Devil | the m0vie blog

Millennium – Lamentation (Review)

Posted on March 24, 2015 by Darren

This February and March, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the fourth season of The X-Files and the first season of Millennium.

Taken together, Lamentation and Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions represent something of a loose mythology two-parter for Millennium. The episodes are not linked by an explicit “to be continued…”, but they feed into one another in a very clear and structured manner. Each of the two episodes exists as a clear and independent entity, but – taken together – they exist as a story that shakes Millennium to its foundation. This is the point at which Millennium seems to know what it is and what it wants to be.

The first season of any show is a difficult time. Everybody working on the series struggles to find the right voice for the series. The goal is to figure out what the show is before the audience loses interest. Lamentation comes quite late in the first season – only four episodes from here to Paper Dove – but it does represent a very clear and dynamic shift. It follows through on a lot of the horror implied throughout the first season, suggesting that Frank Black might be facing something far more sinister and insidious than mere serial killers.

On top of the world…

In fact, Lamentation exists as a fiendish subversion. It is a story that is very clearly set-up as the sort of procedural serial-killer-of-the-week story that the show was churning out towards the middle of the season. Doctor Ephraim Fabricant is released from prison so he can offer a kidney transplant to his sister; however, while he is recuperating, somebody helps him to escape police custody. Having profiled Fabricant during the initial manhunt, Frank is drafted in to track down Ephraim Fabricant before he inevitably starts killing again. The clock is ticking.

Then everything just explodes. Something from the dark heart of Millennium breaks loose; this more primal evil devours the serial-killer-of-the-week structure. It even leaves his second kidney on a plate in the fridge.

Everybody has their demons…

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Filed under: Millennium | Tagged: bill smitrovich, bob bletcher, corruption, Demon, Devil, evil, lamentation, Lance Henriksen, legion, lucy butler, millennium, spread, yellow house | Leave a comment »

The X-Files – Die Hand Die Verletzt (Review)

Posted on August 20, 2014 by Darren

This August (and a little of September), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the second season of The X-Files. In November, we’ll be looking at the third season. And maybe more.

Die Hand Die Verletzt is a fascinating piece of work, for a number of reasons. The most striking reason, however, is that it is essentially a comedy episode. While The X-Files has always had a wry sense of humour – Mulder’s viewing habits are a recurring joke, after all – this is the first time the series has tried to produce a full-length comedy episode. Die Hand Die Verletzt is still a horror story, and the comedy is pretty black, but it does seem to prove that the show can do an entire episode that is funny.

The implications of this are far-reaching. At its height, the beauty of The X-Files was its versatility. The show could tell just about any sort of story imaginable, flitting between prestige drama, out-and-out horror, pastiche, broad comedy, political thriller, satire or even romance. While you could always bet on at least a hint of the supernatural and a dash of horror, The X-Files could really be anything that Chris Carter and his writers wanted it to be. It was even a show that could collide with other shows, as in The Springfield Files or X-Cops.

She’s the devil in disguise…

To be fair, the second season is already reaching towards that approach to The X-Files. Although he has yet to produce a script for the series, the show has hired Darin Morgan to work on the writing team; his sensibilities would be proven truly and brilliantly gonzo. Irresistible proved that you could produce an episode of The X-Files without an overt supernatural horror, focusing on a more grounded horror. Red Museum provided an “almost crossover” with another television series.

However, Die Hand Die Verletzt is the point at which the show does something that looks truly weird in the context of what has come before, yet feeling strangely comfortable in light of what has followed. The script may mark the departure of Glen Morgan and James Wong from the show – the duo leaving to produce Space: Above & Beyond – but it isn’t the end of an era so much as the start of a new one.

The writing’s on the… er… chalkboard…

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: belief, christianity, demons, Devil, die hand die verletz, faith, Glen Morgan, James Wong, kim manners, magic, mulder, occult, pilgrims, religion, satanism, scully, the hand that wounds, the x-files, x-files | 6 Comments »

The X-Files – The Jersey Devil (Review)

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Darren

And with The Jersey Devil, the first season of The X-Files hits its first major snag. The first four episodes have done an efficient job laying down the character arcs and the ground rules for this new conspiratorial series. The rest of the season – like a lot of first seasons – has a great deal of difficulty trying to figure out a formula that works using those elements.

The Jersey Devil is, by all accounts, an episode that should work. It has a nice pseudo-scientific premise. It is written by the creator of the show, and who – at this early stage – could claim a better idea of how the series works than Chris Carter? It gives us some personal insight into both of our protagonists, and it sort of clarifies that Squeeze is not going to be the exception – that there will be a lot of anthology-style episodes.

And yet, despite all that, it doesn’t quite work. The premise is never as interesting as it should be. Chris Carter confirms that while he is a fantastic ideas man, he is not the strongest writer on his own staff. The best of these insights into Mulder and Scully were already made much better in Squeeze, and the rest feel somewhat trite. Despite the fact that it’s only the show’s second anthology-style episode, The Jersey Devil feels like it’s trying to hard to stick to the framework outlined by the three UFO episodes in the series’ opening quartet.

Casting light…

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: Bigfoot, Carter, chris carter, Devil, Diamond, Jersey Devil, jodie foster, Morgan, New Jersey Devil, Pine Barren, Rob Bowman, United States, X-File | 1 Comment »

The Spirit Archives, Vol. 4 (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Darren

As with the previous collection, the War looms large in The Spirit Archives, Vol. 4. While Eisner had been keenly following events in Europe from the start of the strip, things really come to a head here. These are the strips for the six months following the attack on Pearl Harbour, and – understandable – there’s a strong patriot undertone to everything here. Eisner would eventually put his patriotism into action when he was drafted, leaving his character in the hands of his staff – who dutifully kept the comic warm for him during his term of service. While Eisner’s early work on the strip isn’t quite as good as the work that would follow, and the shadow of the Second World War dominates, these are still fascinating stories told by a master storyteller.

Carrying on, naturally…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Devil, Dolan, Ebony, Eisner, Eisner Award, Ellen Dolan, German, German American, jeph loeb, King Hobo, republicans, Spirit, The Spirit: Femmes Fatale, United States, Will Eisner, world war ii | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Devil

Posted on August 9, 2012 by Darren

Devil actually has a pretty interesting B-movie premise, evoking the sort of cheesy thrill of an eighties horror. Six strangers are trapped inside an elevator… and one of them might be Satan. It’s a fairly straight-forward idea, albeit one that the script and direction needlessly complicate and convolute as they attempt to fill up the seventy-seven minutes. In many ways, Devil feels like something of a classic horror throwback, a simple high concept that relies on occasionally overstated jump scares rather than gratuitous gore or carnage. It’s not necessarily the best representation of the genre, but – if you can suspend your disbelief and live with the overwrought corniness – it’s an affectionate old-fashioned homage.

And things were just looking up…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Army of Two, arts, bible, Bravo, Chris Messina, christianity, Devil, Electronic Arts, family, film, Frostbite (game engine), god, Hell, hollywood, Logan Marshall-Green, Mexican Drug War, Mother, Movie, non-review review, parents, Ramadan, review, Satan, Security Guard, Visceral Games, Xbox 360 | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Devil Inside

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Darren

The Devil Inside is a cocktail of fascination, frustration and infuriation. Unfortunately it’s not a balanced one – though there’s just enough interesting ingredients to pique our curiosity, but the delivery is so slapdash and haphazard that these intriguing elements are swiftly brushed aside. The Devil Inside confuses provocative drama with shallow sensationalism, but the biggest flaw with the film is that – quite simply – it doesn’t work. I don’t mean that it doesn’t work as a film. The problem is more fundamental than that. I mean that it doesn’t work as a story.

No need to get bent out of shape...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Blair Witch Project, catholic church, church, Cocktail, Demonic possession, Devil, Devil Inside, exorcism, Exorcism of Emily Rose, film, games, hollywood, home, Horror film, Isabella, Movie, Movies, non-review review, r eview, rome, The Devil inside, William Brent Bell | 3 Comments »

Mike Carey’s Run on Ultimate Fantastic Four – Vol. 4-6 (Hardcover) (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Darren

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Fantastic Four, I’m taking a look at some of the stories featuring the characters over the past half-century.

Ultimate Fantastic Four was never really the crown jewel of the Ultimate line. It wasn’t ever as consistent as Brian Michael Bendis’ 100+ issues on Ultimate Spider-Man, nor as zeitgeist-y as Ultimate X-Men (which had the success of the X-Men trilogy to back it up at least). Instead, like Fox’s Fantastic Four movies, Ultimate Fantastic Four was just… well, just kinda there, really. To be fair, I dug Mark Millar’s twelve-issue run on the title. Hell, I even enjoyed elements of the opening arc by Millar and Bendis, and the year-long run by Warren Ellis that followed. However, Mike Carey’s run is somewhat disappointing. This was the run which essentially saw the series through to the big Ultimatum event, and perhaps it justified the decision to clean the slate when it came to Marvel’s Ultimate line. Because, whatever Carey’s run was, it certainly wasn’t consistently fantastic.

That surfer dude looks spaced...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: brian michael bendis, Comics, cosmic marvel, Devil, four cubed, ghosts, god war, mark millar, marvel comics, Mike Carey, psycho man, robert kirkman, thanos, the silver searcher, the silver surfer, ultimate comics spider-man, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Ultimate Galactus Trilogy, ultimate marvel, ultimate spider man, ultimate universe, ultimate x-men | Leave a comment »

Clip from Devil

Posted on September 8, 2010 by Darren

The guys from Universal Studios Ireland sent over the following clip from Devil. It’s part of a proposed series of films from M. Night Shyamalan that’s he’s deeming “Night Chronicles”. In fairness, the director’s stock has taken a huge fall from its peak with The Sixth Sense (although I’ll argue Unbreakable is his true masterpiece), but it looks like he’s taking something of a backseat on this production – it’s actually directed by Drew & John Erick Dowdle, the guys responsible for the quite good (but not a patch on the Spanish original) Quarantine. Being honest, it could go either way, but the premise – several strangers trapped in a lift and one of them may be Satan – is intriguing enough that it could be the horror hit of the year or it could be terrible.

I guess we’ll see… Check out the clip below.