I am an atheist. In the real world, God and the Devil hold no interest for me. And yet the horror movies that have lasted in my mind almost always have a religious element as both The Omen and Rosemary's Baby haunt me to this very day. Movies of this nature have an uncertainty that is more terrifying and unsettling than any monster or slasher that might be stalking teenagers in the dark.The Devil Inside has no such uncertainty.Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade) is a young woman making a documentary. As a child, her mother, Maria, murdered three men during an exorcism. As Rossi grew up she decided to document her own investigation on what really happened with her mother. Could she truly have been possessed? And perhaps more importantly, can she save her?I knew this movie would be trouble when the first scene opened with a jump scare, the very worst horror technique. A handheld video of Maria's exorcism ends with her abruptly flying towards the screen. This "scare" is the first of many like attempts to frighten the audience. The filmmakers would do well to learn the difference between simply startling and truly terrifying their viewers.These days faux documentaries are a dime a dozen. This film suffers from a very common problem amongst this genre. In order to establish the fact that this is meant to be "real", the filmmakers over-exaggerate every handheld camera movement. At times, the camera loses focus or holds far too long on the back of an extra's head. Many of these shots are completely unnecessary and would be deemed so immediately in a real documentary. But everything here is dumbed down as to beat the audience over the head with the "reality" of the story.The only redeeming part of the film is the woman who played Maria. Alone in a cast of incompetents, Suzan Crowley portrayal is completely unhinged. Bouncing from accent to accent, language to language, and emotion to emotion, Crowley manages to give the audience a believable portrayal of either a paranoid schizophrenic or the victim of a demonic possession. Too bad the rest of the film fails to reach the same heights.
