Though it features few recognisable faces, this Australian-shot, US-set indie horror displays a core competency that gets it some of the way to where it\u2019s heading \u2013 only to collapse in the final reels into the usual hacky manoeuvres. Ten years after fleeing a fundamentalist branch of the Latter-day Saints, snub-nosed artist heroine Elise (Elizabeth Cullen) has started shunning the attentions of boyfriend Adam (John Kim), instead obsessively digging holes in the couple\u2019s back garden and trashing the living room in the middle of the night. Could it have something to do with the grimy cellar door she feels compelled to paint, or the traumatic baptism we witness in a pre-title sequence? What are the chances?<\/p>\n
For somewhere between half and two-thirds of its running time, we\u2019re watching a diagnostic case study: Elise and close pals return to Mormon country \u2013 more specifically, the in-no-way ironically named hamlet of Haventon \u2013 to undergo a regression therapy involving an ayahuasca variant; this will strike anyone as ill-advised even before an actual cellar door is uncovered outside and everybody starts throwing up. (Cue the especially dreadful line: \u201cShe must have torn internally.\u201d) Thereafter, flashbacks reveal what\u2019s been suppressed or concealed: the younger Elise\u2019s growing closeness to the bishop\u2019s daughter Clara (Luca Sardelis) would seem to indicate our girl isn\u2019t possessed, merely bisexual.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The results prove middling at best, not on any level dealing the knockout blow that religious conversion practice deserves; nor is it ever the campy scream the set-up might have licensed. Cinematographer Michael Tessari gives matters a wintry, low-lit, persuasively un-Australian look, and gathers the odd suggestive image, like a dream sequence scattering of petals. More of that would have done Diabolic a world of good, but co-writer and director Daniel J Phillips heads the other way, cranking up the soundtrack\u2019s parping and underlying Mormonphobia with supporting players going heavy on the repression and hysteria.<\/p>\n
Diabolic is on digital platforms from 25 May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Though it features few recognisable faces, this Australian-shot, US-set indie horror displays a core competency that gets it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-683777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}