.

On a family day trip, pre-teen siblings Adolfo and Sara beg to be allowed to climb an ominous hillside on their own. Eager to engage in a little “adult time” in the car, their parents Sol and Felix  let them to go, watching them wander hand-in-hand up the rocky path after a promise to return in 90 minutes time. When the children do finally return, after a night of being lost in the wilderness, Sol and Felix slowly begin to realize that the children who came back are not the same as they were the day before. As their homelife starts to get weirder and weirder, Sol takes it upon herself to find out what’s the matter with her now dead-eyed and creepily quiet children and why the locals are scared of the hillside where the kids disappeared.

Here Comes the Devil has an admittedly  great premise and a grimy 1970s exploitation vibe about it that makes you feel like just about anything can happen.   Unfortunately it never really focuses enough on telling a coherent story to do justice to its theme that (I think) is meant to explore parents’ fears about their kids’ budding sexuality.   It’s a family drama, it’s a horror movie (and the few jolts of scariness the are injected into the film are effective) and it’s a really messed up coming-of-age story.   If writer/director Adrián García Bogliano had properly zeroed in on any one of these things  and really amped up the supernatural elements of this story, this film may have been brilliant. As it stands, it’s only just okay.

Is Here Comes the Devil Essential TIFF Viewing?

Nope. With only a couple days left in the Fest, you’ll want to see a film that’s a bit more polished and less likely to frustrate you with what it could have been.

Here Comes the Devil Screening Times

• Sunday, September 16, 2012 at 3:30pm at Scotiabank

More About Here Comes the Devil

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Kristal Cooper

Editor-in-Chief

Kristal Cooper has been a film buff since the age of two when her parents began sneaking her into the drive-in every weekend. Since then, she’s pursued that passion by working for the Toronto International Film Festival and the Canadian Film Centre as well as spending many a happy hour inside Toronto’s wonderful theatres (she still mourns the loss of The Uptown). She currently acts as Toronto Film Scene’s Editor-in-Chief, is a freelance writer specializing in pop culture and feminist issues, and continues to slog away at her day job as a small cog in the giant machinery of the Toronto film community.

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