Satanic

Trailer _ Satanic

source: Satanic

This movie is the Pumpkin Spice Latte of horror. It is so basic and thoughtless that it reads as an introduction to the genre for teens and twenty-somethings that call Jurassic Park a horror movie. Everything feels patched together. The characters switch motivations constantly, dialogue is often contradictory or just plain doesn't make sense, and the 'witty banter' is terrible and never funny (although it seems to think it is). After the first half hour you will already be sick of listening to characters say they are scared, but then say they want to do something that is clearly dangerous, and then switch again, there is just no care or consistency to plot at all. Overall this movie has no right to be made in this day and age with any kind of budget. It is the worst example of Hollywood where known actors are used in a story that isn't even really a story and is just made to make a passing buck. So much of the money, time, talent and resources could have been used to make a much better movie, not this paint by numbers trash.

Who knew that worshiping the Devil would be this boring? It took me quite a while to get around to watching "Satanic" because there was always something that seemed more interesting to watch coming up. But eventually I got around to watching it. And my suspicions of this being a less than mediocre movie were proved right. "Satanic" turned out to be a very boring movie, especially since the storyline dragged along at a creepily slow pace. It virtually took forever for the story to get from A to B, and it failed to present anything even remotely interesting in the time it took to do so. The storyline was less than impressive, and it never really caught on with me. And I must admit that more than once did my attention wander off towards my phone or I blundered off momentarily. The acting was adequate, and people were doing good enough jobs with whatever little they had to work with in terms of storyline, script and directing. There was absolutely nothing scary about "Satanic", unless you consider boredom to be scary. The effects in "Satanic" were crude, but they were present. And that effort at least counts for something. However, you should not get your hopes up for seeing impressive effects or to be blown away by an impressive display of CGI effects. I managed to endure this ordeal to the end, but it was a struggle, believe you me. And I can't really recommend that you invest your time, money or effort into "Satanic", because it just isn't worth it. There are far better horror movies out there, and far better choices if you prefer supernatural occult horror movies with a Satanic theme.

What else is there to say of this movie? The first 40 minutes is one of the worst things I've ever sat through, and if I didn't have an open mind, I would have shut it off before it could get any better. I remember seeing this somehow make the front page on this very website, despite its utterly despicable Photoshopped poster, and silently vowed never to watch it. However, my curiosity got the better of me when I found it on Netflix. As the title of this review indicates, the first 40+ minutes of the movie feature an annoying and punchable group of teenagers (or early 20-somethings? I don't know) on their way to Coachella (FREAKING COACHELLA), taking a detour along the way at the insistence of the heroine's goth sister to see the "dark side" of California, visiting several occult and Satanic hot-spots, including the Church of Satan and Sharon Tate's house, where she was murdered by the Manson Family, and staying in the hotel room where one Layne Gore (such a cringeworthy name) killed herself in ritual. Eventually, they come upon an occult bookstore and meet some Satanists who they trail, suspecting them of doing some pretty nasty stuff behind closed doors. When they find them in their rural hideout, it appears that they were right, as they find the Satanist they met in the bookstore undressing a woman and holding a knife to her throat, and they interrupt them in the middle of the ritual and allow the woman to escape. They locate the woman the next morning and offer to take her in since she has nowhere else to go. She turns out to be the sole likable character in the entire movie, and the only Satanist who comes across as articulate and doesn't act like a dick ("LaVey was a fraud" is probably my favorite line in the whole movie). When they take her back to their hotel room, she reenacts Layne Gore's ritual and slits her own throat to take herself and the four main characters on a journey to Hell. That's where the movie very nearly does a 180, though it's still terrible and the characters and dialogue are still cringeworthy. From that point on, "Satanic" is actually fairly creepy. But not creepy enough to make up for the waste of time that the first 40+ minutes or so unsurprisingly were. And for a movie called "Satanic", the goth sister sure screams (quite annoyingly) "Oh god!" a lot. Overall, the acting was okay to me, but I would not recommend this movie based on the first act alone. 2/10 (and that's being generous)

The only two things that stopped me from giving this movie a lower rating is the very small twist near the end which I thought was pretty cool, and also it was still mildly entertaining. The story is the same cookie-cutter premise you see in almost every other horror movie, a group of idiot teens doing one questionable thing after another which results into painful consequences, and of course if you pick it hard enough you'll find gaping holes. The characters are forgettable, bland and punchable. I would say they're stupid too but it's a horror movie. That's like ordering a cheeseburger and complaining there's cheese in it. You kind of expect it. The only thing I liked about the cast was the acting, it was pretty decent and believable, but asides that it's the same thing you've seen many times. Out of our 4 main characters, we got two overly adventurous idiots (Seth and Elise), and we got our main character "good girl" (Chloe) who's always saying "I don't think this is a good idea, let's not do this" but eventually goes along with it anyways, and her meathead boyfriend (David) who's on the edge of both sides. Just by looking at them you KNOW who's going to die first and who's going to die last. I didn't care for any of these boring characters, the only thing I was interested in was to see how they were going to face their inevitable deaths, and I was very disappointed. And with that said, this movie also could have been a million times more horrifying if someone with an imagination worked on it, but it was nothing. Just a throat slitting scene, very mild gore, one of them fused and mingled on the ceiling, a stitched mouth, and very crappy implications that demons are stalking them, such as crows slamming themselves into their house, and hard scratch marks on their bodies and car. Wow, soooooo original. Overall, check it out if you're a horror movie junkie, but don't expect something amazing. I watched this on Netflix, and I'm glad I didn't pay to see it because I'd feel kind of ripped off.

I only did that because 1 is the lowest point, so I felt generous enough and gave it yet another one! I watch a lot of underground productions, trying to help the community out, reviewing movies that have no comments, warning people if necessary, advertising for others and so on. Few nights ago I stumbled upon Satanic, I saw who was the lead actress so of course it had to be done. Nothing out of the ordinary for starters, typical moves, acting, plot, until something else decides to happen. And from nothing much, comes probably around 100 screams in 20 minutes. I actually got a headache from watching this one, and I am not kidding. The reveal itself is horrible, completely useless, just some scenes put there to shock, to allow this movie to call itself a horror. The real horror was in front of the screen, me, bored out of my mind but also trying to lower the volume without leaving the bed. The screaming won. I moved! Like hypnotized! This is all you get: screams, screams, screams. And of course no explanation. I really wished Satanic was as the poster showed. Far from it. 2 stars! That says a lot. Not recommended. Cheers!

The mere fact that IMDb needs 10 lines to review a movie will prove a challenge with this film. The summary says it all. AWFUL. Just awful. The only redeeming part of this movie was counting how often a character said Coachella. The movie starts slow and finishes in a flurry. There is no development, no plot, no character insights. To confuse viewers even more they threw in a time twist variable, just for fun I gather. It is what is wrong with horror movies these days, no imagination and no horror. After watching The Conjuring 2, this film deserves no further discussion nor acknowledgement. I really hope this is ten lines because I have truly run out of willingness to discuss this movie any longer.

A tour of LA's creepiest places leads to a chance encounter with a strange woman and a dangerous ritual for four visiting students. The protagonists are unlikeable, and the time wasted developing them just makes them more so, but there's enough that's creepy and disturbing about Satanic to make it an acceptable horror film. Nothing you'll want to see twice, but if you and your friends just want a dumb horror movie, Satanic is better than a lot of things you could settle for. At times, it feels like a vanity project for Hyland, whose character is the movie's conscience and reason and everything else that's supposedly decent and mature, but as with all vanity projects, it ends up a poor way to showcase her potential. When she wants to be cute, she's cute enough, but when she's scared she comes off as hysterical, and when she's righteous, she comes off as overbearing. It's hard to say how much of this is the fault of the script or direction.

If you like horror its at least worth a watch. The acting isn't great, but I found the story to be new and kind of fun. My least favorite part was the ending because (spoiler alert) I found it slightly obnoxious that we didn't at least get to see them all together in hell. I kind of felt like we should have seen Alice welcome them home or something. I feel like there was a really foundation for what could have possibly been a bad-ass movie, but that they just didn't take it far enough. They put us close to the top, without really getting us all the way there. I know that half of the thrill of horror is the unknown, but in this case I feel like knowing just a tiny bit more would have made for a much better movie.