THE DEMON DISORDER (2024)

Studio:   Shudder
Director: Steve Boyle
Writer:   Steve Boyle, Toby Osborne
Producer: Steve Boyle, Ally Muller
Stars:    Christian Willis, Dirk Hunter, Charles Cottier, Tobie Webster, John Noble

Review Score:

---

Summary:

Three estranged brothers are forced to face frightening truths about their father's death when one of them becomes possessed by a strange creature.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Jake Reilly comes to the family-owned auto garage run by his estranged brother Graham to inform Graham that their younger brother Phillip is now possessed like their deceased father George previously was. Graham reluctantly agrees to return to their family's farmhouse after Jake calls out the blood oath the brothers made with their father and shows him cellphone footage of Phillip trying to kill Jake. Jake additionally tells Graham how stillbirths have been affecting livestock since George died, but he insists they cannot call the authorities because they don't want anyone asking questions.

Graham is woken during his first night back at the house to find Phillip eating a live chicken like their possessed father used to do. Phillip lunges at Graham to bite a chunk of flesh out of his chest. Graham and Jake pull a small creature out of Phillip's throat that they trap inside a Tupperware container.

Jake insists on chaining up Phillip like they did with their father until they figure out what is happening. Phillip warns that "he" is still with them and is coming back, which Graham infers to mean the creature is a form of their father.

Jake discovers all the chickens slaughtered in the coop outside. Meanwhile, Graham sees a blinking eyeball inside the chest wound where Phillip bit him.

After Graham breaks the locks on their father's former bedroom, Jake relives the memory of Graham seemingly strangling George to death only for George to suddenly attack Graham while in a state of possession. George only stopped when Phillip was forced to beat him to death. Confused by the memory, Jake drunkenly attacks Phillip, forcing Graham to render Jake unconscious.

Leaving Jake behind, Graham brings Phillip to the auto garage. Since the shop was closed, Graham is surprised to find his teenage employee Cole Nichols there smoking pot. To keep her removed from the situation, Graham puts Cole in a back room where she secretly calls 911 despite being told not to. Paranormal activity soon besets the building.

Brandishing a handgun, Jake arrives at the garage demanding to see Phillip. Graham tells Jake they need to draw out the creature from Phillip and capture it again. Graham also tells Jake he thinks the creature grows inside them until it is strong enough to survive on its own.

After finding him fully succumbed to his possession, Graham and Jake chain up Phillip. As they reconcile over their roles in what happened with their father, Jake wonders if George's death didn't eliminate the affliction still affecting them. With no better options, the two brothers prepare to use a cross to perform a makeshift exorcism on Phillip.

Responding to Cole's earlier emergency call, police officers Peters and Terry arrive to investigate. After hiding their brother, Jake holds Cole at gunpoint to keep her quiet while Graham talks to the two cops. Meanwhile, the creature tears its way out of Phillip and morphs into a monstrous humanoid.

With Graham unable to turn them away, officers Peters and Terry enter the garage. The creature kills Terry. Jake uses his gun to knock out Peters, but he also accidentally shoots his foot.

The three brothers confront the creature. Remembering how their father made them agree to a blood pact to kill him when he finally succumbed to his disease and was no longer himself, Graham shoots and kills the monster.

Telling the others, "It's not over yet," Graham prepares to turn the gun on himself. To prevent his suicide, Phillip and Cole hold down Graham while Jake painfully pulls the other creature out of Graham's chest wound and shoots it.

With approaching sirens heard in the distance, Graham, Jake, Phillip, and Cole hurriedly drive away from the garage despite not knowing where to go. Back at the farmhouse, another crawling creature is seen leaving a trail of slime on the floor.

---

Review:

Graham Reilly hasn't seen his brothers Jake and Phillip since the tragic death of their father George. He prefers it this way. Leaving the other two to tend to their family's falling-apart farm, Graham took up work in an auto garage in an equally remote location, with only his teenage employee Cole as an occasional intruder on self-imposed isolation.

When Jake shows up unannounced, Graham expects drunkenness and violence. What he gets instead is an impassioned invitation to come back home. Graham wants absolutely no part of a possible reunion, until Jake shows him disturbing footage of Phillip behaving bizarrely, just like their father did before he died.

The blood oath they swore reluctantly brings Graham back to the farm. It also brings back disturbing memories of George gnawing on live chickens, getting shackled to his bed, and being one head spin short of totally terrifying his three sons like Regan MacNeil did her mother Chris.

It seems George's death didn't eliminate the disease that made a monster out of his mind. Whatever that demon may be now appears to possess Phillip. Outsiders couldn't possibly comprehend what is happening, because they'd never believe what the trio already suffered through before. Only the brothers can exorcise the evil determinedly haunting their family, and doing so will require confronting the sins of their traumatic past.

"The Demon Disorder" marks the directorial debut of Steve Boyle, whose decades-long career in makeup and special FX production sees him credited on titles ranging from big blockbusters like Peter Jackson's "King Kong" and "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones" to various tiers of horror including "Winchester" (review here) and "Daybreakers." For his first feature, Boyle does precisely what new directors on restricted budgets are usually supposed to do. Cynics might wrongly call the film "cheap" when what Boyle actually accomplishes is he keeps his movie manageable, co-writing a contained story that can be told with five speaking roles and limited locations. Then he taps into his specific experience, and likely phones in a few favors, to layer on the frosting of fine creature FX that highlight an area of expertise where he can get bigger bangs out of smaller bucks than anyone outside of his field could.

The result becomes a movie that's also representative of what prolific B-movie streamer Shudder does best with its original features. Although pops of panic and slitherings from slimy grotesqueries serve up sudden shocks, "The Demon Disorder's" creeps mostly come quietly while the movie squares its spotlight on sibling melodrama. Not exactly a slow-burn, the film's suspense still stays subdued, as Shudder's offerings often do. Australian accents and the farmhouse setting add enough of an edge so the film never feels the fully familiar weight of an average American effort at this level, either.

The synopsis might lead someone to mistake "The Demon Disorder" for yet another routine possession thriller, but the film only echoes common exorcism tropes when looked at reductively. With content constructed around a metaphor for dealing with figurative family demons, the movie doesn't tread into the typical territory of priests spraying holy water or black-eyed victims barfing up pea soup and religious obscenities in equal measure. "The Demon Disorder" stays closer in tone to "Relic" (review here) as grounded, thematic chillers go.

Unlike "Relic" though, "The Demon Disorder" wasn't able to reach me like it probably should have. As of this writing, not only am I six months removed from the death of my own dementia-afflicted father, it's been under one month since myself and my brother, whom I've only seen in person twice in the last 12 years, spread my dad's ashes together. Rather than relate on a personal level, I found myself consciously noticing that the fictional pain of these estranged brothers and the sadness of seeing their father succumb to something terrible wasn't affecting me emotionally. Maybe that's on me. Maybe "The Demon Disorder" just doesn't hit the right notes, or hit them as hard as it could.

To people pressed with too many options and not enough time when programming their own "31 Days of Halloween" marathons, I don't know that I'd recommend "The Demon Disorder's" smaller-scale scares as an essential option that must make the cut. For people whose spooky season starts in September, on the other hand, "The Demon Disorder's" mutation-driven drama might fit better on an expanded 60-day schedule of early evening screenings before moving up to something bigger and bolder.

NOTE: There is a mid-credits scene.

Review Score: 60

---