I TRAPPED THE DEVIL (2019)

Studio:      IFC Midnight
Director:    Josh Lobo
Writer:      Josh Lobo
Producer:  Spence Nicholson, Rowan Russell, Scott Weinberg
Stars:     Scott Poythress, AJ Bowen, Susan Burke, Jocelin Donahue, Chris Sullivan, Rowan Russell, John Marrott

Review Score:

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Summary:

A paranoid man claiming to have trapped the devil in his cellar encounters a new complication when his brother and sister-in-law unexpectedly visit for the holidays.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Matt and his wife Karen arrive unexpectedly to visit Matt’s troubled brother Steve for the Christmas holidays. Based on the blacked-out windows and odd atmosphere, Matt tells Karen that something feels wrong. Steve repeatedly sees visions of his dead wife Sarah through television static while also taking disturbing phone calls from someone unknown.

Following several tense conversations between the three of them, Steve shows Matt and Karen a padlocked door bearing a cross in the basement. Matt and Karen hear a man’s voice ask for help from the other side. Steve astonishingly claims that the imprisoned man is the devil.

When they return upstairs, Steve dodges questions about details by simply saying that something evil conjured itself into the shape of a man and he trapped it behind the door. Steve pleads with Matt and Karen to believe him, adding that he knows his claim sounds crazy, but they cannot tell anyone else because no one will believe it either.

Wanting to understand his brother’s reasoning, Matt entertains the idea that Steve captured the devil. Karen refuses to be complicit in a possible crime and demands to take action. Matt insists that he doesn’t want Steve to go to prison and suggests they simply let the man go and get mental help for Steve.

The two brothers have a conversation about their broken relationship. Steve shows Matt a book that identifies the devil as a presence that manipulates people into committing heinous acts such as murder. Steve claims that by trapping the devil, he has trapped the seed of evil thoughts and instincts that the devil exploits.

Steve takes Matt to a room of newspaper clippings connected by numerous strings to illustrate how he discovered the devil’s pattern. Steve shows Matt a flyer for a missing girl who recently returned home. Steve explains that he thinks others will return too because the devil is currently trapped.

Matt asks who has been calling Steve on the phone. Steve says he thinks someone is coming for the devil. Steve adds that he thinks someone or something also influenced Matt to show up at this critical juncture in the devil’s imprisonment.

Left alone, Karen returns to the basement door to unlock it as the man’s voice pleads with her. When an odd feeling causes Karen to hesitate, the man begins taunting her.

Steve pulls Karen out of the basement. While pointing his handgun at her and Matt, Steve questions Karen regarding what the man said to her. Matt forces his brother to put down the gun. Steve tells Karen he knows she felt something evil.

The power flickers. Steve boards up several windows. After consoling each other over what to do, Matt and Karen fall asleep. Steve falls asleep too.

Another vision of Sarah in TV static wakes Steve. Steve taunts the imprisoned man by asking what it feels like to be helpless.

Woken by a strange feeling, Matt reexamines Steve’s pattern walls. Matt pauses on a newspaper with the headline “Christmas Crash Claims Lives – Brentville Father Grieves.”

Karen confronts Steve in front of the locked door. Steve speaks cryptically about the tragic accident that took the lives of his wife Sarah and their young daughter. Steve says that the man responsible is not evil for what he did, but that evil let it happen. Steve adds, “evil is whatever hurts you the most.”

Steve challenges Karen to open the door so that she can see for herself and so he can see whatever it shows her. Before she can act, Steve renders Karen unconscious with chloroform and locks her in the basement.

After taking another phone call, Steve locks Matt in the pattern room. While Matt escapes and reconnects with his wife, Steve encounters a vision of a longhaired man holding Steve’s daughter’s stuffed bunny toy in two pieces. The man says, “please help, I can’t stop the bleeding.”

Blood gushing from the man’s hands transports Steve to another vision where Sarah wears a blindfold. Realizing she is not real as the vision becomes more terrifying, Steve prepares to shoot Sarah.

Matt and Karen shake Steve back to reality. Matt talks Steve into giving up the gun by saying although he wasn’t there for his brother before, he is there for him now.

Matt goes to free the man in the basement. Karen tells Matt something is wrong even though she can’t explain it. Matt insists that the man is not the devil. Steve pleads with his brother to reconsider. When Matt continues forward, Steve stabs Matt’s stomach. Matt dies. Steve goes upstairs distraught.

Karen confronts Steve in the kitchen. Steve explains that he didn’t intend to kill his brother, but Matt wouldn’t stop. Steve also tells Karen that she can see “her” if she opens the door. Karen shoots Steve dead.

Karen goes back downstairs. The imprisoned man taunts Karen by saying they can save Matt together if she opens the door. Karen doesn’t open the door.

Cops Alan and Ben are called to the house. Alan sees a vision of Santa in the television static. After finding Steve’s body, Alan goes downstairs. The man pleads for Alan to open the door. Alan and Karen end up shooting each other.

The gunshots summon Ben to the cellar. Entranced by the atmosphere, Ben opens the door. A little girl walks past the entranced cop as well as Matt and Karen’s bodies slumped on the floor. The girl exits outside through the front door.

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Review:

Writer/director Josh Lobo doesn’t directly credit author Charles Beaumont in plain sight, yet Lobo’s “I Trapped the Devil” is a feature film riff on Beaumont’s classic short story/”Twilight Zone” episode “The Howling Man.”  If you know that plot, you’ll recognize this one too.

Matt and his wife Karen just dropped in unexpectedly on Matt’s troubled brother Steve.  Matt has been worried about Steve, who remains rattled by recent trauma, and figured it was time for a welfare check disguised as an impromptu holiday visit.

The situation appears worse than anyone imagined.  Steve decks out the former family home like a cross between a hoarder’s junk pile and a doomsday prepper’s shelter.  Newspapers black out windows.  The only light comes from a Christmas tree in the corner.  Most disturbing of all is the mysteriously padlocked door in the cellar adorned with an ominous wooden cross.

Matt and Karen hear a voice on the other side of that door pleading to be released.  He just wants to go home to his family, the imprisoned man says.  Steve insists the voice can’t be trusted.  Astonishingly, Steve says that the man is none other than the devil himself, and setting him free would release untold evil back into the world.

Matt and Karen don’t know what to do about Steve’s claim.  As the night grows longer and the mood more macabre, Matt and Karen gradually become key components of a haunting atmosphere threatening to drive everyone mad.

My chief complaint with setups similar to this one is that paranoia thrillers often spend too much time on a largely pointless “is he or isn’t he crazy?” angle.  Viewers who signed up for a horror movie know full well that the monster never turns out to be imaginary.  Wisely, “I Trapped the Devil” only toys with this part of its premise for a brief bit.  Then it rather quickly confirms, even if this man in the basement isn’t actually the devil, something evil is definitely going on.

“I Trapped the Devil” plays a lot like a theatrical production.  It’s a small indie made by a first-time filmmaker essentially involving just three main actors.  While two of them move to a separate room for a private conversation, the third person tiptoes around a different room for stage-setting cutaways.  Given its patient pacing and dialogue-focused design, “I Trapped the Devil” may be calmer and chattier than some might want from a sinisterly satanic psychological chiller.

The movie nonetheless manages to weave a strong sense of unease through its dimly lit scenery, slowly creeping camera, and dread-inducing sounds.  “I Trapped the Devil” emulates the eerie aura of films like Ti West’s “House of the Devil” by existing in a drearily undefined space with supernaturally suggestive imagery.  A repeated montage of strange visuals broadcast in TV static also reveals John Carpenter’s “Prince of Darkness” as a primary influence.  “I Trapped the Devil” includes enough story that it can’t qualify outright as an arthouse mood movie, although it does linger on several similar notes.

Amidst its slightly surreal dreaminess, excellent acting anchors “I Trapped the Devil” to some semblance of reality.  Scott Poythress puts vulnerability behind his performance that humanizes Steve as more than a mere unstable crackpot.  AJ Bowen complements him well as Steve’s brother.  He doesn’t have a showy role by any means.  Yet Bowen puts in more personality than exists on the page, understatedly creating a vicarious character who sells an unbelievable idea with invested authenticity.

Although it runs only 80 minutes, “I Trapped the Devil” could stand another pass in the edit bay.  Considering its unspoken origin, the movie fittingly might have moved better as a 50-minute episode of Jordan Peele’s “Twilight Zone” reboot.

As its tank of intrigue starts running low down the stretch, “I Trapped the Devil” loses attention spans by becoming overly cryptic.  Due to my detailed synopses, some people probably found this review looking for “ending explained” spoilers.  I have a take under the button above.  However, I’m not sure you can concretely suss out the movie’s full meaning in one watch unless you have the benefit of a Q&A with the director afterward.

Even when its ambiguity becomes too much to bear, “I Trapped the Devil” keeps its head well above water with intriguing interplays, earnest intent to create something creepy, and an omnipresent tone of smoldering suspense.  Its Christmas setting is relatively inconsequential, employed mainly to put colored lights and a few decorations in the background.  But if nothing else, that sets up the film as a solid holiday horror alternative to the usual Santa slashers or creatures-run-amok-in-the-snow movies.

Review Score: 70

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