The Devil You Know

Looking at recent movie releases it’s clear that the devil is having a bit of a moment. Good for them. We all deserve our fifteen centuries of fame, don’t we?

There’s something about the devil that is just an old standard at this point, a well that is returned to again and again for stories because they make for the perfect villain, even in absentia. 

At its heart, horror stories are many times stories of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’, though to look at it that way alone is a bit naive and narrow. If you think of slasher films though you can see Jason Voorhees as ‘evil’, just as you can Freddy Krueger, or the Firefly family, and their victims as ‘good’. Again, very simplistic, but it’s there. We love stories of survival and the idea of surviving an attack from someone or something that wants nothing more than to destroy you really connects to us. There are many themes that bring us to horror but the simple one of good vs. evil has always been one that can pack power. There are some films that never quite add anything beyond that, and never really care to, but the most powerful ones, and the ones that stick with you are the films that can say something more. 

Horror is always full of cycles. Found footage was big. Hauntings were big. J-Horror was big. Werewolves. Vampires. Zombies. The devil. We’ve seen it all and more. What went around comes back and the devil is back baby, they are BACK! It’s interesting though to see the devil’s influence on so many films, as it were, when we’re in a time of political and religious shifting. 

What’s interesting to me is that you’ll see movies about the devil more than those about angels or saviors because the stories are more interesting. There just seems to be more to say with those characters and themes. It’s like Superman, a character that is beloved and well-known but has such very strict rules as to how he behaves that it pens in a lot of storytellers. People feel like the character is ‘boring’ and too much of a ‘boy scout’, implying that because he’s generally seen as kind, friendly, and on the side of higher justice, that he won’t just beat people up or kill them. He won’t go around cursing or sleeping with people. What’s interesting is he isn’t generally much different than most superheroes other than he is portrayed as if he is without fault. 

And THAT is the problem. 

Of course he has faults, just as any angel or savior would. 

But if you are stuck portraying these characters as immaculate and without sin or flaw then it gets boring. It feels often like what it is – preaching. 

It feels as if you are being preached to and not told a story. 

We fear losing control. Losing our minds. Losing our bodies.
Losing our souls.
We fear that we will fall prey to our lesser urges and give in and fall from grace. 

Even the faithless fear they may do something that ‘makes them a bad person’. 

The devil and their allies and minions serve that end. 

They exist to lure humans towards the darkness. 

Because most of us realize we’re not without sin or regret that we are closer to the dark side than we’d like, and not as near to the path of good as we’d wish. 

And let’s face it, stories of the devil are darned interesting and entertaining.

The idea of being inhabited by a malevolent spirit. 

The fight between those grand forces of right and wrong. 

All done in the hues of religion, it’s all powerful stuff.

As I mentioned, we’re at a time when some see devils everywhere. The religious right has decided that they are being persecuted and as such are resorting to a book most of them only seem to understand in broad strokes. They see devils and demons in a world that is simply evolving to meet the needs of a changing world. Whether we like it or not, humanity is on edge and scared and looking for reasons. 

What better time to bring back movies about epic fights between good and evil?

It allows humans to try to overcome the seemingly insurmountable while pairing it with body horror and the fear for our afterlife and soul. In the demonic, we see the very worst parts of humanity – rage, hate, lust, violence, blasphemy, and murder. They are the very worst of us, They look nothing like us, what we see of demons, but they resemble what we could become and some already are. We like to think we are beings of love and light but the fact is that we need look only to the news to see what some of us are, and how similar we are to the monsters of stories and nightmares. 

What movies about the devil and demons show us is that the line that separates us from them is very thin and many of us are closer to it than we’d like to believe. 

As a race, we are closer to that line than we believe. 

Many times there’s a pat ending, a divine intervention, or someone stands up and fights the darkness back, and sometimes the evil wins, though that often feels more heavy-handed than the goodies winning. 

What we see though is that a terrible price was paid to survive and that evil isn’t gone. 

It’s just dormant, for now, and waiting. 

This is a time for the devil. 

A time to reflect the awfulness in humanity and a challenge to overcome it. 

The devil will have their due, and so too will movies about saviors and angels, and then we’ll move on to the next creature in the cycle of horror. 

For now, though, it’s the devil’s time. 

…c…