IfGame of Throneshas taught us anything,it’s how important it is to stick the landing. The finale of a television show or film is paramount, the sliver of difference between a life-changing cinematic experience and a waste of two hours. Cast your mind back to the movie endings that baffled and angered you, maybe it was all a dream, maybe it was an unearned romance or something that was entirely too bleak. All in all, you just didn’t buy it, it was too derivative, it didn’t fit the tone of the film, and it didn’t do the characters justice. It doesn’t have to be a happily ever after, our heroes riding into the sunset, but there needs to be an ending that makes sense to the plot you’ve just watched unfold.
Horror cinema has even fewer stipulations attached, and fewer rules and requirements for audience satisfaction. The bad guys can, and usually do, win, looking at Damien ofThe Omen. The heroes can become corrupted,such as inMidsommar,and endings that leave you shocked and miserable are not only condoned but welcome. However, even horror has its limits; sometimes a happy ending can be cheap, or considered so disappointing that it’s rage-inducing, and in some awful times, there’s no ending at all.
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‘The Devil Inside’ Came at a Time of Found Footage Fatigue
It’s 2012, and the world was going through a lot of found footage fatigue.Paranormal Activitywas onto its fourth movie and no one knew why, people were sick of the films that couldn’t possibly be real pretending that they are to advertise themselves.The Blair Witch Projectkickstartedan intriguing avenuefor people to create horror on a low budget, which would eventually be reintroduced inanalog horror, but it was now tired and boring and audiences weren’t scared by it anymore. So it might come as a surprise that the filmThe Devil Inside, directed byWilliam Brent Belland written by Bell andMatthew Peterman, actually had a bit of hype surrounding it.
It was advertised asThe Blair Witch ProjectmeetsThe Exorcist,with elements of true crime as a young woman attempts to unravel the mystery behind the murders her mother committed, the whole film being a documentary she is making. With many horrific stories circulating the internet about alleged real-life exorcisms, it was set up to have, surprisingly, an astronomical box office:$101 million dollars to a $1 million dollar budget, literally making over a hundred times more back than the film cost to make. Financially, it was a resounding success, but by the end of 2012, it was named one of the worst horror films of the year. So what the hell happened withThe Devil Insidethat got the audiences and critics so wound up?
What Did Critics and Audiences Hate ‘The Devil Inside’?
First, it’s a pretty unremarkable film; not really bad, just quite dull, as films of the subgenre were becoming. It was just kind of derivative. Yes, a film can be unremarkable without being insulting, but notThe Devil Inside, and that’s due to its ending. The film ends with our protagonist, Isabella (Fernanda Andrade), becoming possessed, as her mother did, before causing havoc in a hospital. The chaos moves into a car as someone else is possessed and it swerves into oncoming traffic. The car flips! People are dead! Isabella is gone! We fade to black and… “The facts surrounding the Rossi Case remain unresolved. For more information about the ongoing investigation, visit: www.TheRossiFiles.com.”
A website link.. the film ends with a website link, and people were sent home confused and enraged, decreeing to this day that it’s the worst ending in horror cinema.Bell and Peterman have defended the ending, saying that they were trying something new, going for a realistic approach to the film’s ending because after all, very few unsolved cases are wrapped up in a neat little bow. The fact that it’s so inconclusive makes it more authentic, and sure, if they weren’t looking for a Hollywood ending, they certainly delivered. The audience, however, decided that a Hollywood ending would be at the very least an ending, and it’s not exactly an ending that’s, let’s say, future-proofed. So people go on the website, then what? Do the filmmakers or studio just keep that domain up until the end of time? No, it’s been defunct since 2013, so after that point, the ending makes even less sense.
What Was the Website at the End of ‘The Devil Inside’?
So, what’s actually on TheRossiFiles.com?Thanks to The Wayback Machine we’re given some insight.Some fake newspaper clippings and photos from the film, some background research on demonic possession, exorcisms and ghosts, character bios, and video diaries. It’s a fairly solid trans-media experience for a low-budget film, it even has a cute little fake forum of fake people discussing the film, debating its authenticity. In summary, it’s a fine little promotional website for the film. 11 later, it’s almost quaint.
When done right, telling a story across multiple platformscan yield great results. But not in lieu of an ending to a film people had to pay to watch, not when it reveals absolutely nothing after what we missed when the film cuts to black, no clues into the climatic final scene that we’re usually given in horror films about demonic possessions. A big gripe people have with found footage films is that they have no big final scare, a lot of build-up with no pay-off. Even if this was the creators' intent with this film, for the ending to be unclear because “that’s life, I guess” really showed the worst of found footage films.
We could whinge and moan all day about how bad this ending is, but every failure can be used as a teachable moment. Could this method of storytelling actually work today? What can we learn from the ending ofThe Devil Inside?As for whether this could work today, I think in the age of streaming and analog horror, a case could be made for it. When it comes to cross-platform storytelling, I say go big or go home. Make a website, do a fake podcast episode, give the characters Twitter accounts, allow all of this to be available to the public straight away, and you have one hell of a campaign for your movie. If the movie is also free, or at the very least available on a streaming service like Netflix, or crowd-funded by viewers who would also be contributing to the lore, you have a superb experiment in fan engagement, true crime, and found footage storytelling. That’s just, unfortunately, not whatThe Devil Insidedid.
With this debacle, we learn once again thatjust because something is realistic, doesn’t make it good. People go to watch movies, especially horror movies, to feel a lot of things — frustration and dissatisfaction are not among them. Life is frustrating and unsatisfying enough as it is.
