I made a triple feature weekend out of forthcoming horror films Devil’s Acid, D-Railed, and The 11th Patient, and I personally have a favorite of the three. Let’s see which one.
DEVIL’S ACID (2018)
Devil’s Acid is going for the whole sleazy, over-the-top, offensive, surreal drug trip vibe. I’ve been looking forward to checking it out for a while, and now that I have I can’t decide if the movie was trying too hard to be trashy…or if it didn’t try hard enough.
It’s presented as a “scary” story a dad is telling his two kids. Scenes of this trio reacting to the plot as it unfolds are injected periodically throughout the film. While they aim to be humorous, they just weren’t funny to me at all, and therefore added nothing.
The plot focuses on a total douche bag little guy. We first meet his caricature of a racist character as he belittles his help—all people of color.
Next, he throws a party/contest for a bunch of friends at an abandoned prison. The challenge: take his special brand of acid and then dare to stay in select parts of the prison overnight.
Once the group splits up, everyone starts tripping and having sex. There’s lesbianism, puking, human sacrifices, the devil taunting everyone and messing with their heads (he’s just a dude in a cape with little horns glued to his forehead), dildos thrown in just so the film can appear more whacky than it is, and my personal favorite horror scene involving a woman give birth.
It is all acid trippy for sure, but there was nothing here that I found fun, funny, or scary, no matter what kind of weirdness was thrown at me.
To further drag out my disappointment, one of the kids listening to the story keeps interrupting and offering his own thoughts on how the story should go, so we are also subjected to alternate scenes that the dad then rejects.
THE 11TH PATIENT (2018)
I would describe The 11th Patient as Silent Hill (the video game) meets The Cell (the movie). The unique approach definitely had me hooked for a while. A teenage boy is found in a coma in the woods, and a specialist with the ability to go into his dreams, well, goes into his dreams.
A majority of the film has no dialogue. We follow the kid through his nightmarish experiences as he moves from one location to another with a lantern in hand.
A masked figure is chasing him, and he also runs into various hellish baddies, which is super chilling…at first.
Unfortunately, that’s the extent of what happens. He’s never actually in danger, so he repeatedly sees something, is chased by it, and simply gets it off his tail by moving to a new location. He even reacts with dream-like disconnect, never seeming as terrified as one would be in his situation.
The music has that eerie Silent Hill (the video game) clang, the kid reminded me of Stephen Geoffreys of the original Fright Night, and with about 30 minutes left there’s finally a little dialogue and an attempt to go into the dream to rescue him. For me, it was a highly anti-climactic finale.
D-RAILED (2018)
The opening credits borrowing the underwater POV of Jaws was the first sign for me that I was going to like this one. D-Railed is so my kind of creature feature.
It starts on Halloween night with a group of people in costume getting on a murder mystery train. I was a little bummed that once we board it, Halloween is totally forgotten.
The murder mystery segment is a little longer than it needed to be, but then things go horribly wrong, the train crashes, and one group is stranded in the middle of the water in a runaway car.
Before long, they’re being torn apart by a slimy sea monster reminiscent of The Creature from the Black Lagoon! The monster rox, there’s good gore, and it’s the fricking women who won’t take any shit whenever the attacks come.
The only part of D-Railed that didn’t do much for me was the end. Wouldn’t you know Lance Henriksen shows up just in time to reveal the twist, and it’s about as cliché as having Lance Henriksen in your movie.
