SORRY ABOUT THE DEMON (2022)

Studio:     Shudder
Director:    Emily Hagins
Writer:     Emily Hagins
Producer:  Ben Hanks, Pasha Patriki, Emily Gotto, Cameron Burns, Ashleigh Snead, Aaron B. Koontz
Stars:     Jon Michael Simpson, Jeff McQuitty, Olivia Ducayen, Paige Evans, Sarah Cleveland, Dave Peniuk, Jude Zappala, Kristen MacCulloch, Tony Vespe, Presley Allard

Review Score:

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Summary:

Recently dumped, a heartbroken man unknowingly rents a haunted house from a family secretly trying to sacrifice him to a demon.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Having possessed their young daughter Grace, the demon Deominus warns Grace’s parents Tammy and Ken Sellers, along with Grace’s older brother Jake, that their house belongs to him and he demands Grace as a human sacrifice. Ken bargains to find another person to sacrifice in his daughter’s place so he can get Grace and the house back.

Needing a new place to stay after being dumped by his neglected girlfriend Amy, underachiever Will rents the Sellers house while the family relocates elsewhere. Amy briefly stops by, but only to drop off a left-behind box of foul-tasting toothpaste, which Will sells as a telemarketing customer service rep.

Will comes to realize the house is haunted after a series of minor paranormal experiences, culminating in the mysterious appearance of a cake whose icing reads, “I will have your soul.” Will summons his friend Patrick for help. Patrick calls the cops, who merely warn the two men against wasting their time in the future. Will wishfully wonders if Amy could be involved somehow, but Patrick implores Will to accept the reality that his romantic relationship is over.

Paranormal activity continues to plague Will. Will learns about Deominus from two restless ghosts who also haunt the house.

Desperate for a safe space, Will rushes to Amy’s apartment only to discover she is now dating a guy named Nick. With nowhere else to go, Will reluctantly goes back to the haunted house.

With the paranormal activity and ghost sightings increasing in frequency and intensity, Will once again turns to Patrick. Patrick introduces his co-worker Aimee, whom Patrick is romantically interested in. Will tells Patrick and Aimee about the haunting, and how the demon Deominus doesn’t seem interested in taking his particular soul. Familiar with New Age mysticism, Aimee reveals she used to perform spiritual cleansings and offers to perform one on the Sellers home.

Will returns to the house with Patrick and Aimee. During her cleansing ritual, Aimee falls unconscious and Patrick becomes possessed by Deominus. While possessed, Patrick breaks Will’s arm. Aimee recovers and expels the demon from Patrick.

Before taking Will to the hospital, Patrick and Aimee warn Will against continuing to stay in the house. Feeling despondent, Will muses that perhaps his purpose in life is to protect the world by guarding against the house’s demon, since it doesn’t want him and he feels destined to live alone anyway.

Will returns from the hospital to find Amy waiting for him outside the house. Over dinner and a movie on TV, the two of them reconnect and end up sleeping together.

Will wakes the next morning to discover Deominus possessed Amy. Patrick and Aimee eventually learn what happened, but Will initially refuses their assistance because he believes he can win back Amy by performing an exorcism by himself. However, once Aimee warns that Amy could be taken to Hell and killed, Will agrees to let Patrick and Aimee help.

Expecting Will to already be dead, the Sellers Family returns to the house. Will realizes the family knew about the haunting. Ken Sellers admits he wanted Will to be sacrificed so he could save his daughter Grace. Will awkwardly forgives the family in order to concentrate on banishing the demon permanently.

Still possessed, Amy grabs Will and locks him in the cellar with her. Meanwhile, Aimee recruits Patrick and the four Sellers Family members to perform a Ouija board séance to sever the link between Deominus and the house’s two restless ghosts. Through the board, the spirits warn that Deominus has the power to possess two people at once. Grace suddenly becomes repossessed.

Will gets Amy to overpower Deominus by admitting he failed their relationship because he was worried Amy was on a path to becoming more successful than him. Amy returns to normal.

Still controlled by Deominus, Grace attempts to enter a portal to Hell forming out of ectoplasm on the cellar floor prior to a 3:15am deadline. Patrick notices that the goo resembles vile plaque that infected a cavity he once had. Remembering the box of toothpaste he stored earlier, Will and the others use the toothpaste to destroy the portal.

Grace manages to grab Amy and jump into the portal just as it closes. Will stabs the cursed cake with the threatening icing since it contained Deominus’s bound spirit. Will’s action causes Grace and Amy to return without Deominus. The two restless ghosts decide to remain in the home, which upsets Ken.

One year later, Ken finalizes the sale of the house to Will, who agreed to live there permanently with the two ghosts. The Sellers Family joins Amy, Aimee, and Patrick for an anniversary celebration with Will. Grace briefly disappears to recover a cassette tape player from the cellar. As the Sellers Family drives away later with Grace grinning ominously in the backseat, Will realizes Deominus used the tape player to repossess the girl and escape the house.

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Review:

Ken and Tammy Sellers have a big problem with their new house.  Theirs isn’t a typical issue like leaky plumbing or peeling paint.  The Sellers Family’s peculiar predicament has to do with a dastardly demon.

Claiming the house to be his, Deominus has possessed the couple’s innocent little daughter Grace.  Deominus now plans to take the girl back to Hell as a human sacrifice, until Grace’s father steps in to make a modest proposal.  If Ken can put someone else in Grace’s doomed place, maybe he can win back his daughter as well as his home.  But where will Ken find a sucker to unwittingly rent out a cursed property whose cellar hides a gooey, grimy, bubbling portal to the underworld?

Enter Will.  An underachieving customer service rep who hawks terrible-tasting toothpaste over a headset, Will needs a new space where he can feel sorry for himself after being dumped by his neglected girlfriend Amy.  So Will moves in and the Sellers Family moves out, leaving Will to deal with the demon in addition to his breakup.  Too bad for Ken’s secret soul-swapping plot, Deominus has no interest in possessing a sad sack like Will.  That doesn’t mean Will won’t be plagued by paranormal activity though.  Because in addition to the demon, two other ghosts inhabit the house, dunking Will up to his eyeballs in haunted hijinks that make processing his rocky relationship with Amy even more problematic than he ever could have imagined.

While Will is in the thick of getting accustomed to single life in a spooky home, many of “Sorry About the Demon’s” early minutes compose a mostly one-man show.  Alas, that one man is mostly “meh,” which isn’t a highly desirable adjective when describing what’s supposed to be a charmingly sweet screwball of a lead character.  Montages meant to depict the ways in which Will works to better himself to win back Amy just show him exercising, repairing a dresser, trying on clothes, and baking cakes as a running gag, all of which are ordinary actions, not extraordinary antics that might make Will more endearing, engaging, or entertaining.

Maybe it’s fitting that Will is a mild-mannered man since “Sorry About the Demon” is a mild-mannered movie occupying a comparatively safer space among horror-comedies.  The ratings board might request a couple of nitpicky nip-tucks here or there.  Otherwise, “Sorry About the Demon” could probably pass as PG.

One scene shows a shirtless Will waking up in bed with Amy after an evening of offscreen intimacy, but there are very few other allusions to sex and barely so much as a single innuendo.  Will also says “Oh, sh*t” for comedic effect at the conclusion, though that’s the only four-letter word that gets dropped.  There’s nearly no blood or gratuitous gore either, only one visual bit with a broken bone and a few ghoulish faces on possessed people and ghosts.

It’s by design that “Sorry About the Demon” opts for the softer side of comedic chillers instead of going for raunchy gags or riotous horror.  That’s a perfectly fine target for a funny fright film to shoot at, as long as the audience sees the arrow aiming for an innocuous affair that’s good for casual chuckles rather than outrageous laughs.  The feature comes from writer/director Emily Hagins, who has been making movies since her teens, and whose youthful POV skews toward a lighthearted tone, one that is certainly reflected in this film’s optimistic take on exorcising a demon as a metaphor for winning back a lost love.

As far as break-up movies go, “Sorry About the Demon” is no “Annie Hall” or “500 Days of Summer.”  As far as horror-comedies go, it can’t compete with “Shaun of the Dead” or “Army of Darkness,” either.  Think of “Sorry About the Demon” like a horror version of a Hallmark Movies & Mysteries original, complete with an oscillating doop-doop-doop musical score more commonly heard when a clutzy snooper tiptoes around before knocking something over and freezing in place with a wince, and you’ll be closer to picking up what the movie is putting down.  Whether or not you want to pick it up in the first place depends entirely on what temperature you like to take your horror and your humor.  In “Sorry About the Demon’s” case, hopefully that temperature is “room.”

Review Score: 50

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