prime issue than a film issue. I'm all for amplifying the effect of a scary movie by choosing to turn off the lights. I'm not a fan of making a movie so dark that I have to turn off all my lights to see what's going on. The contrast on this movie was awful. Often, I could not see what was happening in scenes. Similarly, I can appreciate how getting quiet can amp up the tension. However, I shouldn't need to consider turning on subtitles because if I shift in my seat, it will overpower the dialogue. There is a chance that it's just a shit transfer to Amazon or maybe even my TV (which I don't have any other problems on). It led to a subpar viewing experience though. Also, I was hoping for at least one decision in the movie that would surprise me. One moment where I thought: "Wait, what now?" After the cool premise, which is in the title, it was pretty much the movie I expected. I think Josh Lobos proves he has a lot of knowledge of horror movies. Hopefully, with his next movie, he finds something a little fresher to do with that knowledge, because this is a really solid debut.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
No comments:
Post a Comment