DEMONIC - Neill Blomkamp made the beginnings of a great new franchise, with remarkably efficient visual effects, and then apparently got bored during the script review and editing phase.
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Woman who is estranged from her imprisoned, criminal mother is requested to assist with an experimental technology. This new science allows us to enter the minds of the comatose in a virtualized space, like CELL or DREAMSCAPE. The effects in these sequences use the corruption inherent in LiDAR assisted capture and camera tracking to "simply" create eerie effects of a dilapidated world. The woman agrees to meet with her mother, in part to have a final chance to voice her unending hatred for ruining her life. The mother accepts the blame and hatred, and insists that the daughter leave immediately and never look back. Another figure appears in the simulation, terrifying the daughter, who flees.
The research group is revealed to secretly be a Vatican-funded SpecOps group which seek out possessed individuals and attempt to cleanse them from the world. If you like RPGs, this is a bit like Kenneth Hite's Night's Black Agents setting, or even The Dracula Dossier.
So far, so good, right? But then:
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The film completely ignores its own internal logic and structure. The SpecOps doctors have stated that they're unaware of what happens in the simulation, which may be a lie to gain plausible deniability, but they're seen actively observing the simulation and the daughter's progress in it in something like isometric view in Unreal Engine Editor. They ask the daughter if she saw anyone else in the simulation, and she evades telling them that there was a hulking crow demon in there with her. The SpecOps asks if she knows where the building is that she visited in the simulation, though this is the very building her mother burned down, killing over 20 people, so this would be a matter of public record.
The demon is somehow able to visit the world at large, and begins marauding the daughter's friends, and she's driven to help them. This leads to an encounter with the SpecOps team, who have apparently moved the comatose body of the mother to the burned facility, and somehow ENTIRELY fucked up the exorcism. The lead operator has been possessed, and is still working to capture and inhabit the daughter. SOMEHOW the daughter overpowers this Vatican supersoldier, and stabs him with the Spear of Longinus. The demon then enters the daughter because reasons. She stabs herself with the Spear, the demon hops out, but then apparently finally dies.
Blomkamp: Camera work is cheap and effective. Meaty, grotesque effects. Remarkably efficient use of LiDAR and motion-tracked camera effects. If he'd spent more time thinking about grounding it in reality like he did with District 9, this could have started a franchise. I think he became bored but was contractually obligated. A real shame.
