Speed Demon (2026) by Jon Keeyes

Director: Jon Keeyes

Year: 2026

Country: USA

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Exorcism

Plot:

Taking a train to New York City, a priest and the troubled nun under his care find that the passenger on board carrying a sacred artifact has become possessed by a demonic being and begins looking for ways to crash the train, forcing her to find the faith necessary to exorcise him.

Review:

For the most part, this was a disappointing if still somewhat watchable genre effort. Among the few positives here is the mainly intriguing setup about moving the setting of a possession film out of the confines of a remote, protected area and putting everything in the open, out amongst the public. The idea of setting it on a train where everything comes out into the open regarding how the rest of the passengers are aware of the infected persona and must join forces with the religious figures onboard to successfully defeat the deranged individual from carrying out his plan becomes an immensely chilling idea the more we see of the intended possession taking place with a crowd of passengers also taking the train with her.

The usual assortment of sequences here trying to depict this, from the manipulation of crows to fly into the windows of the train to kill themselves, the chilling whispers and invocations to dismember themselves, offers a fun take on the style. The race against time to figure out the purpose of the possession and why the passengers have been targeted by the figure, it all creates a series of impressive and conceptually fun exorcism sequences designed to help overcome how derivative and formulaic it all is. Once again, this all falls under the guise of a religious figure who has lost her faith and is forced into a battle with a religious figure from her past and spends the whole time trying to regain her spiritual side to battle the powerful evil involved, and it doesn’t do much of anything new or original beyond changing up the location of where it all takes place.

As well, there’s also the general lack of information we get about anything happening here, as we get little bits of information about what’s going on. The idea of the demon possessing this particular figure that it does is a bit obscure, and rarely does anything that’s going on make any sense, with the random characters going along for the trip being a complete mystery based on everything else going on. The passengers themselves are mostly bland and virtually indistinguishable from each other, with the way they tend to be just random faces on the train despite all of the time spent with them, and it’s just quite obvious how this tends to be quite random, going from one thing to another in this type of setup. There’s little here to help tie these people together either when the possession starts to take hold, and it just makes for a generally tough time trying to make sense of this one, and with the lame CGI for everything, it's what brings this one down overall.

Overview: ***/5

An intriguing idea that gets quite problematic at times, there are some worthwhile elements to be had here, but it all gets underwhelmed by a series of issues that keep this one down. Those with an appreciation for this style of genre fare or who don’t mind the issues on display will want to give this a shot, while most others out there should heed caution.