Review of Bedeviled (2017) by Cathy S — 12 Nov 2017

I'd file this movie in the curse lite section of horror genres, and it is clearly aimed at fluff-brained teenagers, as they are the only ones likely to find anything remotely scary in this movie about (you guessed it) a group of young school friends finding themselves bedeviled by a mysterious telephone app, the ghost of the friend who shared the app with the circle, and their own worst fears risen to macabre life in front of them.

Despite all of that angst, misery, fear, and haunting going on, the movie still manages to be more boring than frightening, relying almost entirely on creepy images embedded in jump scares that simply are not enough to horrify, cinematically or psychologically.

There is nothing on offer here that viewers can't find done better elsewhere, right down to the casting of Brandon Soo Hoo, the only cast member showing off any actual talent, which is no surprise given how he inflected layers of complexity in his character and managed simultaneously to horrify, amuse, and engage viewers' sympathy in his turn as an adopted parson's son with a dark side transformed into a vampire in From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series.

(It, too, is available on Netflix and is a much better way to spend one's time on the site's horror selections.) Soo Hoo makes the most of what little grist he is given in Bedeviled, especially in the movie's one sex scene and its inventive use of Shakespeare.

Yet even this ubiquitous element comes up short, as most of the action is heard rather than seen and ultimately is laced with more sweetness and humor than steam. I'm surprised this even received the R rating, with it all feeling soccer mom slick; you could almost hear the conversations about appropriate viewing, with more sulky teens headed for sleepovers rolling their eyes and swearing the movie selection for scaring themselves awake hardly shows anything good, with other moms then confirming the lack of nudity, promiscuity, gore, and occult sensibility.

The movie even aims to be politically correct in how it sets up and dishes out the scares, with much ado made about the token black character whistling Chopin on the train to reassure the old white ladies he's not the kind of thug that mugs and about his greatest fears being old white ladies such as herself, white cops, and white people in general (no offense to his mostly white circle of friends).

However, stereotyping is still on dazzling display, as when the writers take the token Asian kid's fears from "the village back home," where a pregnant and disgraced aunt threw herself into the drinking well and polluted it for months before her body was found.

Villages with communal drinking wells are in reality an exception rather than rule for Asian millenials and those old/young enough to be their aunts, with advanced cities the norm now that the modern technology revolution manufactured in that part of the world has spread its tentacles across the region.

I don't usually cry foul for such violations in what is obviously intended just to be entertainment, but it's just one more way that Bedeviled gets the tone wrong. A lot of reviews have made (unfavorable) comparisons to Smiley, Unfriended, The Den, # Horror, and other social-media themed movies, but honestly Bedeviled seemed to draw most of its copycattiness from Hell Hazers II: The Reckoning, the movie-within-a-show the Supernatural series used to spoof horror tropes in the episode "Holloywood Babylon.

" Unfortunately, Bedeviled is not purposefully injecting those elements in a wry, self-aware way, instead using "explainers" to pepper conversations between characters about what is really happening and to legitimate its "how's this for a technical twist" ending.

I deliberately left that vague just in case anyone ignores this review and rushes off to Netflix to stream the movie, but my recommendation is that you should pick something--almost anything--else, be that the better social-media horror movies mentioned, the 13 seasons of Supernatural that will keep you watching for weeks, and/or classic entries from the horror genre.

Curse movies don't get better than American Werewolf in London, a movie that set the tone for injecting humor into horror and schooled all film auteurs to come in doing the same, and the first Insidious movie is an instant classic that elevates jump scares to high art and was the source of the creepy hands that Bedeviled totally ripped off for its main character.

Much like the app that started its characters' trouble, downloading Bedeviled is not a good idea, and it will definitely still a chunk of your life you wish you had back!