TL;DR: An interesting idea for a creepypasta becomes a painfully mediocre film.
And lo, we have reached the distant edge of found footage, where we find creepypasta horror. Which is no slight, as there are some amazing creepy pastas out there that capture the feeling of dread from the commonplace;. Thinking about it, mixing found footage and modern horror myths/creepypastas makes a lot of sense. They both play on the fear of the dark, and the things that lurk there. They are the peanut butter and chocolate of horror.
The thing is, though, that, like found footage, there are a lot of mediocre and undercooked creepy pasts. Stories that are more a core scary idea than a fully fleshed out tale. And believe me, the excitement of that initial idea is intoxicating, but the cold realization that you aren’t sure what to do with it is sobering.
“Demo_n” appears as a COVID-era film in that it features several participants of a video call gathering together. In this case, Gary is pulling two friends together to watch a film, while introducing them to a new friend. Things are done over a video all on the computer, and tensions are raised immediately when one of the old friends says some insensitive things about the new one’s newfound religious pursuit. As the group are about to watch the film, the connection gets laggy and the three friends decide to dip out of the stream while Gary tries to fix things. What no one realizes is that Gary had clicked on a link for a new game, not looking into whether it was safe or not. By clicking the link he has opened a gateway to something diabolical that now has its sights set on the friends. Unless Gary quickly figures out how to beat the game, and the demon contained within it, he and his friends may be doomed.
The core idea here is interesting: friends dealing with something supernatural via a game. It isn’t a new idea, but the use of animation in the film to depict the video game is really clever and adds a lot of personality to the film. The movie feels like a riff on “The Host,” but not as fleshed out. It feels sloppy. The friendships feel awkward, there is no real mythology to the game – a brief glimpse didn’t offer much – and the video game feels more silly than scary.
They worked with what they seemingly had, which is great, but the film feels like a pantomime of other films in the subgenre. This is an interesting idea that just isn’t cooked fully, and just doesn’t have any impact or anything new to offer.
I appreciate the effort, and the risks taken, but it didn’t work for me.
1.5 out of 5
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 