Demonic (2015)

Demonic arrives from 2015 with the quiet confidence of a film that wants nothing more than to scare you in a house. A Louisiana slaughter, a detective, a psychologist, a séance gone wrong, a pregnant survivor, a demon who has been talking through the wrong body for most of the runtime. Director Will Canon keeps the plates spinning between interrogation room and camcorder footage, and the whole thing lands somewhere between competent and forgotten. It was released in Brazil first, then Turkey, then Mexico, and finally reached American audiences on Spike TV two years later. That trajectory tells you most of what you need to know about its cultural ambitions, which is to say it had none beyond the box office.

The cast includes Aaron Yoo and Terence Rosemore in supporting roles, and Maria Bello carries the psychologist with professional poise, but nobody is asked to stand for anything. There is no thesis in the room. The film has no interest in the politics of its own premise, no comment on the church, the police, or the neighborhood where the house sits. Michelle is pregnant, and that pregnancy is a plot device, a final scare involving a squirming shape in the womb, not an argument about bodily autonomy. The demon is a demon. He wants out.

This is a supernatural thriller that treats its audience as adults capable of enjoying a haunted house without a pamphlet. No sermons. No reckonings with history. No gentle correction of the viewer's moral posture. It is not a good film, exactly, and it is not a bad one either. It simply exists, ninety minutes of flickering lights and a detective who shoots the wrong man at the wrong moment. Somewhere a scorecard sits entirely blank, and there is a strange dignity in that.