The trailer for Neill Blomkamp’s Demonic is a trippy, violent stroll through VR hell
The District 9 director is planting a flag and saying "Chappie, this ain’t"
Film News Neill Blomkamp
Following the surprise success of District 9, pretty much everyone was ready to anoint Neill Blomkamp as the king of sci-fi horror. The heir apparent to Ridley Scott or David Cronenberg, but with more of an action bent, Blomkamp threaded a tough needle, delivering a movie that was smart, emotional, and scary as hell. His follow-ups, however, were much more of a mixed bag. Elysium managed to score some points as a Halo-influenced stab at class and climate crisis, while Chappie became a punchline even before people had a chance to see it. For the rest of the 2010s, the director found himself trapped in development hell between making sequels to Alien and RoboCop. Neither panned out.
This brings us to Demonic, Blomkamp’s latest horror science fiction movie that includes marines with machine guns—the guy knows what he likes. Amid hyping a District 9 sequel, Blomkamp looks like he’s scaled back considerably for Demonic, which now has a full trailer that’s heavy on violence, plot, and what appears to be a hellacious Sims expansion. So what is Demonic? Well, the synopsis is intentionally vague, with IFC Midnight stating, “A young woman unleashes terrifying demons when supernatural forces at the root of a decades old rift between mother and daughter are ruthlessly revealed in this horror-thriller from director Neill Blomkamp.” Not much there.
Based on the trailer, the film follows a woman (Carly Pope) who is enlisted by a team of researchers to use some kind of virtual simulation to enter the mind of her estranged mother and investigate why her mother went on a “homicidal rampage.” As you probably guessed, the simulation leaves something of an imprint on the woman, and she cannot discern between the virtual world and the real world. As you also probably guess, the film also features a plot where the Vatican hires a black-ops team to hunt a demon. Yeah, it’s one of those movies.
Demonic really does look pretty interesting. There are elements of A Nightmare On Elm Street, Insidious, and a touch of Videodrome. Plus, the studio claims that the film uses “a patent-pending new method of using volumetric capture (a three-dimensional video technology that turns actors into geometric objects.) The amount of volumetric capture in Demonic is the most ever seen in a feature film.” This explains some of the glitchy visual effects seen in the trailer’s in-simulation segments. Either way, it’s nice to see Blomkamp experimenting with digital effects again. That was part of the magic of District 9. Here’s hoping this one delivers.
Demonic opens in theaters and on VOD on August 20.
49 Comments
LOL you had me at “black ops team hunting a demon.” Sounds completely batshit, count me in.
I just want a tooling-up montage where they strap on their Dyneema cassocks, grab their tactical crucifixes, and lock and load Super Soakers with Holy Water.
Sadly, the line “I kick arse for the lord!” has already been taken.
can it be licensed for re-use? LOL
This is gonna have a Jacob’s Ladder-style twist ending, right? Like, they were in hell the whole time or something?
Not another Jacob’s Ladder scenario???
If Jeffrey Characterwheaties is in this I’m in.
So, which do you think it will be? A Jacob’s Ladder-style ending or an ending where they were all in hell the whole time?
Yes, but only after a huge gunfight in a moodily-lit warehouse.
Supernatural phenomena as metaphor for interpersonal family drama is all the rage these days, eh? Almost miss me some torture porn…
“A young woman unleashes terrifying demons when supernatural forces at the root of a decades old rift between mother and daughter are ruthlessly revealed”That legitimately sounds like what an AI trained on horror synopses would write. “A young woman makes the terrifying discovery that a clown cat is hunting her through the halls of an abandoned hotel to exorcise her grandmother.”Also: “ruthlessly revealed?” What makes a reveal ruthless?
“Also: “ruthlessly revealed?” What makes a reveal ruthless?”
Ruthless means having or showing no pity or compassion for others, so I guess it would be someone revealing something without pity or compassion for the person to whom they are making the revelation?
I don’t know, I simply used my knowledge of the English language and my adult human common sense and my half-a-brain to figure out something that half a retard could figure out.
Loud sting.
Seriously. This abuse of adverbs deserves a fine.
Here’s hoping Neill Blomkamp is like M. Night Shyamalan and gets back on track when you take away his budget.
What if The Cell but with Lawnmower Man-level special effects and throw in a bit of Possessor to distract from the “Vatican black ops team” angle?
if these “Vatican black ops” guys are also ninjas or something else equally nuts (instead of throwing stars they use throwing crosses)…I am beginning to swoon. LOL
Producer: Why don’t you make a movie about video games? That’s hot right now.
Blomkamp: Video games…simulation…hallucination…possession……Vatican black ops team!
Producer: Er, well, how about a movie about social media? People love that shit. Blomkamp: Social media…Internet…simulation…possession……Vatican black ops team!
“the director found himself trapped in development hell”
He wasn’t trapped in development hell so much as he signed several leases to stay for an extended time in development hell.
I find Blomkamp’s premises interesting, but I do wish the execution were tighter. Seems like there’s always some point in the movie where he realizes there’s a new question he’s more interested in answering, and then it all gets muddled.
This looks really fun.I gotta admit though, sending someone into the mind of a serial killer to ask “why” sounds like a horrible idea.“They said they were bored”
“Can you ask for more details?”
“No they’re creeping me out”
Basically this trailer is a masterclass in getting me to buy a movie ticket. I hope the full movie can live up to it.
Yeah, it’s a hell of a good trailer. As a rule I’m not interested in horror, but I might actually consider watching this.
I’ve given up on Blomkamp, but at least this one doesn’t seem likely to feature sledgehammer social commentary.
‘Not much there’ is the perfect description for Blomkamp.
Is every movie about nightmares going to be compared to Elm Street for no reason?
Where’s the Dreamscape love??
Yes. Freddy Krueger is basically burned into the pop-culture landscape to the point where if any movie/TV show/whatever is about dreams, that reference is going to happen. Hell, even Inception got it on South Park.
Only the ones where someone gets cuts in a dream and the cuts are there when they wake up
I didn’t see that in this.
1:27
“the Vatican is funding a black ops team”[cross burned into back]this went from “this looks like it could be good” to “this looks like it could be so bad it’s great”
>Following the surprise success of District 9, pretty much everyone was ready to anoint Neill Blomkamp as the king of sci-fi horror.Does anyone else think the exact same thing is happening with Jordan Peele right now? Get Out was incredible and deserves all the praise it gets but it’s still only a single movie – maybe slow down on calling him the king of all horror.
Wait, wasn’t this basically the plot of an episode of Evil? And Black Mirror, for that matter? (Actually, splicing together a few Black Mirror episodes now that I think about it…)
Not sure I buy the categorization of District 9 as “sci-fi horror”. Maybe if you’re extending the definition of “horror” in some socio-political way? It was plenty gory in spots, and had it’s share of Aliens homages, but much more in the “action” camp, than the “horror”.
Admittedly, it’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but isn’t there a whole body horror element to the movie where a man turns into a bug monster?
He does, but to me it felt more like suspenseful “clock-is-ticking” motivation than body horror, particularly since the depiction of the “Prawns” is more-or-less sympathetic. It plays out more like D.O.A. than The Fly.
Fully agreed. All that talk was very confusing. It was very much sci-fi/action.
I remember it being heavier on the comedy than the horror.
“turns actors into geometric objects”and Morgan Freeman as…the Cylinder
Is a “And Marlon Brando is the Sphere” joke low hanging fruit?
don’t volume-shame
Dude did get pretty loud, but.
You had me at “Vatican black ops”.
Just how many times have we seen the whole “Person A in a coma, so Person B has to use some techno-magic to go inside her dreams, while unscrupulous creator of the techno-magic sits at a monitor watching like it’s a goddamned movie”?I mean, this is just sooooo lazy.
Judging by this trailer, at least one more time.
Who gives a shit as long as it’s good? Many things are the same if you boil it down enough.
Does District 9 hold up? I have not watched it in years but I remember liking it
Elysium was boring as all hell, and while Chappie was certainly bad, I at least found it entertaining. The discourse around those two movies seems to be backwards to me.