THE DEVIL INSIDE starts out as a promising 'found footage' style mockumentary, detailing demonic possession in much the same way as the (better) LAST EXORCISM. After a genuinely creepy opening segment, however, it gradually starts to fall apart and ends up being an ultra-familiar and, in the end, disappointing movie.

The problem with the film is the story, or lack of it. It follows a group of rookie priests who perform various exorcisms, and the narrative is tenuously tied together by the presence of a pretty young woman who's attempting to help her mother, herself a victim of possession. The trouble is, it all plays out exactly as you'd expect, with nary a surprise along the way.

It goes without saying that the two exorcism scenes are genuinely disturbing, but that's only because they slavishly copy the EXORCIST formula without adding much in the way of new stuff; it also strikes me that the limb-breaking stuff has been done before in THE LAST EXORCISM or elsewhere. And as the film gets on, it gets worse, until it ends up being just people running around and screaming instead of compelling viewing. It comes up short and abrupt at the end, reinforcing my opinion that the writers ran out of steam.

On 30 October 1989, in South Hartford, Maria Rossi (Suzan Crowley) brutally murders two priests and a nun during an exorcism and calls the police. Two years later, she is arrested and sentenced to the South Hartford State Asylum. However, a couple of months later, she is transferred to the Centrino Mental Hospital in Italy.

Twenty years later, her twenty-five years old daughter Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade) accepts to make a documentary about her mother and she travels to the Vatican School of Exorcism in Rome. Isabella befriends the priests Father Ben Rawlings (Simon Quarterman) and Father David Keane (Evan Helmuth) in the school. Then she visits her mother with the director Michael Schaefer (Ionut Grama) that is shooting the documentary.

The two priests invite Isabella and Michael to witness the exorcism of a young woman. Then they go to the hospital where Maria Rossi is interned to exorcise her. Father David shows the evidences to the Church and Maria's doctor but they are not accepted. Sooner Father David is possessed by a demon and commits suicide. Isabella has a seizure and Ben and Michael take her to the hospital. Sooner they learn that Isabelle is possessed by a demon and they need to take her to Father Gallo to help Ben in an exorcism.

"The Devil Inside" is a noisy and disappointing home video of bad quality with another story of exorcism. The acting is not bad, with the Brazilian Fernanda Andrade in the lead role; but after the original "The Blair Witch Project", the documentary "style" using a Handycam has become the favorite of people that wants to make a cheap film. The conclusion is absolutely disappointing. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "A Filha do Mal" ("The Daughter of the Evil")

I had gotten quite absorbed by this film. It was quite entertaining and I thought they handled the, far too commonly used, documentary style relatively well, aside from the annoying acting of the cameraman.

It sets up the story well enough and the majority of the characters are entertaining. I did not find myself feeling very scared by the film but this is common enough for myself and horror films, but I was quite entertained by the film waiting to see where it went.

The story was developing nicely with the introduction into the world of exorcisms and discussing problems with the church's approach to them, I was feeling quite engaged. Then they finally establish the mother is possessed...as everyone knew anyway...and they go off to put their case to the church to do an exorcism, but this is made into a thing that they will have to fight for.

Surely with this being set up, the viewer can expect a big climax in the form of the mother's exorcism? ... Nope. Instead the demon bounces around the characters in fairly boring fashion and kills them all...

Worst ending to a horror film I think I have ever seen. To make it even worse, they stick in a website at the end to say go to this website to find out more about this unsolved case...this website is no longer online and when it was online was in fact just a promotional website for the film.

It is an insult to the viewers. This film looks as if the makers ran out of budget halfway through the film and just decided they end it with what they'd filmed. It can hardly even be called an ending.

Steer clear of this film! Waste of time! And an insult to the viewer!