Demon
Studio: The Orchard
Directed by Marcin Wrona
Sep 09, 2016
Web Exclusive
Weddings provide naturally tense settings with built-in stress and expectations long before any plot machinations are set in motion. Framing a horror film around a wedding can work wonders for raising anxiety among characters in a heightened story or it can come off as a cheap way to explore pathos. Fortunately, Marcin Wrona’s final film Demon is more in line with the former.
Peter travels to Poland, alone, to marry Zaneta, the love of his life. This detail is hardly lingered on, but it underscores most of the film. Peter is an outsider from the first frames of the movie. Maybe the shots of him on a boat could be read as a bit on the nose, he’s a fish out of water, but that’s also a reach. He glimpses a lady in the shallow part of the lake screaming, struggling with people trying to restrain her. While he doesn’t understand how it might have any impact on him, it’s clear this is being used as a portentous image. It’s a sign of things to come. And it’s one of the weaker moments, because it pushes the anxious tone instead of allowing it to bubble underneath the narrative’s surface. When the film spells out its horrors is when it loses its momentum.
When Demon is more ambiguous and mysterious, it is more impactful. The prologue is centered on Peter arriving, meeting his new family, and getting the keys to an old house belonging to Zaneta’s relatives. It’s a fixer-upper. Digging up some of the ground to prepare for landscaping, he discovers a buried skeleton. That night, staying in the house alone, Peter wanders outside and is sucked into the earth near where he saw the bones. The next morning, he’s found in his car, alive, with dirt in every crevasse. The wedding is on, but he’s anything but settled.
The rest of the film is the wedding, and it’s crisp and wrought with palpable energy turning the screws as tight as they can go. While there is a supernatural element related to a being called a “dybbuk” (the titular demon, but from Jewish folklore. Also used in the opening of the Coen Brothers’ film A Serious Man), it is never at the front of the film. Instead, every action, every contortion, and every horrific moment is done naturally with the dybbuk’s clutches relegated mostly to the background. Unlike big budget thrillers, Demon doesn’t rely on a bludgeoning of CGI. Its simplicity is one of its greatest strengths.
Unfortunately, the energy dies on the home stretch. The finale is a bit too jumbled and features a couple stylistic and narrative choices that feel either cheap or cliché. These aren’t maddening touches and the ending isn’t exactly poor, but it doesn’t quite live up to the delightful, raving lunacy of everything that came before it. Demon is a fine film steeped deeply in its culture, but it neither holds the audience’s hands nor makes its story too distant, and the wedding setting helps that sense of universal familiarity bleed in.
Author rating: 7.5/10
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