It’s 2012, and if the first movie of the year is any indi­ca­tion, we are all doomed.

It is hard to put into words just how bad The Devil Inside was. I saw it last Friday with a crowd of the usual suspects—gaggles of teenagers and uni­ver­sity stu­dents, cou­ples looking for a scary date movie, and some horror fans keen on seeing if this pos­ses­sion movie would live up to its hype. Hype, mind you, not reviews–there were no press screen­ings for this film (sign of doom number one) and it had a Rotten Toma­toes score of 7% (sign number two), but there were nifty viral videos fea­turing audi­ences lit­er­ally jumping out of fright.

The only jumping that occurred during The Devil Inside is when half the audi­ence bounded to their feet as the film ended and pro­ceeded to curse, swear, and yell at the screen. Their rage-filled colourful lan­guage was the best part of going to see this movie. I laughed and laughed and felt some­what better about forking over $11.50.

The Devil Inside is  about a woman who is tracking down her ma in a scary hos­pital in Rome. Her mom killed some folks in the 1980s some­where in America and, log­i­cally, was sent to a hos­pital in Rome. The folks in Rome don’t think she is pos­sessed, though. They brought her there just because. Her daughter, the bland pro­tag­o­nist, decides to par­tic­i­pate in a doc­u­men­tary about her mom and sets off to see her for the first time in 20 years. When she arrives in Rome, where everyone speaks Eng­lish all of the time, she makes pals with some cool priest types. They team up to try and solve mys­teries and exor­cize her mom’s demons. It’s around here that you start to feel very sleepy.

There are a lot of mediocre horror movies that follow the same for­mula of cheap jump-scares and tired horror tropes. They offer a min­imal pay-off and maybe two or three good scares. I can put up with those. Alas, the most fright­ening moment in The Devil Inside, a film about demonic pos­ses­sion, is when a dog barks at the pro­tag­o­nist. I would like to think that was on pur­pose, but, having no faith at all in the director, writers, pro­ducers, actors (you get me), I can only assume that this was an acci­dent that they decided to keep. Thank you, dog, for trying to save this movie. Your efforts have not gone unno­ticed. Treats are in the mail.

There is a slim chance you might be fright­ened by this film if you have never, ever watched a horror movie or, per­haps, if you are an espe­cially fragile child under the age of 10 who has been shielded from all forms of media. Every tired, old con­ven­tion of this genre is replayed without even a hint of orig­i­nality. The found footage style of film­making attempts to inject some energy into the movie but, as with every­thing else in this movie, fails.

This bru­tally bad film doesn’t even give the audi­ence a proper ending, instead offering up a link to a web­site that looks like a con­spiracy theorist’s Tumblr account.

It’s not good, guys. It’s ter­rible, awful, hor­rible, dreadful, unpleasant, horrid, repul­sive, and… I’m run­ning out of syn­onyms. Re-watch The Exor­cist, The Omen, Ses­sion 9, Fallen, or even 2011’s slug­gish exor­cism flick The Rite which now seems awe­some in comparison.

Horror fans deserve way better than films like this. Don’t reward lazy film­making with your money and atten­tion. Trust me: we don’t want a sequel.

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