For the first 30 minutes of Daniel J. Phillips’ Diabolic, I keep looking at my watch, wondering how long I have to go. See, it isn’t a terrible movie, but it’s derivative of every other modern religious horror. A protagonist – in this case, it’s Elise (Elizabeth Cullen) – is plagued by something. The only way to confront what’s taking place in the present state and in order to move forward, it’s necessary to go back to the past and discover what’s been repressed there. In Diabolic, this means that Elise needs to return to the fundamentalist compound where she grew up to find out what’s eating at her. Of course, after discovering it, she may wish she hadn’t, as well as Adam (John Kim) and Gwen (Mia Challis) who went along with her.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Well, stick with it. After Phillips takes the audience through this highly generic setup, the director takes a radical turn that subverts all expectations and ideas. It’s all been deliberate, because at this point, Diabolic rumbles to life like a behemoth waiting to rise, hurling revelations and thought-provoking questions at the viewer. With each thread being untangled, this story becomes a clearer and more pertinent discussion about how one’s upbringing, including their religious belief system, holds the ability to build up or break down somebody. Sometimes, people experience such trauma from their family’s forced shared ideology that it suppresses who they are meant to be and does irreparable damage to the individual.
Phillips navigates such tricky subject matter through the metaphorical lens of horror, but the filmmaker isn’t afraid to lean into the frightening nature of humans doing bad things to each other as the core focus rather than bombard the viewer with an onslaught of visceral imagery. As a matter of fact, Phillips withholds the big sinister showpiece until the final 15 minutes of the film. Having said that, when it hits, it hits. I think I might need to burn sage before going to bed. It’s an ending fit to rival the insidiousness of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist. It’s creepy, unsettling, and – pardon the pun – diabolical.
The cast more than carries its weight in this heavy story, but Elizabeth Cullen pulls out a showstopping performance that should have everyone in the film industry sitting up and taking notice. Cullen treats Elise as an enigma – a puzzle – that needs to be solved along with the audience. There’s no wink-wink aspect in this portrayal. Cullen feels every fear, every discovery, and every trauma in real time with the viewer. By the time the third act rolls in, Cullen embraces it all to unleash a hellacious finale. If Cullen doesn’t become the next big horror superstar after Diabolic, the world deserves a Melania sequel.
While Diabolic looks like an ordinary religious horror on the surface level, it knows exactly what it’s doing by deceiving in the early stages. It’s a slow burn, sure, but this film doesn’t only preheat to cooking temperature, it pours gasoline over everything to burn the whole house down in the end. Diabolic is smart and sinister – what more could you want from a horror movie?!
The Review
Diabolic
While it seems generic at first, Diabolic summons all the fury to become an unstoppable horror.
Review Breakdown
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Verdict
