Chasing the Devil

Chasing the Devil

Chasing the Devil

Chasing the Devil

Not the vibe I was picking up. Anyways, here's another film about a group of kids privileged enough to not need to have real jobs and just chase ghosts for a living. This isn't the worst ff film I've seen, but it's up there. Unbelievable acting, dry and annoying characters, situations that could and would never happen. All you can do is ask yourself why. Your friend gets a word burned into his skin and you don't take him to the hospital? And he's also walking around like he's fine 2 min later? Your friend tries to gauge his eyes out and instead of grabbing his hands (you're barely 2 feet from him) you just yell no stop don't? And then don't call an ambulance afterwards? The black guy agrees to go in the dark basement by himself after the death?! Everything was just awful. And the cringiest thing ever said "she's like a sister. One I fantasize about a lot." Gross.

The movie uses several trendy tropes as if pulled from a grab bag. It uses these with little regard to how relevant it is to the plot, or the design of the film. It leads to a conflicted film with a weak identity. To the point where these problems break the viewing experience. If this were made in 2022 I would guess chatGPT wrote the script. Is it found footage? Then why does half the movie look like it's on regular film and not amateur film equipment? Sometimes it shows perspectives from the characters personal cameras and it is grainy. Sometimes their camera perspectives show clear footage from the regular movie camera. Both the grainy footage and the clear footage get affected by supernatural distortion. So is the clear footage supposed to be found footage too? There's no consistency with the found footage element of this film. Most of the time when character-perspective footage is used, it is not showing anything that the normal camera couldn't. It brings nothing to the table. It is pointless. So then we're left with the plot. It is another possession film. Normally these films provide a drip feed with reasons for the supernatural experience. Or the supernatural elements are frightening enough to keep viewers enraptured. Neither of that occurs here. It just has the possessed person doing generic low budget possessed behavior. This behavior is largely irrelevant and has no affect on what the characters do other than a moment of shock. Finally my question for nearly any possession film. Why does this supernatural being care so much about these regular old, mundane, benign humans? Most films like this cannot answer that. With that unanswered, it leaves the viewer with little reason to care about these characters. In the end I've put more thought into this review than thought was put into this film so who is the real winner here. They got me to watch an hour of it, and then write this for 20 minutes so I guess I got got.

CHASING THE DEVIL is another in an endless run of found footage horror movies made on zero budget which means you know from the outset it simply won't be very good. This one's yet again about a team of paranormal investigators sent to a haunted location to probe an inexplicable death. There are hints of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY throughout, amid a whole lot of conversation that doesn't really add up to much and makes the whole thing slow-moving and uninteresting. The cheesy horror elements are predictable and clichéd, although this isn't the worst of its type.

Otherwise, I would have given it a 4. If you can get through the dramatic, cliche acting of the first 45-60 minutes, the last 30 is fairly entertaining. Not great, but at least better than bad found footage films. None of the twists were surprising. Plot was mediocre and only delved info surface level explainations.

At first I didn't think I would really like it, but once I gave it a few minutes it grew on me. There were times when the acting was off, but not everything can be an Oscar winner right? The film actually had a really good story line, and it took you on a pretty good ride. But, I thought the DR. was a dick and not the way a theologian would act. But, looking back on that scene, it appears that he very well could have been possessed. I do have a problem with demon possession being like a virus, because it is in fact not. It is exactly that, a possession of a demon. I also don't agree that a demon can just jump from one body to the next at will. If a person is a person of faith, well, then by belief, that person has Jesus living within them, therefor a demon could in no way possess them. That person actually has a inner amulet. The film could have done a better job with explaining more about what the entity wanted. Yeah, end of days is fine and all, but so cliché and vague.

Honestly wasn't expecting much- but I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I expected too. I especially loved the character of Hailey- I wish it would've had more of a story about her because Elise is an excellent actress: I immediately recognized her from The show Salem.

sometimes it had fun moments, only to frequently slip and fall on its dumb face with really bad decisions made in shooting or acting or execution. then it devolves into a minor league "The Thing" situation. I would've rated it a 4 or 5 out of 10 if it were just a goofy little thing like this. then at the very end the main character gives a dumb monologue to the camera, addressed directly to Satan. then Satan gives a dumb rebuttal. then, entirely out of nowhere, with absolutely no relation to the film or anything mentioned or implied in the film at all, it shows a picture of Charles Manson, then starts showing pictures of other known serial killers, panning out to show more. Then it starts repeating pictures once it's panned out far enough, maybe trying to cover for the fact that they couldn't think of enough serial killers and so had to keep repeating rows to make it look like a lot. the movie seemed to be implying at the very last moment that all serial killers were possessed by the devil or else part of some mind-numbingly incoherent plan to start the apocalypse