Director: Josh Lobo
Year: 2019
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: A Man in the Dark
Genre: Supernatural; Psycho/Thriller
Plot:
After getting together for a Christmas dinner, a dysfunctional family grows increasingly frustrated at their hosts' frantic behavior as he slowly tries to convince them he has captured the Devil himself down in the cellar of the house and continually gets more determined too prove them wrong.
Review:
Overall, this was somewhat disappointing and rather bland. Among it's brighter aspects on display is the manner in which the film goes to provide a grounding nature for the premise on display. The entire idea of the Devil being captured and held in the basement of a person's house, however ludicrous that might be in real life, would in fact start to play out a series of psychological mind-games as that's how he would the being would react. This drives a wholly believable round of paranoia and psychosis in those he's around, which is what happens here as the series of babblings, pictures and newspaper articles adorned with strings connecting everything together. These paint the picture of a deranged, unhinged mind that becomes far more dangerous the more they're stuck in the house and quickly becomes pretty chilling as the instability quickly turns to more dangerous antics as he tries to get them to believe him. This extended character study is compounded by the coda in the finale where it offers a far more enjoyable twist than expected which really sells this one nicely, giving this one enough to hold it up over its flaws.
One of the main issues with this one is the fact that the main storyline here makes absolutely no sense and comes off as more of a comedic effort or parody than anything that's actually intended to be frightening. This really comes off as a goofy seeming premise that doesn't come off in the slightest bit rational or believable that the devil would be captured in a regular box and kept chained up the entire time in a person's basement which ruins the plans of a scheduled Christmas dinner hosted there, and the end result is a film fighting incredibly hard to get something this silly to be taken seriously. His paranoid rants and drawings that are continually brought up to everyone are just a sign of how ludicrous it is that someone would believe this premise, and how the series of incidents he tries to bring up in order to help sell this thing as the devil is quite insane.
That this is mostly compounded by the utterly dull first half with the multitude of family issues that get brought up as well really makes for a longer chance to realize these issues. From the strained relationships and questioning of everybody's intentions being there to the incredulity that they can't believe his story, these issues just highlight how the storyline here becomes all the more confusing. You're incredibly bored and utterly uninterested in what's going on the majority of the film as the paranoid antics just aren't in the slightest bit exciting and really just highlights how dragged out the pacing here gets. With the film springing to life only in the finale and keeping things incredibly talk-heavy until then with the paranoia-based rantings makes this pretty dull and really just drags this out. Overall, these are what really hurt this one.
Overview: *.5/5
While there's certainly the potential here to have a lot of fun with the storyline here and the type of action on display, there's way too many flaws to overcome these factors leading to a disappointing turn. Give it a shot if you're interested in it even with these issues or looking for something different than normal supernatural affairs, while those who are let down by the flaws should heed caution.
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