SPOILER ALERT
A discombobulated mishmash of horror, folklore, morality play and zany wedding comedy, Demon (2015) attempts to investigate evil within the human soul and the sins of the past a la The Shining. However, unlike Stanley Kubrick's 1980 classic from which it wantonly steals, Demon lacks recognizable humans, an analytically rigorous interpretation of history, and control of tone. It was directed by the Polish director, Marcin Wrona who committed suicide upon its release, a fact that I did not know as I was watching the film and am fairly sure would not have changed my viewing experience if I had.
Demon begins promisingly enough with widely framed, deliberate compositions depicting a variety of Polish landscapes intruded upon by creaking, violent machinery. A Caterpillar excavator repeatedly foregrounds the frame, and this bit of construction equipment is Demon's symbolic linchpin and arguably its most interesting character. These largely wordless introductory sequences play on tensions between nature and humankind's technological proxies, and come as close to evocative imagery as the movie can be said to get.
The story concerns Piotr (Itay Tiran), a Londoner who has come to the backwoods of Poland to marry his Polish fiancée, Zenata (Agnieszka Zulewska). Handsome and sporting a Cristiano Ronaldo-style Eurotrash haircut and fashion sense, Piotr, like all of the characters of this film, is someone about whom we know and learn nothing.
The inciting incident is Piotr's discovery of a human skeleton on the grounds where his wedding is to take place. In tandem with this discovery, Piotr begins regularly seeing (or is he hallucinating?) ghosts, and the film falls into a grating two-step formula: jump scares depicting Pior's visions / reaction shots of Piotr sweating profusely in a state of confusion and horror - all while the soundtrack pumps out Penderecki.
Full disclosure: I find the appearance and sudden disappearance of ghosts and the question of whether or not the protagonist is actually seeing them or is merely hallucinating (because face it, they always are really seeing them so why waste precious screen time devoted to the question) to be one of the most boring, perfunctory clichés of horror cinema and the basis for a whole sub-genre of CGI-laden gothic schlock typically involving the ghosts of dead children that I wish would go away. That is not to say it can't be done well (The Others, Devil's Backbone, Don't Look Now are great movies) but the central conceit is simply not scary to me and must be imbued with an undercurrent of emotional violence, social commentary, or technical bravado to sustain my interest - all of which Demon lacks.
The film employs a number of over-the-top horror clichés that are at odds with its high-minded neo-Kubrick pretensions. These include nonstop thunderstorms, ominous nosebleeds, and interrupted sex replete with bouncing titties straight out of an 80's slasher flick. Wrona's choices here don't suggest campiness or pastiche so much as a sincere if dunderheaded attempt at conjuring menace. The problem is, none of the characters have defined personalities, and as such, it's difficult to find them vulnerable or their situation dangerous.
The movie takes on the tone of black comedy and allegorical folk tale when the story's focus shifts to the wedding festivities. At this point, the story follows Piotr gradually succumbing to the titular demon (or "dybbuk" in the parlance of Jewish folklore) possession while still attempting to partake in the typical wedding pageantry: speeches, dancing, drinking, bouquet-throwing. It's this tension between Piotr losing his proverbial shit and the increasingly drunken revelry of the wedding that supplies the film with the majority of its unfulfilled potential as farce.
The father of the bride, Zygmunt is arguably the antagonist and the movie's chief vessel for comic relief. Already skeptical of Piotr whom he barely knows, he is more preoccupied with saving face and keeping the wedding guests drunk as opposed to addressing the demon possession unraveling before his very eyes. While theoretically funny, this incongruity plays out as something of a perpetual, lumbering punchline. The problem, again, is one of characterization or lack thereof. The ethnic tensions between Zygmunt and Piotr, a Jewish foreigner would seemingly underlie Zygmunt's comic levels of hostility towards the latter but remain curiously underdeveloped and limited to linguistic misunderstandings.
In general, the script's reductive characterizations have the habit of rendering all of the characters' actions somehow repetitive and schematic. Wrona's clumsy blocking also constricts physical comedy and makes the actors work extremely hard to bear precious little expressive fruit, which is especially apparent during a pivotal shirtless dance/possession scene that is referenced in the film's poster art.
During this scene as well as others, the wedding guests move together as one, amorphous and featureless unit in graceless, symmetrical clumps. Consequently, there is no sense at any time that this is a real wedding composed of real individuals. Also, despite that its setting is a party with dancing and music, Demon has zero scenes of visual or musical momentum or rhythm.
As unscary, unfunny, and visually inert as Demon is, it is even less successful as a morality play. The wedding is populated by symbolic characters called the Doctor, the Priest, and the Professor. These highly constructed characters speak in enigmatic, meandering monologues about the abstractions they represent: science=hypocrisy; mysticism=honesty; remembrance=salvation. To call their conversations dialogue would be misleading; imagine Dogville as scripted by a precocious high school student.
When it is finally time for the Professor who speaks Yiddish to explain, by the most expository means possible, the true identity of the demon, the film's Holocaust allegory about never burying the past goes from painfully on-the-nose to self-defeating. The film's 'never forget' message is undermined by refusing to allow its symbolic vessel for the traumas of the past say her piece. Rather, Demon filters her pain through the Professor, who is more of a comically broad stereotype than a human being whose lived experiences we might be able to empathize with.
What's more, the demon is a superficial, aggrieved teenage specter out of the worst kind of paranormal Hollywood gothic schlock. While I've admitted my bias against ghost-children-movies, there are countless examples of more imaginatively conceived characters of this sort: for example, Santi, the dead boy in Devil's Backbone or Mischa Barton's Munchausen syndrome-by-proxy victim in Sixth Sense. The denouement with its poor characterization of the demon destroys whatever potential Demon had to be a horror-inflected companion piece to Ida, Paweł Pawlikowski thoughtful Polish Holocaust remembrance story which also has a buried skeleton as a central metaphor.
As for the film's risible lifting of the 'you've always been the caretaker' photo from The Shining? For shame. Luckily, the film ends on the subject it knows best: the Caterpillar excavator. Ultimately, the excavator's awkward, jerky movements achieve a dubious harmony with the film's thematic and visual gracelessness that make its final appearance a fitting coda.
A discombobulated mishmash of horror, folklore, morality play and zany wedding comedy, Demon (2015) attempts to investigate evil within the human soul and the sins of the past a la The Shining. However, unlike Stanley Kubrick's 1980 classic from which it wantonly steals, Demon lacks recognizable humans, an analytically rigorous interpretation of history, and control of tone. It was directed by the Polish director, Marcin Wrona who committed suicide upon its release, a fact that I did not know as I was watching the film and am fairly sure would not have changed my viewing experience if I had.
Demon begins promisingly enough with widely framed, deliberate compositions depicting a variety of Polish landscapes intruded upon by creaking, violent machinery. A Caterpillar excavator repeatedly foregrounds the frame, and this bit of construction equipment is Demon's symbolic linchpin and arguably its most interesting character. These largely wordless introductory sequences play on tensions between nature and humankind's technological proxies, and come as close to evocative imagery as the movie can be said to get.
The story concerns Piotr (Itay Tiran), a Londoner who has come to the backwoods of Poland to marry his Polish fiancée, Zenata (Agnieszka Zulewska). Handsome and sporting a Cristiano Ronaldo-style Eurotrash haircut and fashion sense, Piotr, like all of the characters of this film, is someone about whom we know and learn nothing.
The inciting incident is Piotr's discovery of a human skeleton on the grounds where his wedding is to take place. In tandem with this discovery, Piotr begins regularly seeing (or is he hallucinating?) ghosts, and the film falls into a grating two-step formula: jump scares depicting Pior's visions / reaction shots of Piotr sweating profusely in a state of confusion and horror - all while the soundtrack pumps out Penderecki.
Full disclosure: I find the appearance and sudden disappearance of ghosts and the question of whether or not the protagonist is actually seeing them or is merely hallucinating (because face it, they always are really seeing them so why waste precious screen time devoted to the question) to be one of the most boring, perfunctory clichés of horror cinema and the basis for a whole sub-genre of CGI-laden gothic schlock typically involving the ghosts of dead children that I wish would go away. That is not to say it can't be done well (The Others, Devil's Backbone, Don't Look Now are great movies) but the central conceit is simply not scary to me and must be imbued with an undercurrent of emotional violence, social commentary, or technical bravado to sustain my interest - all of which Demon lacks.
The film employs a number of over-the-top horror clichés that are at odds with its high-minded neo-Kubrick pretensions. These include nonstop thunderstorms, ominous nosebleeds, and interrupted sex replete with bouncing titties straight out of an 80's slasher flick. Wrona's choices here don't suggest campiness or pastiche so much as a sincere if dunderheaded attempt at conjuring menace. The problem is, none of the characters have defined personalities, and as such, it's difficult to find them vulnerable or their situation dangerous.
The movie takes on the tone of black comedy and allegorical folk tale when the story's focus shifts to the wedding festivities. At this point, the story follows Piotr gradually succumbing to the titular demon (or "dybbuk" in the parlance of Jewish folklore) possession while still attempting to partake in the typical wedding pageantry: speeches, dancing, drinking, bouquet-throwing. It's this tension between Piotr losing his proverbial shit and the increasingly drunken revelry of the wedding that supplies the film with the majority of its unfulfilled potential as farce.
The father of the bride, Zygmunt is arguably the antagonist and the movie's chief vessel for comic relief. Already skeptical of Piotr whom he barely knows, he is more preoccupied with saving face and keeping the wedding guests drunk as opposed to addressing the demon possession unraveling before his very eyes. While theoretically funny, this incongruity plays out as something of a perpetual, lumbering punchline. The problem, again, is one of characterization or lack thereof. The ethnic tensions between Zygmunt and Piotr, a Jewish foreigner would seemingly underlie Zygmunt's comic levels of hostility towards the latter but remain curiously underdeveloped and limited to linguistic misunderstandings.
In general, the script's reductive characterizations have the habit of rendering all of the characters' actions somehow repetitive and schematic. Wrona's clumsy blocking also constricts physical comedy and makes the actors work extremely hard to bear precious little expressive fruit, which is especially apparent during a pivotal shirtless dance/possession scene that is referenced in the film's poster art.
During this scene as well as others, the wedding guests move together as one, amorphous and featureless unit in graceless, symmetrical clumps. Consequently, there is no sense at any time that this is a real wedding composed of real individuals. Also, despite that its setting is a party with dancing and music, Demon has zero scenes of visual or musical momentum or rhythm.
As unscary, unfunny, and visually inert as Demon is, it is even less successful as a morality play. The wedding is populated by symbolic characters called the Doctor, the Priest, and the Professor. These highly constructed characters speak in enigmatic, meandering monologues about the abstractions they represent: science=hypocrisy; mysticism=honesty; remembrance=salvation. To call their conversations dialogue would be misleading; imagine Dogville as scripted by a precocious high school student.
When it is finally time for the Professor who speaks Yiddish to explain, by the most expository means possible, the true identity of the demon, the film's Holocaust allegory about never burying the past goes from painfully on-the-nose to self-defeating. The film's 'never forget' message is undermined by refusing to allow its symbolic vessel for the traumas of the past say her piece. Rather, Demon filters her pain through the Professor, who is more of a comically broad stereotype than a human being whose lived experiences we might be able to empathize with.
What's more, the demon is a superficial, aggrieved teenage specter out of the worst kind of paranormal Hollywood gothic schlock. While I've admitted my bias against ghost-children-movies, there are countless examples of more imaginatively conceived characters of this sort: for example, Santi, the dead boy in Devil's Backbone or Mischa Barton's Munchausen syndrome-by-proxy victim in Sixth Sense. The denouement with its poor characterization of the demon destroys whatever potential Demon had to be a horror-inflected companion piece to Ida, Paweł Pawlikowski thoughtful Polish Holocaust remembrance story which also has a buried skeleton as a central metaphor.
As for the film's risible lifting of the 'you've always been the caretaker' photo from The Shining? For shame. Luckily, the film ends on the subject it knows best: the Caterpillar excavator. Ultimately, the excavator's awkward, jerky movements achieve a dubious harmony with the film's thematic and visual gracelessness that make its final appearance a fitting coda.
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