Where the Devil Roams

After waiting for the film to be available on Demand, I was finally able to watch it last night and I enjoyed it immensely. I have seen KNUCKLE JACK, THE DEEPER YOU DIG, and HELLBENDER. It is the same voice of the Adams Family in those films that you'll find in this one. It opens with a vaudevillian style reading of a poem filmed with a black & white vignette. The poem, read by a tattooed and pierced amputee is the theme and main plot device of the entire film as it deals with loneliness and longing among the outcast, neglected, and broken. It follows a small family Seven (John Adams), Maggie (Toby Poser), and Eve (Zelda Adams), in a Northeast carnival circuit after World War I. At times the setting is hard to maintain and draws attention away from the story (like well maintained and paved rural roads) but the award winning cinematography makes up for it by keeping the mood set in a cold, unforgiving world where people on the fringe of society still want to be loved. I would recommend this and any Adam's Family film to any movie lover that wanted something unique, original, and full of heart. It took a moment for me to warm up to it, but even being a fan of the filmmakers, but once I did I was reminded why I'm a fan.

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source: Where the Devil Roams

This would've been a lot better as a short film and hopefully that concise format would've actually gotten the point of it across. It was painful to sit through and the only way I got through it was by laughing at how absurdly serious they were taking themselves throughout the entire film. Their cinematography has improved since Hellbender and I enjoyed the atmospheric music, but other than those two elements, I have nothing positive to say about this film. As a horror fan and someone who generally loves things to do with carnival settings, I would not recommend this film. If you really want to see it, wait until it comes into a streaming service so you're not paying any extra for it.

No pun intended - you can tell that this movie is not one to easily rate - considering the two different experiences you can read about here in the reviews. I do understand that the other reviewer had issues with it - the Adams family (the name alone made them a perfect fit to make movies, right?) do movies that are ... well they are not meant to be mainstream at all. So you have to dive in them with an open mind. Like what is the story here? What are the lessons? Is there any moral code? Just free your mind from any restrictions and you'll be fine. Do not try to think in boxes. You have quite a few great characters in here. Most seems patch or rather piece work. Like a puzzle that may not look like it is fitting together - but once you've assembled it, it totally makes sense. Well maybe not totally, but you get what I mean ... hopefully. There are quite a few easter eggs hidden in this (like a Karloff sign, which apparently was inserted digitally after the fact as the director told me) ... and the creepiness factor is quite high. This is also a love letter to black and white horror movies ... again, it may be tough to get a hold on the movie, but do not even try to do that ... if you like weird ... well you could do worse.

Nonsensical self-indulgent garbage that feels like an eternity, Where The Devil Roams opens with a man reciting a poem in front of an audience. It goes on and on and on. Every time you think he's finished, he starts another verse. I almost crumbled before the film had really began. Amazingly, this isn't the worst thing about this interminably dull, totally baffling mess that could only appeal to the most pretentious of movie viewers - those who might consider the more experimental work of David Lynch or Alejandro Jodorowsky far too accessible and mainstream. From what I could gather, the story involves a murderous husband/wife/daughter trio of carnival performers who go on the road after stealing a supernatural heart and sewing needle that enables them to reattach severed limbs as though they had never been detached. When the husband and wife are mutilated in an axe attack, the daughter patches them up using the heart and needle, but finds that she needs to regularly replace the hacked off limbs with fresh appendages when the old ones start to go mouldy. This leads to plenty of carnage, which could have been a whole load of gory fun if only the directors (it took three of them to film this mess) hadn't opted for such an incomprehensible and utterly tedious arthouse approach. Rarely have I longed so hard for a film to end (unfortunately, every time it seems like it's about to finish, another scene kicks in). 1/10, although I would rate it 0/10 if I could: that pointless scene where two characters haggle over the price of a room for the night made me want to put my foot through the screen (I'm glad I didn't: it was an IMAX screen and that might have been costly).

The filmmaking Adams family make low budget,chilly horrors that are several cuts above the usual stalk and slash horrors that populate the market. They have a keen eye for character and atmosphere that make for a more subtle horror, with well drawn characters that add to a rather brave whole. Unfortunately here the plot is bogged down with tedious hallucinationary scenes, an overlong opening that doesn't excite or grab the audience but is daring nonetheless, and a music video that plays weirdly at the end- It adds nothing really. The piercings and tattoos on the carnival workers,seem too modernistic out of place , like Lucy Osbourne appeared,minus her sodding phone! The CGI on the WW1 scenes are a little too unsubtle. Nonetheless, I applaud this family of filmmakers for trying to appeal to the more adult of horror fans. The designs and cinematography effectively evoke the back roads of 30s Catskills, the chilly look got to my bones and they look of the time and place. After a couple of predictable' found footage' films of late at least these guys know there is room for low budget horror to develop interesting ideas rather than cliched use of the camera and lines of dialogue. It could have been better but overall a memorable little chiller.

Short review: 'Where the Devil Roams' made me really happy. To see a family making independent horror movies is terrific, but these are anything but your average home movies. This one is made with a lot of class. It's extremely dark in the early going, but it isn't afraid to throw in some moments of humour. And it's absolutely funny stuff, but the tone is so dark you can almost feel bad for laughing. This one was described to me before going in as a slow-burn, but I'm not sure I'd agree with that assessment. There's a hell of a lot of violence and mayhem for a 'Slow-burn". Then the twisted ending is the cherry on top. I enjoyed this movie. 7/10.