Army of the Damned vs Devil Seed – demon double feature showdown!

It’s demon attack time, and I’m not talking about the classic Imagic game for Atari. However, I probably should have just spent my time battling those futuristic alien birds for the millionth time instead of watching Army of the Damned and Devil Seed.

ARMY OF THE DAMNED (2013)

What should be a simple win-win piece of b-movie fun for a guy with my tastes fails to hit the mark.

In short, a bunch of horror icons, veteran actors, and wrestlers (Tony Todd, Michael Berryman, Nick Principe, Tom Paolini, David Chokachi, Tommy Dreamer)—along with Joey Fatone of ‘NSync and Sully Erna of Godsmack—star as a reality TV show cast and cops that all end up in the same house together…and begin turning into demons.

And by demons, I mean their eyes turn black and they lower their chins to their chests to look menacing.

There’s plenty of gore, gunfire, and running around, but not much else. The cast tries to be quirky and funny, but the material just doesn’t lend itself to the tone it’s going for, so everyone seems to just be phoning it in.

Not even the constant, aggressive metal soundtrack can make this one as action-packed and fast-paced as it wants to be. Bummer.

DEVIL SEED (aka: The Devil in Me) (2012)

Considering every mainstream possession film these days has absolutely nothing new to add to the genre, I don’t see the point in bashing an indie horror film about a possessed woman for being derivative.

If you’ve devoured and liked everything that’s hit theaters in the wake of The Last Exorcism, then you have nothing to complain about with Devil Seed, because you get everything you want. At the end of a drunken night clubbing with her friends, a young woman visits a psychic.

Next morning, she remembers nothing, but soon begins hearing noises, seeing things, and suffering from scratches and bruises on her body. Eventually, an exorcist comes to battle it out with her as she crawls around and snarls like a demon.

The exorcism sequence is quite effectively done (there’s a particularly creepy incubus attack leading up to it), and there are even some tense and atmospheric moments sprinkled throughout the film, but they become quite repetitive and lose their potency. There’s no steady build to the situation—it’s mostly talk as the woman struggles to get her friends to believe something is happening to her, starts researching her problem herself, and teams up with one of her professors and his father because they have experience with the supernatural. Then all of a sudden, she’s a raging demon bitch from hell. So essentially, the movie would be more fun if you just skipped most of it and watched the final act.

Director Greg A. Sager went on to make the film Kingdom Come, which I blog about here. I definitely prefer that film over this one, simply because nothing is ever going to top the mother of all possessed chick movies – The Exorcist!