Here Comes The Devil Review

Do you like your satanic possessions with a little Mexican kick? If that’s the case, you just might want to check out Adrián García Bogliano’s Spanish-language horror film Here Comes The Devil – or more appropriately Here Cums The Devil. Any Todd & The Book Of Pure Evil fans in the house? Remember that song “Horny Like The Devil” from their first musical episode? I remember laughing at the song based on pure comedic merits, because we don’t know really know how horny the Devil is – until now. In what is essentially a softcore porn mixed with Children of the Corn, Bogliano offers a sadistic and sexually-vitalized take on the possession sub-genre, delivering creepy kids driving their parents mad.

While on a family vacation, Felix (Francisco Barreiro) and Sol (Laura Caro) let their children go explore a hill on their own, but the situation becomes serious when neither return. After spending a tumultuous night alone in a hotel, the couple’s children return the next day, but upon arriving home, the parents notice strange happenings starting to occur. Not knowing how to stop the other-worldly happenings, Felix and Sol attempt to seek retribution for what could have happened to their children, but as the events become stranger and stranger, rational explanations become more out of the question. When these children returned home, did they come alone? That’s the scary, unanswerable question Felix and Sol have to face.

Adrián García Bogliano first entrances viewers by making some interesting connections between sexuality and Satan, correlating negative events like the children’s disappearance (and more sinister happenings) with, say, Sol’s gushing orgasm. Arousal and passion goes along with the Devil’s presence, which we also see through the babysitter’s encounter, but constantly through the movie sexual pleasure is equated to the most evil of sins. Of course, at the same time, it feels a little unnecessary and forced, as Here Comes The Devil opens with a long-winded, obligatory lesbian sex scene, which weakens the blow every time a character pops up fully nude – which is way more than you’d expect.

Here Comes The Devil is a tonally confusing film that winds up somewhere between a Telemundo soap opera and a creepy after-school special about finding demons in dark caves, but the overly jokey atmosphere doesn’t exactly play towards any tension. Bogliano doesn’t conjure much in the way of scares, as even his more paranormally charged scenes culminate in nothing but the Devil sneaking a quick nip pinch (seriously wish I was joking). Sure, Satan’s sexual perversion sometimes warrants some obscurely intriguing horror moments, but his nastier moments were more of a whimper than roar, as Felix and Sol just had to stomach some mini earthquakes – and maybe a floating child or two.

Bogliano’s shooting techniques also left me slightly confused and unimpressed, as he utilized quick zooms and pans like Edgar Wright on crack in the most obscure moments. So many times we’d fly in for a closeup on Sol’s face, as she just continued to stare into the distance, in a way that was almost a tad bit uncomfortable. Trust me, there are plenty of times to utilize a quick zoom for a highlighted effect, but Bogliano treated the filmmaking tool like a child discovering a new toy for the first time. We’d be gliding through a scene when all of a sudden…ZOOM TO ROCK! PAN TO SOL! QUICK, FOCUS ON THAT MOUNTAIN! Edgar Wright is one of the few people who can get away with making an entire movie out of quick cuts, as Bogliano unfortunately demonstrates the frustration of beating this frantic dead horse to a tiresome pulp.

Here Comes The Devil gets caught up in a little too much satanic hanky-panky to make a truly terrifying watch, and with a supernatural aspect that doesn’t exactly impress, Bogliano’s product is more “Mild” than “Fire.” A greater effort could have been made to turn Felix and Sol’s children into true hellspawn disciples, as a noticeable lack of horror couldn’t carefully balance out such a randomly absurd story. Adrián García Bogliano certainly has a sleek style about his filmmaking, and while some people may embrace this Spanish-language B-Movie, something about such a strange atmospheric combination had me frustrated, bored, and somewhat perplexed. While a sex-obsessed Devil may sound hellacious, turning the Dark Lord into a low-level pervert is entirely as lame as you’re imagining.