A woman furtively leaves her marital bed at dead of night in a hill-top, bay-view, hi-tech luxury mansion. She gets away from her soon-pursuing husband by the skin of her teeth and we soon learn in the aftermath that said husband was a control-freak, obsessively watching her every move. And if you look carefully, that he's seriously into optics and the like, remember that. Next thing, she's told by hubby's lawyer brother that he's been killed and she's been left his fortune. So she moves in with her cop pal and his college-age daughter and in relief, starts splashing the cash, but she just can't shake the feeling that her old man is still around and actually isn't dead at all.
From this set-up, the film could really have gone one of two or three ways, either as a realistically presented psychological thriller with her out-of-sight ex using his power and influence to disrupt her life while keeping well away from her, or even as a study in paranoia with the wife suffering some kind of breakdown and just imagining all the crazy things happening to her or it could of course go the full H.G. Wells and set the psycho-spouse up as a mirror-suited (remember what I said about his interest in all things optical?) killing-machine, rendering him invisible, out to get her back under his control which plan he puts into motion by firstly framing her for the murder of her own sister just for starters, as you would. Guess which way it goes?
So sure enough we get all the cliched, seen-'em-before silly-looking scenes of people fighting and getting beating up by an invisible enemy and lots of static, subjective camera-shots looking at inanimate objects and inviting the viewer to join the connecting dots.
Elisabeth Moss as the persecuted wife, gets to bring out her scared, angry and mad faces as the body count increases and the situations become even more ridiculous and predictable. Not that she takes all the mayhem happening around her lying down, oh no, she sure enough overcomes her terror, finds her inner Sarah Connor and decides to fight back leading to a final reckoning back at their old house. For me, she does a good job of staying in character without once breaking out into fits of laughter at all that's going on, especially when her stalker turns out to resemble a now-you-see-him, now-you-don't super-villain running around in a costume that, when revealed, makes him look like Spider Man.
I just found it all very predictable, weakly-characterised, mildly absurd film entertainment. For one thing, I thought the editing poor with jumps to scenes with little or no explanation. Once I sussed how the film was playing all the carefully arranged attempts at dramatic tension evaporated so that I couldn't even be bothered to shout "He's behind, in front of, to the left or right of you or wherever he was!" at the screen.
Sorry, with its transparent characters and see-through narrative, I just couldn't see what all the fuss was about here.
Devil's Whisper (2019) 1080p
Read More »15 year-old Alejandro Duran, who comes from a religious Latino family, aspires to one day be a Catholic priest. But when Alex discovers a mysterious box he unwittingly unleashes a demonic spirit bent on possessing him. Alex must find a way to defeat this ancient demon, which has been tormenting children since the dawn of man, before it destroys him and everyone he loves. On the surface Devil's Whisper is a supernatural horror film about demonic possession but at its core it's a psychological thriller about repressed memories, childhood trauma and the cycle of abuse.