The only real problem with "The Devil Inside" is that it never stops feeling like a fake. Unfortunately, that ends up being a pretty big problem, making the latest low-budget horror mockumentary a weak attempt at tackling the frequently done exorcism movie. So badly does "The Devil Inside" want to play like a documentary that it ends up too slick to be authentic and too unimaginative to be a feature film. Instead, we get a hybrid of retreaded material that's passed off to us as if it's really happening, but those who have seen a few similar movies will probably have a hard time being fooled.
Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade) has a bit of a problem. After years and years of living in the dark, she's finally told the truth of her all but forgotten mother, a disturbed woman stuck in a psychiatric center across the pond in Italy. Not only is her mother Maria (Suzan Crowley) lost in madness, she also killed three people 15 years ago in brutal fashion and seems to, just maybe, be possessed by the devil.
This is shocking news to Isabella, but she's curious and hires a documentarian to help her in her quest for answers. Why she picks the guy she picks is difficult to say, though 30 minutes at Wal-Mart and even you could find a cameraman with a more stable hand. So over-the-top is the jostling and jerking during the "documentary" footage that you begin to wonder how the lighting and sound can be so perfect. And why do the actors often seem to waiting for lines? These aren't questions you're supposed to be pondering while watching a pitch black horror film about demons and brutal exorcisms.
With the aid of her erratic cameraman and limited ability to understand her surroundings, as she's not the slickest of sleuths, Isabella still doesn't have a problem finding answers. Early in the film, Isabella walks into a Vatican exorcist class just in time to hear them talking about details that directly relate to her mother's strange case. For it being a supposed documentary, and an incredibly low-budget one at that, Isabella sure does have remarkable timing.
In the class, there are some doubters who wonder whether or not exorcisms actually take place, but soon Isabella has been brought behind the scenes by two overzealous students who have taken matters into their own hands. Both David (Evan Helmuth) and Ben (Simon Quarterman) are priests operating on the fringe of papal authority, providing time for some lame jabs at the rigidity of the Catholic Church. Ben and David say that it's very difficult to prove demonic possession, even with all the exorcisms they have unofficially done, but maybe they just don't know how to work a camcorder.
As we plunge headlong into a series of attempted exorcisms, we start to find that "The Devil Inside" is up to the same old tricks of showing seemingly normal people wig out and turn into demons right before our very eyes. This was shocking and intense in 1973 when Max von Sydow was trying to pull the devil out of Linda Blair in classic "The Exorcist," but now we've seen it all. Suzan Crowley and Bonnie Morgan (an actual contortionist) are both extremely talented at making their bodies look like they might be possessed, though the movie isn't strong enough around them for us to really care. Director William Brent Bell does have some visual creativity, but neat camera tricks can only enhance a movie, not make one.
As a faked documentary, Bell also could have learned a little bit from "Paranormal Activity" and even "Apollo 18," namely that less tends to be more when trying to fake like you're witnessing actual events. One thing you absolutely need to do to make an effective film - and sometimes the only thing - is help blend the audience into the story, to make them occasionally forget that they're watching a movie. In "Paranormal Activity," it often felt like you were watching the events unfolding on camera. Here, Bell has a hard time making it seem like the real thing and at times feels like it has to be mocking the very genre it's exploiting. While this can be funny in the right hands, at least in "Piranha 3D" the jokes were worth the cheese you were forced to suffer through. In "The Devil Inside," all the little in-jokes manage to do is point out that you're not watching a documentary.
For whatever reason, horror seekers have a strange attraction to seeing perfectly normal people get possessed by satanic forces unable to be explained by science. A decent chunk of us like to watch robots battle for intergalactic supremacy, so the cinematic instincts need not make sense. When done well, a good exorcist tale can be as creepy and spine-tingling as anything the horror genre has to offer, but "The Devil Inside" just isn't the right movie. If only Isabella had the courage to fire her cameraman, maybe we would have had something.
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June 12, 2026 17:14 ET Major central bank action was the focus this week in economic news. The European Central Bank became the first major central bank to move in response to the rising inflationary pressures in the backdrop of the conflict in the Middle East. In North America, the U.S. inflation and trade data as well as Canada’s central bank decision gained attention. The Chinese trade data was the main news in Asia.