Adult children caring for aging parents is such a common stage in life that it’s not surprising that horror filmmakers would take on its more unpleasant and terrifying aspects. Relics, visitand The Manor These are all recent examples, but Australia Devil’s Disorder.
Devil’s Disorder Co-written and directed by Stephen Boyle, who made his debut as a cinematographer after a storied career as a special effects artist. Among his many achievements are: Star Wars, matrixand The Hobbit Franchise. But even if you knew that Devil’s Disorderbut still not ready Visceral It’s an emphasis on body horror and “crawling, oozing creature terror,” sometimes separately, often combined, and executed with the loving care of someone who knows exactly how to scare an audience.
The story revolves around just two locations: Graham’s (Christian Willis) auto repair shop and the dilapidated farmhouse he fled to, where his older brothers Jake (Dirk Hunter) and Philip (Charles Cottier) still live, though Graham has no plans to return. When Jake turns up drunk at Graham’s garage, insisting that it’s past time to see each other and uttering the ominous phrase “blood oath,” it’s clear that Graham has no desire to return to his childhood home. The family’s troubled patriarch (Jake) is depicted in the walls, outbuildings, and especially in the chicken coop.The Lord of the RingsThe death of John Noble hastened Graham’s resignation.
But the past apparently still holds a strong hold on the place, and the violent atmosphere left by his father has begun to take on a distinctly supernatural hue, with Philip now exhibiting violent mood swings that mirror his father’s downward spiral.
It would be easy to make the story “Philip is possessed by his late father” or “Philip is possessed by the demon that previously possessed his late father”, but Devil’s Disorder It turns out there’s not much interest in describing exactly what kind of occult nightmare has been unleashed here. When evil lurks The film is more realistic in that the threat seems to be a naturally occurring intrusion rather than a magically engineered one. Instead, it focuses on how the brothers, particularly Graham and Jake, must overcome their estrangement and work together to protect their family, even though they’re already exhausted from dealing with years of drama and trauma. “When you see a lot of weird and strange stuff, it starts to feel normal after a while,” Jake admits at one point.
The film’s metaphors of dementia and terminal illness are perhaps a bit too overt, but combining them with a story of healing a fractured brotherhood lends a welcome complexity to the story. The acting is good, too: Noble’s character is genuinely frightening in the flashbacks, and Willis and Hunter have a lived-in chemistry that brings believable the love-hate extremes of the brotherly relationship.
But the main reason to actually check is Devil’s Disorder Boyle’s contributions to the field of special effects: John Carpenter’s The Thing and alien The movie probably provided some inspiration. Evil Dead II There’s a lot of stuff thrown in there, too: gruesome wounds, flesh-ripping gore, disemboweled animal corpses, vats of blood – most of which seem to be practical effects – that really ramp up the horror, especially when it comes to the various creatures that stalk the story.
Devil’s Disorder It will be available to stream on Shudder on September 6. It will also be available to stream on AMC+.
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