BEDEVILED (2016)

Studio:       Freestyle Digital Media
Director:    Abel Vang, Burlee Vang
Writer:       Abel Vang, Burlee Vang
Producer:  Abel Vang, Burlee Vang, Leng Yang, Cheng Yang, Kirk Roos
Stars:     Saxon Sharbino, Mitchell Edwards, Brandon Soo Hoo, Carson Boatman, Victory Van Tuyl, Jordan Essoe, Alexis G. Zall

Review Score:

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Summary:

A paranormal presence haunting a mysterious phone app terrorizes five teenage friends.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Having downloaded “Mr. Bedevil,” a mysterious Siri-like A.I. app, a paranormal presence stalks teenager Nikki in her home. Nikki is found dead from shock inducing a heart attack.

Following Nikki’s funeral, her boyfriend Cody, her best friend Alice Gorman, Alice’s boyfriend Gavin, Haley Davis, and Haley’s boyfriend Dan mysteriously receive invites to download “Mr. Bedevil” from Nikki’s phone. After installing, each teen is taunted by Mr. Bedevil through their phones and becomes supernaturally haunted according to their personal fears. Gavin is tormented by clowns, Haley by a childhood teddy bear, and Dan by a grim woman from an old family photograph. Alice sees visions of her dead grandmother while Mr. Bedevil takes the form of a police officer and a white woman to frighten Cody. The friends also discover brands on their bodies in the shape of Mr. Bedevil’s app icon.

The five friends eventually accept that the app has inexplicable abilities and intends to kill them. Mr. Bedevil uploads Haley and Dan’s sex video to the internet. Gavin tries smashing his phone but it reforms. Dan tries making a police report but the attending officer ends up possessed by Mr. Bedevil.

Mr. Bedevil impersonates Alice and calls Gavin to come to Alice’s house. There, multiple clowns torment and kill Gavin. Alice comes home and discovers Gavin’s body.

Alice recovers Nikki’s phone since that is where the invites came from and Cody hacks into it. Cody discovers that Nikki received her app invite from Samuel Price, Nikki’s former physics tutor who was also a pseudoscience enthusiast.

Alice and Cody go to Sam’s house and find his body under a bloody sheet in the garage. They also find audiotapes of Sam’s research in which Sam identifies Mr. Bedevil as a paranormal presence who uses the app to enter reality in a manner similar to a Ouija board.

Haley is murdered by a killer teddy bear. Dan is killed by a vision of the woman from his family photo.

Cody finds a way to finish writing code started by Sam that will uninstall Mr. Bedevil from his and Alice’s phones. Because the app is capable of adapting and rewriting its firmware, Cody can only use his program when Mr. Bedevil enters the physical world by first connecting to the phone’s hardware.

Cody and Alice set a trap for Mr. Bedevil at a warehouse using two separate computer stations. Mr. Bedevil enters through Alice’s phone and torments her in the form of Alice’s grandmother. Cody’s program successfully uninstalls the app from Alice’s phone and Mr. Bedevil vanishes.

However, Mr. Bedevil then comes for Cody through Cody’s phone. Alice attempts to banish Mr. Bedevil through the second computer station but the uninstall program freezes. Cody dies.

While attending college some time later, Alice Facetimes with her mother back at home. Alice is horrified to discover her mother is now using the Mr. Bedevil app herself.

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Review:

The five friends battling an electronic age boogeyman in “Bedeviled” are exactly like the pals you probably had at their age.  Assuming of course you went to high school inside a typical teen horror movie, where your clique ticked every checkbox for ethic diversity while including at least one tech whiz, an athlete, a smart ass, a good girl, and her casual rival with a prissy streak.  You can additionally relate provided your guy friends had heartthrob hair, the girls looked ready for a runway, and everyone lived in a gorgeous home.

Sixth friend Nikki recently died.  The others don’t know it yet, but Nikki was supernaturally spooked to death by a paranormal presence haunting a mysterious phone app.  “Mr. Bedevil” is an A.I. assistant kind of “like Siri” explains someone.  The only differences are that Mr. Bedevil has an annoying voice, speaks insultingly, interrupts at inopportune times, and usually doesn’t do what you say.  So when dead girl Nikki’s phone impossibly sends everyone an invite to try the app for themselves, why wouldn’t they jump at the chance to throw away Alexa and Cortana for something infinitely inferior?

Mr. Bedevil is soon summoned to torment everyone according to personalized fears.  Alice is plagued by visions of her dead grandmother.  Cody sees shifty-eyed white women and harassing police officers.  Gavin’s coulrophobia manifests in the form of clowns made up like Halloween haunt actors while Haley is frightened of a childhood teddy bear ridiculously rigged to be supposedly scary.

Now the five friends must find a way to uninstall the evil app before it can kill them all.  Then the audience must discover if they can maintain any interest in the humdrum horror before deleting the movie from memory.

Directing duo Abel and Burlee Vang construct a visually attractive film staffed by photogenic actors and crisp production design.  The brothers impressively made “Bedeviled” for six figures in three weeks and the result is prêt-a-porter alongside any millennial-geared thriller in an undiscerning multiplex.  Yet with so much of that effort spent on scenes either copied, clichéd, or otherwise unoriginal, “Bedeviled” could have been completely compiled from stock footage.

Take your pick from the pile of flattened tropes: a meta-joke about the black guy being first to die in a horror movie (hilarious!), countdown clocks by way of computer loading bars (suspenseful!), not one single scare coming from something other than a sudden Spinal Tap spike in the volume (terrifying!).  From little details like an attending detective penciling in a tiny notebook to generic bookends of a prologue death and a “he’s still out there!” epilogue, I cannot come up with one single thing in “Bedeviled” that isn’t derivative.

The film’s young cast is appealing enough, though no one shakes the script from his/her head to feel like a personality that isn’t from a page.  Dialogue isn’t delivered all that stiffly, yet you can still see anticipation in everyone’s eyes as they wait to say lines in an on cue cadence.

SMALL SPOILER

It isn’t until midway through that “Bedeviled” makes it clear Cody was Nikki’s boyfriend, given how quickly his tears dry following the girl’s first act funeral.  Main girl Alice later loses her beau and similarly mourns for less than one onscreen minute.  Soon it is back to laughing and personal revelations between Alice and Cody as if friends dying regularly is more common than mom’s tuna casserole on Tuesdays.  Alice and Cody should have had a romantic relationship instead.  It would have made for stronger characters and a more emotional climax.  Or more accurately, a climax with any emotion at all.

END SPOILER

“Bedeviled” is basically a poor man’s “Nightmare on Elm Street.”  Describing it as by-the-book isn’t quite right as it never turns past the first page of being pat, predictable, and pedestrian in every sense as a supernatural slasher.  About the best that can be said of “Bedeviled” is that it is “eh, ok” for a SyFy Saturday matinee.  As social media tech terror thrillers go, “Bedeviled” makes “Unfriended” (review here) look like “Casablanca.”

Review Score:  40

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