Review of The Devil's Curse (2008) by Kjetil H — 11 Nov 2008

Aka The Devil's Curse (USA).

This UK horror is struggling to get out from under all the cliches and doesn't quite make it. It doesn't help that the story has been done to death in various guises either.

A group of five students get kicked out of their accommodation and have to find somewhere to stay for the weekend. One of their friends tells them about an abandoned Catholic college building so they go there. Once inside, one of them realises that this is the building which was closed down after five students tried to summon a demon and four of them committed suicide and the fifth went mad. I could leave it there and you could still work out most of the film.

This abandoned building conveniently still has electricity, hot and cold running water, no dampness and no smashed windows, yet strangely no squatters or homeless people have taken advantage of this. Mobile phones don't work in the building but laptops seem to be able to run forever on battery power. I'm sure the demon is to blame for all these weird occurrences.

The acting isn't bad but the characters are quite cliched as well; hard working girl, male friend who likes her but can't tell her, party boy, odd girl that turns out to be a secret lesbian and the claustrophobic one that freaks out a lot. They weren't too annoying but they weren't people that you could particularly care about either.

There is no gore and only a couple of jump scares which you know are coming but there are a few places where it manages to be a little bit creepy...and I didn't guess the twist so I suppose that must be worth something even if it didn't really add anything to the film. In fact, the weirdest thing about this film was seeing Stephen Gately (ex-Boyzone singer) as one of the original students.

I'd recommend it if you can watch it without paying a lot for it because it's OK, just nothing very original at all.