The late Polish director
Marcin Wrona, who tragically took his own life just days before the theatrical
premiere of his third and final film, Demon,
created one of the bleakest and most sardonic horror films of the year. Second to the South Korean shamanism shocker The Wailing, this tale of a Polish
wedding gone berserk when the groom appears to be succumbing to possession by a
Jewish demon known as a dybbuk is at once an unflinchingly realistic portrayal
of dislocated spiritual forces as well as a jet black comedy about denial. Less about the evil spirit that may be linked
to a skeleton found outside the to be newlywed’s home than the cumulative
impact the dilemma has on the wedding guests and the bride, this chilly and
draining nightmare stands out in an oversaturated market of devil movies
flooding the multiplexes this October.
While the epicenter concerns a jolly good young fellow growing
increasingly erratic with numerous rational explanations offered including the
possibility of alcoholism, epilepsy or rushing into a marriage, the possession
is merely a catalyst to the real horrors involving the in-laws and father of
the bride. Instead of trying to solve
the demonic affliction transforming the groom into a mere shadow of his former self,
dad and the in-laws work tirelessly to save face all the while burying their
heads in the sand, the logic being all will be well as long as the guests are
continually fed copious amounts of booze.
In scene after scene, the characters and poor spectators watching this
movie will gradually lose their minds as the chaos, intoxication and madness
intensifies without relent.
Less of an old fashioned
ghost story than an allegory for the all-consuming toxicity of denial, this is
one of the rare horror movies where the behaviors of the onlookers are
infinitely more troubling than the human being possessed by a vengeful evil
spirit. Much like Andrey Zvyagintsev’s
despairing Russian drama Leviathan,
the rural Polish countryside has never looked or felt more like a desolate
wasteland with its unfortunate denizens doing all they can to maintain
smiles. Touching on painful post WWII
wounds and drawing heavily from S. Anski’s Russian verse play The Dybbuk, Demon is fraught with angst dripping from every frame of the film’s
bleak visual schema. With a beige and
sickly greenish look lensed by Pawel Ellis with frequent wide shots contrasted
by intimate close ups of the groom’s face whose eyes grow more sinister as the
film progresses, this could well be the most deathly looking rendition of a
foreign country since Srdjan Spasojevic’s A
Serbian Film. The soundtrack itself,
partially composed by Marcin Macuk while largely dominated by Poland’s greatest
avant-garde composer Krzysztof Penderecki, is a moody and ambient buildup of
dissonant strings leading towards a shriek.
Having recently reviewed Penderecki’s opera The Devils of Loudon, the still active composer quite simply is the
very definition of modern horror soundtracks.
Listen to one of his compositions with the volume turned up loud with
all the lights off and you’ll be hard pressed not to succumb to cutis anserina. Special thanks of course go to the leading
couple, played by Itay Tiran and Angnieszka Zulewska, who convey a seemingly
happy pair of lovebirds who by the end of the film are streaked with blood,
sweat and tears covering their terrified faces.
Equally commanding and most frightening of all is the father of the
bride played by veteran actor and comedian Andrzej Grabowski who willfully denies
to himself and everyone around him the inexplicable horrors unfolding before
his very eyes. The worse the situation
grows, the more and more he convinces himself there’s nothing wrong.
By the time Demon was finished, I felt drained
dry. It’s hard to believe there could be
a bleaker, more hopeless film released in theaters this year than the Hungarian
holocaust drama Son of Saul, yet here
we are. Though spiced with mordant humor
throughout, almost sniggering at the descent into booze addled debauchery and
chaos, Demon is ultimately an
anguished, veiny scream of despair picking the scabs of still healing wounds
from a violent history from which Poland has yet to recover. Like the old saying goes, to forget the past
is to relive it and in Demon the past
rears its ugly head to destroy the present.
Like the loose Polish kid cousin The
Wedding, Wrona’s dark and foreboding parable might be the closest the
depiction of marriage, what is supposed to be a happy and life affirming
celebration of two lovers coming together, has come to looking very like a
flesh and blood Hiernymous Bosch painting.
Everyone who watches it can speak to having been to a bad wedding or two
where drama or bad feelings fly while the elders do their best to keep a lid on
the occasion, but few can say they’ve ever witnessed one this insane and
nightmarish. In light of the director’s
tragic and unexpected suicide, Demon is
clearly borne out of the dark and deep depths of a tormented man’s soul trying
to make sense of a world gone mad with the denial of the evil pulsating in
it. This is not by any means an easy
watch. Contrary to the devil horror
funhouse scares of James Wan’s The
Conjuring or Oren Peli’s Paranormal
Activity and much the typical Blumhouse Productions fare, Demon is as haunted, terribly sad and uncompromisingly
hopeless of a demonic possession horror film as you can possibly imagine. Like the wedding guests unlucky enough to
witness the groom’s implosion and woeful crumbling of the happy occasion
firsthand, you won’t know what hit you.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki