Diabolic

GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★1/2

Rated: MA15+

Directed by: Daniel J. Phillips

Written by: Mike Harding and Daniel J. Phillips

Produced by: Silvio Salom, Daniel J. Phillips, Mark Patterson, Grant Hardie, Vasili Papanicolou

Starring: Elizabeth Cullen, John Kim, Mia Challis, Robin Goldsworthy, Genevieve Mooy, Luca Sardelis, Seraphine Harley, Mark Saturno, Terence Crawford, Dennis Coard.

‘Evil is here.’

It’s 2015.  A Mormon church is conducting a ritual, the, Baptism For The Dead.

Three women clad in black speak the name of those dead while a priest (Terence Crawford) holds a girl dressed in white in a large bath, dunking her under water as each name is spoken.

‘The prisoners shall go free.’

The girl screams underwater as the last name is spoken, Larue.

Fast forward ten years, and Elise (Elizabeth Cullen) is painting, in love, ‘I love you, ‘she tells her husband, Adam (John Kim).

‘I love you more,’ he replies.

There’s something off about, Adam.  It’s a sickly sweet obsession.

Elise doesn’t want to get into it tonight.  She’s tired.

Elise is having blackouts.  And what she’s doing in those blackouts is becoming more violent; the time lost, getting longer.

Her therapist suggests going back to the source, back to the, Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) for healing.

It’s a last-ditch effort to help Elise before admitting her to a psyc hospital.  And her husband and best friend Gwen (Mia Challis) are coming along to support her.

Noted in the film as based on a true story, Diabolic uses the ritual and beliefs of FLDS, described as a cultish offshoot of the Mormon church, as a foundation to the horror of Elise’s blackouts.

This is a story of a spirit, Larou, possessing a young girl through a Baptism For The Dead, and the guilt of those who conducted the ritual trying to heal the girl, only to release the evil from its host, allowing Larou to do harm outside the restrictions of Elise’s body.

Elise feels light.  She feels better.  Until she starts to remember.

There’s good pacing to the film, that builds the tension, think figure in a darkened doorway that catches the eye, just, then disappears; so, the jump scares are well-timed and effective.

The characters show restraint, allowing a suspension of belief to what’s happening to the couple in trouble and best friend Gwen, as Elise tries to piece together her memory of the past.

FLDS healers, Hyrum (Robin Goldsworthy) and mother, Alma (Genevieve Mooy) introduce the doctrine of ritual and the ritual gives the haunting horror a firm grounding because it’s based on what is currently used in a religion in existence today, including: the use of datura root to induce visions guided by a ‘classic’ shaman, polygamy and the, Baptism For The Dead where the spirit of the dead are invited into a living vessel to be baptised and therefore given admittance into heaven.

What could go wrong?

I enjoyed this film more than I thought I would, not just because of the foundation of story, but the performance of Elizabeth Cullen carries the weight of narrative well.

John Kim as the husband grew on me as those initial traits were used to add depth to his character.

And there’s thought put into the detail of the film, of what happens when camping in the middle of no-where like using the light of a lantern instead of a mobile described as listening to an LP instead of streaming, and after drinking datura the characters had the dialled eyes of those on drugs.  It’s the attention to detail that makes it easier to get absorbed into the story of the film.

Diabolic does get a little shaky there at the end, a little, The Exorcist: Believer (2023); and like Adam at the start of the film, hard to believe.

But the spirit of Larou was well shown, creepy, scary.  And I don’t scare easily.  Which (excuse the pun) comes back to the timing.

I can see why Diabolic won, ‘Best Australian Feature’ at the Adelaide Film Festival because Diabolic is an interesting story, with thought put into the telling.