DEVON (2024)

Studio:   Screambox/Cineverse
Director: Jenni Farley
Writer:   Jenni Farley
Producer: Anthony Serrantonio, Zack Carpinello, Deanna Testa
Stars:    Tara Rule, Hank Santos, Steven Etienne, Lauren Carlin, Rotisha Geter

Review Score:

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Summary:

Five amateur investigators search an abandoned asylum for signs of a teenage girl who mysteriously went missing decades earlier.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Alison Roberts, Jared Stevens, Carly Carmichael, William Edwards, and single mother Kat Rose answer an online ad asking for five people to investigate an abandoned asylum for clues regarding the disappearance of Devon, a girl who was supposedly institutionalized there and went missing when the facility closed in 2000. Shortly after entering the asylum, the five urban explorers are mysteriously locked inside. Throughout the ensuing night, the group becomes argumentative and unsettled over odd experiences such as seeing a ghostly girl and finding Devon's name written in blood on a wall.

Separated from the others, Kat inexplicably finds her daughter Elle's keepsake stuffed animal in one of the asylum's rooms. Drawn to her daughter's voice, Kat ends up attacked by a ghost.

After a Ouija board warns him to run, another ghost attacks William. A ghost also attacks Carly. Lured by his mother Susan's voice, Jared gets attacked by an apparition, too.

Teenagers exploring the asylum later find Alison emotionally distraught and bring her to the police. Under accusatory questioning, Alison confesses she is a psychiatrist who invented Devon's story and the asylum scenario as part of a case study for her PhD thesis to see what would happen to the unwitting participants' minds while locked inside a seemingly haunted building. However, Alison was not prepared for an actual supernatural experience to cause four deaths.

Disbelieving Alison's claims, two police officers insist on searching for the dead bodies so they can arrest Alison for murder. Despite Alison warning them of the paranormal danger they will encounter if they venture inside, the two officers go to the asylum anyway.

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Review:

I've never seen a single second of MTV's "Jersey Shore." With celebrity culture being what it is, however, I still know who Jenni Farley is. I'd probably even recognize "JWoww" if I saw her walking down the street, despite never watching her show.

From the looks of Farley's directorial debut feature "Devon," someone might think she's never seen a single second of a "good" horror movie. With misperceptions of the genre being what they are, it seems like Farley simply thought she could pull a "Blair Witch Project" by handing five folks a couple of small cameras and having them improv their way around a beat-up building. I'm not sure she'd recognize a tripod, C-stand, or stage light if they fell over and hit her in the face, despite presumably being around production equipment every other day for several years of her life. That's the impression "Devon's" carelessly minimal effort gives, at any rate.

"Devon" is a "found footage" horror film. What else would it be when you're trying to stitch a flick together as cheaply as possible? Specifically, it's a haunted asylum investigation, a fully played-out subgenre that hasn't been in vogue since the 2010s, roughly when "Jersey Shore" cast members were still relevant in reality TV. Weird how both peaked in popularity around the same time, yet no one gave Farley the memo that fright fans have long since moved on from spelunking through abandoned buildings in a first-person format.

According to the threadbare backstory, the film's titular teenager was institutionalized at an asylum where she went missing after the facility shut down in 2000. Devon was born in either 1986 or 1987 depending on whether you go with what a character says or what's printed on a website about her disappearance. I'm inclined to consider the online page less reliable since it also directs the reader toward a "photo to the left" even though said photo is actually on the right.

Get used to sloppy details. The most basic-looking front and end credits you'll ever see both misspell actor Steven Etienne's last name as Entienne. A character whose last name is probably meant to be Carmichael has it spelled Charmichael. Credits also exist for unnamed characters Teenager 1, Teenager 2, and Teenager 4, yet Teenager 3 is nowhere to be found. Could no one be bothered to spend one minute proofreading the film's text?

The setup doesn't make a mote of sense. Anonymous parents posted an ad offering $100,000 for five unrelated people to search this dilapidated asylum for clues regarding what happened to Devon over 20 years earlier. Why five nobodies, who include a bartender, a single mom, and a woman who lives with her parents? They have no known experience with urban exploring, recovering missing persons, or investigating paranormal activity, yet they're expected to find something nobody else did in the decades since Devon disappeared? A ludicrous "twist" later offers some explanation, but it's so implausibly unrealistic, the movie somehow ends up finishing in an even messier state than it begins with, which shouldn't be possible.

The "investigation" consists of a collection of the most overused horror cliches imaginable. Cellphones don't have service. Creepy dolls are randomly strewn about. Words are written in blood on a wall. Someone pulls out an Ouija board at one point. Maybe I missed it, but I'm surprised there isn't an empty wheelchair rolling down a dirty hallway. Mostly, everyone suddenly screams at the darkness or a loud noise every so often as "Devon" continues amassing a trove of tired tropes.

"Devon" also includes all the hallmarks of lo-fi indie horror made for pocket change. Everyone in the cast is someone you've never heard of, and will never see again, putting up awkwardly unconvincing performances. Handheld cameras suffer repeated seizures as they struggle to focus on vague blurs and black blobs. You'd think Jenni Farley might have more means to produce a higher quality movie, yet the slapdash "style" and cluttered credits where multiple jobs are handled by the same five people condemn "Devon" to the same cellar as every other DTV disaster filmed with friends and family over a weekend.

I cannot think of any worthwhile reason to watch "Devon" except to be able to say, "I saw that movie JWoww made," which might not be something to admit out loud. I'm awarding "Devon" a score of 10 out of 100, although I'm honestly not sure how those ten points are even earned. Thoroughly unoriginal and without a single second that can be considered entertaining, at least the movie only runs 70 minutes, though I suppose that extra 10 technically disqualifies it from being a literal amateur hour.

Review Score: 10

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