BURY THE DEVIL (2026)

Studio:    Brainstorm Media
Director: Adam O’Brien
Writer:    John Petrizzi, Brad Hodson
Producer: Philip Kalin-Hajdu, Benoit Beaulieu, Adam O’Brien
Stars:    Dawn Ford, Emmanuelle Lussier Martinez, Bill Rowat, Mark Krupa, Jason Cavalier, Steve “Liquid” Hawley

Review Score:

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Summary:

A hospice nurse uncovers disturbing clues indicating an elderly woman’s dementia could be connected to demonic possession.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Still grieving her own mother’s death from the same affliction, hospice nurse Julia spends a stormy night inside a remote lakeside house watching over Evelyn, an elderly woman dying with dementia. Evelyn repeatedly forgets who Julia is, even assuming she is an intruder at one point. Julia calms and distracts Evelyn by focusing her attention on odd paintings that spark recollections of Evelyn’s ex-husband Randall.

Upon getting back to bed, Evelyn invites Julia to pray with her. Julia notices Evelyn changing her prayer’s words to disturbingly speak about taking souls. A short while later, Julia becomes additionally unsettled by strange noises and footsteps.

Evelyn’s ex-husband Randall shows up unexpectedly. Surprised to learn she was praying, Randall wraps a rosary around his hand before checking on Evelyn in her bed. Alluding to their deceased daughter Sarah, Randall confronts Evelyn with a piece of paper bearing a mysterious incantation. Randall demands to know where Evelyn is hiding a certain item the two of them previously buried. Julia forces Randall to leave when he becomes physically aggressive toward Evelyn out of frustration.

Julia finds Evelyn eating from the trash while acting feral. After Evelyn scurries away on all fours, Julia’s subsequent search for the woman leads to the discovery of occult grimoires. Blood spatter visible in blacklight also shows a specific symbol secretly marking the paintings along with a trail leading to a door covered in bloody handprints.

Randall returns to infiltrate the house with two companions, Peter and Edgar. Planning to capture her with rope, Peter and Edgar look for Evelyn. Meanwhile, Randall tries calming a panicking Julia by starting to say something about Sarah’s death. When the other two men corner Evelyn, Randall abruptly locks Julia inside a bedroom.

Insisting their daughter cannot be brought back from death, Randall again confronts Evelyn about the occult incantation. Eveyln suddenly succumbs to complete demonic possession. Peter is supernaturally killed. Randall and Edgar escape outside.

Julia breaks out of the bedroom. Regrouping with Evelyn, Julia sees the woman clutching a small ivory figurine. An audiotape of an apparent possession and exorcism episode involving Sarah prompts Evelyn to openly regret bringing her daughter to evil. Still thinking Evelyn is just confused, Julia relates by revealing how she blames herself for being afraid to be there when her own dementia-afflicted mother died.

Randall returns once again. Claiming that Evelyn is no longer herself, Randall warns Julia she isn’t safe as long as the figurine remains in the house because it is an anchor for a dark entity now attached to Evelyn. Randall promises he will leave if Julia can retrieve the figurine so he can rebury it.

Evelyn arms herself with a knife to keep Julia away from her and the figurine. Julia becomes unsettled when Evelyn taunts her with revealing information about Julia’s dead mother. Evelyn gets away, initiating another search that leads Julia to a room adorned with occult symbols and ritual paraphernalia.

Edgar, two more thugs, and a disgraced priest who previously tried performing a failed exorcism on Sarah join Randall at the house. Randall assures the men they can destroy the evil entity with the incantation he translated. When they attempt to exorcise Evelyn, however, she violently attacks all five men.

With the house interior now covered in carnage, Evelyn finds Randall outside as the sole survivor of Evelyn’s supernatural assault. To save Evelyn, Randall gives Julia a box while insisting she’ll have to rebury the figurine, which Evelyn only disturbed because she thought she could bring back Sarah’s soul. Still possessed, Evelyn attacks her ex-husband from behind.

Taunting Julia in her mother’s voice once more, Evelyn attacks Julia. As the two women struggle, a demonic arm comes out of Evelyn’s throat to grab at Julia. Screaming for Evelyn to forgive herself for what happened to Sarah, Julia recovers a knife and stabs the clawing head, seemingly causing the demonic presence to dissipate.

No longer possessed, Evelyn unexpectedly knocks Julia to the floor. While dousing Julia in gasoline, Evelyn apologetically admits that the entity can only die if it is inside a living vessel. Evelyn then sets Julia on fire. In various voices including Sarah’s, the burning demon begs not to be killed. Evelyn tearfully observes from outside as the fire spreads to consume the entire house.

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Review:

Don’t expect to be drawn into “Bury the Devil” right away. A thunderstorm threatens to make things wet outside the remote lakeside house where the entire movie takes place, but the slow-build drama happening inside is very dry.

Still grieving her own mother’s death from the same affliction, Julia just took a job as the live-in caretaker for Evelyn, a dying woman suffering from dementia. Evelyn brushes her hair while listening to a hymn. The two women engage in casual conversation while Julia checks Evelyn’s blood pressure. Once Evelyn is tucked into bed, Julia unpacks a suitcase before taking a phone call from her concerned father. A total of ten minutes passes with the most action being Julia washing her hands after dumping spoiled refrigerator food into the trash.

Not a whole lot happens during the next ten minutes either. The main way “Bury the Devil” keeps eyes open during these low-impact lulls comes from its chief creative conceit, which is that the film is shot and edited to look like one continuous take occurring in real time. Results are mixed. On one hand, it’s always fascinating from a cinephile’s POV to see how such setups are blocked so actors, lights, and effects appear in their planned places at their planned times. On the other hand, “Bury the Devil’s” handheld camera has a hard time staying still when it pauses in one stationary position, causing queasier stomachs to anxiously beg for a cure to seasickness.

The mystery of what’s really going on with Evelyn gets the first real scratch on its skin when Evelyn’s ex-husband Randall pays an unannounced visit. Concurrently, the arrival of this actor cuts into the fiction’s believability, as a tree would probably be less wooden and thus more convincing in the role. This particular performer has mostly worked in TV series that date as far back as the second season of “The X-Files.” With so many years of experience, it’s surprising that instead of a natural character, he comes across as a guy just reciting rehearsed lines with nearly no inflection. Speculation suggests perhaps he was preoccupied with the physical side of a one-take project, and that had him too concerned with cadence so his timing didn’t interfere with the camera’s choreography.

Also in his defense, Randall’s dialogue is mostly meaningless. Several characters, but especially Randall, speak in circles that put great strain on their sentences to avoid saying anything of concrete substance. Randall could explain Evelyn’s odd behavior to Julia by revealing, “She’s possessed by a demon that previously killed our daughter Sarah.” Julia would have great difficulty believing that claim of course, but simply saying, “Evelyn is in trouble,” which are Randall’s actual words, doesn’t accurately encapsulate the severity of the situation.

Earlier than that, when Julia kicks Randall out of the house because he won’t reveal his intentions, he warns her with, “You have no idea what’s going on here.” Okay. Well, if you’re so concerned about the safety of your ex-wife and her innocent caretaker, maybe some actionable information would be more helpful than a cryptic threat?

So, what did happen to Evelyn and Randall’s daughter Sarah? The most Randall offers on that subject is, “She died because we couldn’t protect her … We got careless. We thought we knew better and it destroyed us. Evelyn never forgave herself.” That’s as vague as the disgraced priest who later cautions against another exorcism attempt by asking Randall, “Do you remember what happened the last time we tried this?”

Luckily for viewers who’ve seen this same premise before, but unluckily for a movie that would prefer to be perceived as more original than it is, horror fans can instantly identify signs of an occult ritual gone wrong. It’s not entirely clear if a demon possessed Sarah because Evelyn meddled in dark forces or if Evelyn only turned to arcane knowledge in an attempt to restore Sarah’s soul. That’s the price to be paid for ambiguity, but the bottom line is that dark entity is now bound to Evelyn.

The bonus points “Bury the Devil” scores for trying a one-take presentation keep it out of the red as far as an overall rating goes. Impressively for a low-budget indie, the movie maintains a good look washed in cold blue hues that are only a touch too dark, but are mostly effective for building an atmosphere that could have been boring if white walls were shot unfiltered. Without its real-time gimmick, “Bury the Devil” would likely die in DTV obscurity due to its recycled story and scarcity of scariness. Good thing it has that little hook, although the tip isn’t sharp enough to pierce all the way through.

Review Score: 50

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