Here Comes The Devil is about a family on a road trip. The children go missing, and when they return, they are acting differently. The parents assume the worst, but they cannot imagine what really happened. Here Comes The Devil was shot in Mexico and directed by a Spanish (country of origin and language) director. There are subtitles. While Here Comes The Devil is an engaging movie, it ultimately needed a couple of more drafts before shooting. In the end, the prurient nature of Here Comes The Devil seems gratuitous though I am sure there was a point, but the various elements do not quite blend together as well as they could with a little more work.
My first impression of Here Comes The Devil was “Oops, Netflix switched my streaming movie with lesbian porn.” Then I hit pause and realized that I did have the right movie. Here Comes The Devil is obsessed with sex and adheres to the old formula that sexual women equals inherent danger. When the kids go missing, there are shots of their mother climaxing as the kids enter a cave. Here Comes The Devil is not a subtle movie, but seems to have a retro desire to reference Grindhouse films’ shooting technique and 1970s horror films like The Entity both visually and in its story. Here Comes The Devil’s actors look like real people.
Here Comes The Devil’s title is a bit misleading. The title actually references the parents’ reaction when they think that their children are victims. Here Comes The Devil is interested in how people react when something bad happens to them. The bad thing may be supernatural, but people will never be able to comprehend it, communicate to each other and stop or prevent the bad thing from happening. Instead whether or not under the supernatural influences human behavior, people will tear each other apart over the confusion. Here Comes The Devil is deliciously bleak in that way.
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Here Comes The Devil alludes to an interesting supernatural force that I wish was explored a bit more rigorously in the film. Here Comes The Devil seems to be going for a Lovecraftian entity like the Banshee Chapter, but falls short. I like the idea of it being there before people were there, and the Native Americans warn people to stay away from the area. It isn’t good or evil in the sense of God versus the devil though it inexplicably shares some traits with the latter (possession, milky eyes, levitation, weird noises, electrical disturbances).
Here Comes The Devil is closer to Invasion of the Body Snatchers without the extraterrestrial nonsense, but the actual rules of this being’s motives, chore list, hopes and dreams are elusive. We know how it affects people and the practical results of its interaction with us, but it seems maddeningly disinterested in the outside world. It seems like an awful lot of trouble to do all of that just to return to the cave in your new incarnation daily. Does the entity want to have sex because it seems to want to be in two people of the opposite sex or be attracted to it? Then what was with the fingers at the beginning of the film? Here Comes The Devil is kind of sad-the entity gets to possess bodies and even after existing longer than people, seems aimless and unfocused except it wants to go to the cave and see/grope boobies. Is that all there is?
Side note: dear gas station attendant, maybe warn me about not going to the caves BEFORE I send my kids up there.
Here Comes The Devil is a must see for horror fans looking for something a little different, but it feels frustratingly incomplete and spends more time on sex and violence than bringing those elements together to make something collectively meaningful. Ultimately the core of the story is messy and falls flat though it is suitably sinister. Here Comes The Devil is ultimately a disappointing movie that had great bones and would be perfect for another person to remake it.