TOWNHOUSE OF THE DEVIL


EXORCISMUS Starring Sophie Vavasseur, Stephen Billington


and Richard Felix Directed by Manuel Carballo Written by David Muñoz IFC Midnight


If exorcism movies have taught us anything


about the Devil, it’s that he’s a liar liar with his brimstone pants on fire. At every turn he’ll try to trick you, mess with your head, fill you with self- doubt and betray you. This, of course, makes him perfect to work in marketing. The Dark Lord’s claw prints are all over Exorcis-


mus, the latest foray into the revitalized posses- sion genre. See that cool cover image? Well, that ain’t the girl who stars in the film. Sophie Vavasseur (Resident Evil: Apocalypse), who has much shorter blonde hair, is the lead here, as Emma, a British teenager who plays with an old Ouija board one night and gets a bad case of the Devil. Initially, director Manuel Carballo does a great job of selling the girl’s gradual possession, as she has believable blackouts, seizures and then full-blown supernatural episodes. (FYI: levitating in the kitchen will, in fact, convince your family that something’s up.) Her uncle Christopher (Stephen Billington: Resident Evil), a disgraced Catholic priest who saw a girl in his care die during an exorcism, is seemingly Emma’s only hope and moves into the family home to begin the lengthy process of driving out the demon. Maybe you noticed that the film was penned by


David Muñoz, screenwriter of Guillermo del Toro’s bril- liant The Devil’s Backbone. That’s proof of quality, right? Wrong. Exorcismus has its creepy moments – many of ’em thanks to Vavasseur’s diabolical multiple personality performance – but the plot descends rather quickly from compelling to cliché and then to downright silly. Remember that Looney Toons cartoon where Ralph Wolf and Sam the Sheepdog eat lunch together and converse pleasantly while off the clock, but once they punch-in Sam spends the day throttling Ralph? It’s like that. Christopher and Emma eat break- fast together and then go upstairs, where he ties her to a chair and incites her inner demon with his cruci- fix, hoping that she’ll stop picking off family members. C’mon... Oh, and if you’re tempted by Doug “Pinhead”


Bradley’s name on the DVD cover, be warned: his screen time amounts to a cameo. Doug’s not here right now, which just goes to show that the Devil’s in the marketing.


DAVE ALEXANDER DEATH COMES CRAWLING


MONGOLIAN DEATH WORM Starring Sean Patrick Flanery, Drew Waters


and Victoria Pratt Directed by Steven R. Monroe Written by Kevin Leeson, Neil Elman and Steven R. Monroe Lionsgate


A film about the five-foot-long burrowing crypto- logical creature olgoi-khorkhoi, a bright red Mongo-


Exorcismus: The Devil made Emma (Sophie Vavasseur) do it.


lian death worm that spits an acid-like substance ca- pable of killing people on contact, sounds like a good


idea for a creature feature (after all, Tremors was a success twenty years ago). But in the hands of the Syfy network, little of the cryptid’s menacing mythol- ogy remains. Instead, viewers are left with basically an Allan Quatermain-style quest for treasure. When an American oil company sets up shop in the


Mongolian desert, its drilling awakens the nominal squirming grubs. Enter Daniel Upton (Sean Patrick Flanery: Saw 3D), a fortune hunter searching for the worms because he buys into the local legend that they’re guardians of Genghis Khan’s tomb. Hired by a pair of physicians to transport medicine to a local village ravaged by a plague, Upton’s quest puts both the doctors and the innocent villagers in danger when he must choose between retrieving the tomb’s cache of riches and destroying the deadly invertebrates (and Khan’s final resting place with them). Although creature features of


the past celebrate kitschy mon- sters with equally campy story- lines, Mongolian Death Worm tries to root its tale firmly in the real world, often downplaying its more over-the-top elements. Quirky characters abound, no- tably a Mongolian lawman (George Cheung) who resem- bles a Texan sheriff complete with a white Stetson and a 4x4 truck. But this nod to the South isn’t surprising since Texas served as a stand-in for Mongolia. No wonder the landscape seems off, the locals a little too clean and there’s not a yak in sight. The writers also chose to ignore much of the death worm legend, instead depicting the crea- tures as hulking monsters complete with a queen. Yet amongst all this movie misdirection, Flanery’s performance as the likeable scoundrel Upton helps


the film retain some credibility. (The actor has had plenty of practice depicting heroic adventurers – he portrayed a young Indiana Jones in the TV series of the same name.) But is it enough to make Mongolian Death Wormanything more than a Sunday afternoon time-waster? You may experience a minor case of the creepy crawlies at best.


JASON PICHONSKY FATAL ART ATTACK


FALL DOWN DEAD Starring Dominique Swain, Udo Kier and David Carradine


Directed by Jon Keeyes Written by Roy Sallows Image


Horror fans are no strangers to questionable plot


turns or characters making bad decisions – venturing into the woods alone, reciting unholy incantations, taking the shortcut across the moors, and so on. Our patience is stretched to critical levels, but somehow we keep hoping the payoff will make it worth the agony. Every so often, however, a movie comes along that so callously abuses our generosity that we’re left with little choice but to call bullshit. Fall Down Dead stars Dominique Swain as


Christie, a single mom trying to make it home on Christmas Eve. In her way is “The Picasso Killer” (the always-amazing Udo Kier), a noto- rious murderer who earned his nickname by creating portraits of his victims using acrylics and chunks of their skin. Christie catches him


in the act, he catches her catching him, and not only does he need to stop her from telling the authorities, he identifies her as his “masterpiece.” She narrowly escapes into a nearby office building, falling under the care of its security guard, a conspicuously wobbly David Carradine (sadly, in one of his last roles). Cops arrive, and upon learning that her assailant is The Pi- casso Killer, they turn ghost-white. Now here comes the bullshit.


C I N E M A C A B R E 41 RM


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