While none of these films might be the best that Tubi has to offer, they sure did work well together as a trilogy of the occult.
DEADLY DEALINGS (2022)
This is a very indie release, but I was drawn to it by the showy demon in the trailer, who was most definitely a highlight for me. However, my feelings towards all home-brewed indie films are the same. No matter how much energy and pride you put into creating it, you simply have to watch your own movie back and ask yourself, “If I wanted to sit down to watch a horror flick, and this was what I got, how would I honestly feel?” Better yet, ask third-party eyes to watch it and be brutally honest with you about what you might need to fix before releasing it to the public.
There are parts of this 71-minute movie I appreciated, but most of that comes at the end. With over forty minutes of mostly filler beforehand, there’s a good chance that many people won’t stick around to see the final act. In cases like this, it’s not the common low budget issues that are the problem…it’s the fact that too many filmmakers have an idea for a movie, but they simply don’t know how to structure a story or write a script. For instance, the filmmaker here co-directs, co-stars, and wrote the script. You don’t have to do it all for it to become your vision.
Whether AI or filters were used for the visual outdoor scenes, I do love the color palette chosen for them. It really captured a feeling for me, and it is on display from moment one, when our main girl is at the cemetery visiting her dead brother’s grave.
Then the film gets bogged down by poor dialogue. Her queer best friend reads her Tarot cards. They watch an occult talk show, but the audio quality on these clips is terrible, so you can barely hear what’s being said. The main girl talks to her therapist. She has dinner with her parents. She has a group therapy session. Much of this does nothing to develop a story or characters in an interesting way, and it definitely doesn’t propel the plot forward.
Finally, her queer friend suggests they use a Ouija board to contact her brother. This is where things get cheesy fun. A queertastic demon visits her bedroom in cool horror lighting and offers to bring her dead brother back in exchange for her dreams—dreams that have little impact on what’s left of the movie.
It’s like a campy horror drag show drenched in glitter and neon light as the brother returns and some odd little twists essentially shift away from the character perspective we’ve been following for the whole the film. You just have to go with it, because the final act is quite fun. I just wish the first half of the film could have met its energy, or at least ramped up to it smoothly, because it kind of feels like two different films as is.
DEMO_N (2024)
This 75-minute movie is another one of those webcam flicks in which most of the events take place on computer screens as four friends have an online reunion from the comfort of their own rooms.
This time around, one dude scores a free demo of a horror video game before he begins chatting with his friends. It’s a 2D side scroller that looks like it’s from the SNES/Sega Genesis era, and some of the most fun I had with this movie was watching the parts where he plays the game to try to save his friends.
See, for no good reason, when he plays the game the first time, he apparently unleashes a demon that then begins possessing his friends once they connect. But don’t expect to see much of them being possessed, because the movie is riddled with fast, choppy editing, scrambled video, and total blackout moments.
The ending is my favorite part. After our main guy fights a final boss in the game, suddenly the movie switches to both his POV and standard third-person view when his friends show up in demonic form and chase him around his house. Awesome. We also get one of the biggest butcher knives I’ve ever seen in a horror movie.
THE DEVIL’S DISCIPLES (2024)
IMDb doesn’t even make note of it, but it turns out this movie is a “recut” or “revised” version of a movie called Disciples that the filmmaker made in 2014. I covered it here, but I don’t remember a thing about it, so it was like watching it for the first time. However, since I couldn’t remember it, I also have no idea if this simply removes scenes, adds content, or removes some material and adds new footage, because it runs 10 minutes shorter than the original cut.
What I can say is that based on my previous post about this film, nothing has really changed in terms of it being a hot mess, and I shouldn’t have bothered to watch it a second time.
I feel like I’m repeating myself, but the cast of horror veterans is awesome: Angus Scrimm, Debbie Rochon, Tony Todd, Brinke Stevens, Linnea Quigley…
None of them helps make this a good movie. We get a chaotic plot about a variety of ghouls, humans, and Satan lovers coming together to prevent a prophecy from coming true and destroying everything. These kinds of epic concepts always seem to fall apart in a low budget environment, because there’s only so much you can do with simple sets and loads of dialogue.
There are too many characters, too many random scenes, the dialogue is dull, and there is no clear story structure. Everything that happens feels random as scenes jump all over the place right from the start.
However, a myriad of sadistic violent, bloody, and sexual scenes and visuals that use practical effects are awesome and were the one saving grace for me.
