Demontika

Hey, another James Wan movie? Certainly seen a few of those recently. And this one is getting familiar territory of contacting spirits in a spooky house.

While we get the spooky house, we also get the aftermath as we open with a police detective investigating a house where a number of bodies were found and one survivor. We jump back and forth in the narrative, and there were actually a few decent scares (although jump scares are pretty much all this movie has in the scares realm). At first there's the typical 'strange things are happening, but the main cast don't notice', but quickly it becomes different as the cast do notice and actually have strange things happening in front of them (and they stupidly decide to stick around, although there's a reason they could be doing that - but spoilers). Even in the detective plot, things start coming unnatural... and this is the first time where I'd actually like to see a sequel to see where the hell they think the plot is going beyond evil unleashed.

So yeah, this movie is a lot better than the usual fare, although recently (and we are only talking the past year), horror movies have been getting a lot better in setting the tone and being actually scary. (At least, the decent ones are, there are still a huge pile at the bottom of the bucket.) With having the events front and center and not just with the audience in the know, it works a lot better.

Perhaps they are finally starting to get the formula right? (And one that doesn't involve redoing Japanese or Korean horror movies?)

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