Wicked Within, The (2015)
Directed by Jay Alaimo
Starring Sienna Guillory, Gianna Capaldi, Enzo Cilenti, and Michele Hicks
Holy shit, this movie is bad. I sat through this movie, hating every second of it, so it would be immoral for me to make you wait through every word of this review just to get to the conclusion. This movie is absolute, irredeemable trash. The plot is nonsense, pace incomprehensible, characters forgettable, and action nonexistent. Every scene was torture, and every twist awkward and uncomfortable. This is, without a doubt, the worst movie of this year’s After Dark Horrorfest. It might very well be the worst movie in the entire history of 8 Films to Die For.
Don’t watch this movie. I know I might be building a curiosity just to see how bad it is. It isn’t even functional as that. It isn’t an interesting, failed experiment kind of bad. It isn’t even memorable as a cultural artifact of mankind’s ability to finish a film despite total incompetence. It is uncomfortable to watch this movie. It is so inept at every turn, so absolutely devoid of substance at every pivotal point, that to recommend this movie would be sadistic. I often recommend Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 to people as a prank, but this is beyond the realm of practical joke.
Don’t watch this movie. I cannot fathom how this movie made it onto an anthology of any kind. The Wicked Within Tells the story of a family dinner that lasts an incomprehensible amount of time. Sisters Beth and Hannah are content drinking their problems into oblivion, but their mother has unfortunately seen fit to make tonight the night that she demands everyone talk about their childlessness and infanticide. I cannot tell if they were worse off before or after the demon popped into their lives.
Don’t watch this movie. It turns out that Hannah and her husband Michael have lost a child a year ago, and this is the first time they have socialized since. Friend of the family Maggie is also there, awkwardly sitting through the whole thing. As the night progresses, everyone gets drunk and acts enough to collect a paycheck. Eventually, Beth gets possessed, and eats the scenery harder than Edward Furlong in any movie post 2000. She does full on demonic monologues 30 minutes in, and it just gets worse from there.
Don’t watch this movie. At the film’s half-hour mark, they decide to just lay the whole plot on the table. Turns out, Hannah accidentally killed her daughter, her husband wants to sleep with Beth, Beth’s husband ran over a woman, and Beth is kind of slutty. The cliché ending that we normally would half-heartedly anticipate at the end is shoved right into the middle, without any regard for pacing or tension.
Don’t watch this movie. Realizing that she is possessed, they call in a psychic, who quickly discovers the house is haunted as fuck. They hold a comically rushed séance, and start hearing the voice of the dead daughter urging her mother Hannah to tell the truth. Hannah harshly and conspicuously demands an end to the spiritual channeling, at which point her mother denounces the entire thing as rubbish. The psychic teleports across the room, and starts cackling in a demonic tone while taunting them all. Cool, I guess everyone is at least on board with the demonic possession shit at this point.
Don’t watch this movie. If you can believe it, the movie actually goes downhill from here. They then invite a priest in, who also makes the conclusion that the demonic presence is in fact evil. At this point, the mother decides that this is all superstitious bullshit, and vows to come back the next day with a “professional.” I’m sorry, was the teleporting demon-speak not enough to get you on board with the whole premise? How about the literal disembodied voice of your dead granddaughter you literally heard 15 minutes ago? Two scenes ago, you were shocked and in terror by the mystical teleporting omniscient demon beast. Did you just forget that? It feels like the movie was poorly cut, with extra scenes added to expand on the story by someone who hadn’t seen the rest of the film.
Don’t watch this movie. From here, it just continues to spiral down into nonsense hell. None of the twists, turns, or character decisions either A) make sense, B) build on the story, or C) offer a significant scare to at least redeem this pile of confused bullshit. The final twist is the worst of all, completely turning the movie into an exercise in pointlessness with no payoff. Sitting through this mess provides no satisfaction.
Don’t watch this movie. This is perhaps one of the least enjoyable films I have ever watched. There isn’t a good plot to keep you engaged, interesting twists to engage your mind, nor action to turn off your need for either of those other two. It feels like it was written by a child, who has just come to understand the fundamentals of plot twist and narrative wrap-around, but hasn’t yet mastered even the first part of the complexity that makes it exciting. It is amateurish in the worst way. I could tear into a thousand minutia of this movie, but every point would just be another nail in the coffin of a film that is already dead and buried. All I am left with is a resolute and firm piece of genuine advice:
Don’t watch this movie.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
