Diary entries forDemonic
Demonic
If I were to play you a double feature of District 9 and Demonic, and tell you one of these was Neill Blomkamp's first film and the other was his most recent film, what would your reaction be depending on how you are as a person? The optimist would have the wrong order. "Clearly Demonic is an amateur effort, and D9 is where he really found his stride" The pessimist/realist would have the correct order, acknowledge that ever since D9 either studios have been unwilling to provide him the budgets needed to meet his lofty creative goals (see the failed attempt at doing an Alien film, or the failed attempt at doing a Robocop film) or audiences have been left baffled by his creative work that's able to be released (see Chappie), and conclude that at this point Neill seems to have given up This isn't at all to knock giving up, by the way. Giving up isn't just easy to do, it's understandable. Climate change and its devastation is locked in for decades to come minimum. COVID isn't going away any day soon. The US had four years of a very shitty president, is in the middle of a fifth, and will have minimum three more (following the 2000s which had eight more years). A lot looks, and is, hopeless even on a broad scale. Getting to a more personal scale is arguably even more harrowing. We all just lost a year and a half to a pandemic with no end in sight. That's tough even for the average person, especially so for a creative/talented person. You never know what you could have done with that time. Nobody wants their time wasted With Demonic, Neill Blomkamp wastes your time He filmed this secretly/unannounced mid-/late-last year. What's more pessimistic/realistic: that he put himself at risk amidst other people during a rapidly-spreading pandemic And wasted his own time making this shoddy half-uninspiring possession film (with a few bits of potential here and there if it'd at all been lingered on or given the focus it deserved) with shitty AI effects out of an early Resident Evil film or glitches done better in straight-to-video The Ring knockoffs, when he could have done something more? Or that this is just post-Chappie Neill? Whatever the answer is, right this moment the visual result couldn't be further away from what one sees when one visits District 9
Demonic
We're long away from the promising Blomkamp of District 9, but actually i have interested in this proto "Second life's creative mod" version of The Cell, but with horror... just not his best.
Demonic
There’s an interesting film in here, with a plot that I would love to see done again (it’s quite similar to Incarnate, but I found this to be far more interesting). What could have been a really captivating film was let down by a very weak script, which felt more like a first draft than one that you’d want to film. There are some sequences that I thought were great, but far too many were unforgettable. The film tries to balance the horror and sci-fi, but doesn’t manage to create an atmosphere to make either work together. It’s a shame, since there were some really interesting ideas here, it’s just sad that the film ended up lacking because of a very weak script. I’m still excited to see more from Blomkamp, and I hope that he starts doing shorts again for his Oats Studios, since those truly were something special.
