Monday, December 17, 2018

MAY THE DEVIL TAKE YOU (2018) ** ½


A bankrupt man resorts to having a mystic do an incantation to reverse his fortunes.  The ritual is successful, but as time goes by the man becomes ill and falls into a coma.  After visiting him in the hospital, his family returns to his old, rundown house.  While cleaning up, they disturb a restless spirit which tries to possess and kill the family.

The specter sort of looks like something out of a Japanese horror movie.  Pale face, messy hair, the whole nine yards.  There are even scenes of characters being forced to eat hair and/or hair attacking people, which are big in those kinds of films.  Despite that, the ghost has a funky, unique vibe to it that helps separate it from other similar spirits we’ve seen.  

Writer/director Timo (The Night Comes for Us) Tjahjanto gives us a lot of Sam Raimi-inspired shots of possessed people floating, puking blood, and attacking loved ones in gory ways.  There’s even a book of creepy drawings just like the Necronomicon.  In fact, the beginning has a Drag Me to Hell feel to it, which makes me think May the Devil Take You would’ve never existed had it not been for Raimi's influence.

It’s sort of more fun picking out where Tjahjanto steals his inspirations from than anything.  I mean you’ve got to do something to help you get past the overlong running time and deliberate pacing.  The family drama stuff isn’t all that involving either and seeing how the whole thing hinges on their dislike and distrust of each other makes the various backstabbing (and frontstabbing) lose a little of its bite.  

There are just enough gruesome moments here to qualify it as a near miss.  The face-ripping gag alone is enough to earn the film an extra ½ *.  I just wish that some of the voodoo doll-centric kills weren’t so cartoony.

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