Four
friends go on a Satanic sightseeing tour on their way to Coachella. They visit Sharon Tate’s house and even stay
in a hotel room where a woman apparently committed suicide in a Satanic ritual.
When they follow a Satanic book store
owner to his home, they witness him and his followers participating in a
bizarre ritual. They stop him from
sacrificing a young girl and take her back to their hotel room. That's when all hell breaks loose. Literally.
The girl gets drunk, draws a pentagram on the wall, vomits and pees on the
floor, and then slashes her throat. This
is a decent horror set piece, all things considered. It's even scarier when you realize the teens
definitely aren’t going to get their security deposit back.
Satanic
is competently made. The acting isn’t
bad and there are a handful of mildly effective moments. (I liked the black and white pre-title
sequence of old timey and/or cartoon footage of the devil mixed in with a home
movie of a Satanic wedding presided over by none other than Anton LeVay.) That doesn’t disguise the fact that it feels
more like a short film that was expanded to feature length than an actual movie.
The fact that the twist ending is like
something out of a bad Twilight Zone episode cements that feeling. (The scene where our heroes get the 411 on
the Satanic chick from the book shop owner is priceless though.)
The
cast, especially Sarah Hyland as the Final Girl, is certainly capable. I just don’t think the budget was there to
make the horror come to life. It will be
interesting to see what director Jeffrey Hunt could do with a little bit more
money at his disposal.
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