Chasing the Devil is yet another film in the "found footage" horror genre, but instead of being content with telling a simple ghost story, it tries to combine elements from several other successful films. There's bump-in-the-night spooky stuff caught on camera AND paranormal investigators AND possessed teenage girls AND the possessions are like a virus that can jump from person to person AND anybody who's ever watched the video has died horribly.
Sounds pretty exciting! Sounds like an action-packed adventure! Well, it's not. Incredibly, despite jamming all these ideas into one film, Chasing the Devil is an amazingly boring movie. The best hand-held cam/found footage movies are the ones that show us enough to be freaked out, but not so much that it looks like the low-budget production it actually is. Unfortunately, Chasing the Devil shows us too much of what little they had to work with. For example, there's a lot more blood in this movie than one usually sees in "paranormal investigation" type films, but this only serves to make the film ridiculous. One character gouges out his own eyes with his fingers and then instantly dies, blood spurting as though he also nicked his carotid artery while digging around in his sockets.
The characters are flat, completely forgettable and basically interchangeable. The only one who makes even a slight impact is the typical "chubby comic relief" guy, whose "jokes" are loud sarcastic comments about things we just saw and about how the hot girl will never have sex with him. Nothing in the film is genuinely scary at all, and there aren't even many cheap scares like sudden loud noises to make us pay attention. The effects are bad and simply lazy. We're supposed to believe that the DEVIL, not a simple demon or naughty spirit, but Satan HIMSELF is running the show - and the worst he can do is make people have deep voices, flicker the lights, and make the cameras go a bit fuzzy. He doesn't even throw any furniture around or make the possessed people twist into freaky positions! I refuse to believe that Mephistopheles is that unimaginative.
There are numerous problems within the film that make the premise extremely unbelievable, and it never lets us forget for even a second that we are watching a cheap horror film. The worst example of this is when characters broke the fourth wall, which happened several times.
Overall, a very dull movie. Not even much good as a guilty pleasure afternoon time-waster.
Sounds pretty exciting! Sounds like an action-packed adventure! Well, it's not. Incredibly, despite jamming all these ideas into one film, Chasing the Devil is an amazingly boring movie. The best hand-held cam/found footage movies are the ones that show us enough to be freaked out, but not so much that it looks like the low-budget production it actually is. Unfortunately, Chasing the Devil shows us too much of what little they had to work with. For example, there's a lot more blood in this movie than one usually sees in "paranormal investigation" type films, but this only serves to make the film ridiculous. One character gouges out his own eyes with his fingers and then instantly dies, blood spurting as though he also nicked his carotid artery while digging around in his sockets.
The characters are flat, completely forgettable and basically interchangeable. The only one who makes even a slight impact is the typical "chubby comic relief" guy, whose "jokes" are loud sarcastic comments about things we just saw and about how the hot girl will never have sex with him. Nothing in the film is genuinely scary at all, and there aren't even many cheap scares like sudden loud noises to make us pay attention. The effects are bad and simply lazy. We're supposed to believe that the DEVIL, not a simple demon or naughty spirit, but Satan HIMSELF is running the show - and the worst he can do is make people have deep voices, flicker the lights, and make the cameras go a bit fuzzy. He doesn't even throw any furniture around or make the possessed people twist into freaky positions! I refuse to believe that Mephistopheles is that unimaginative.
There are numerous problems within the film that make the premise extremely unbelievable, and it never lets us forget for even a second that we are watching a cheap horror film. The worst example of this is when characters broke the fourth wall, which happened several times.
Overall, a very dull movie. Not even much good as a guilty pleasure afternoon time-waster.