Aussie-made films can sometimes lean on the outback, or curiosity about Indigenous culture, but Diabolic takes a different path. Though the story plays out in the proverbial outback of Utah, I couldn’t help wondering why foreign investors were more interested in helping Daniel J. Phillips make this film than backing local creators. It’s not a detail worth nitpicking since the movie was shot in the land down under, but it becomes noticeable when the landscape feels slightly wrong for its intended setting. Maybe that’s part of the hallucinatory effect Phillips is aiming for.
After Elise (Elizabeth Cullen, The Bureau of Magical Things) leaves The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she thinks she’s safe. She’s moved on, but the nightmares keep coming. Elise has PTSD, and that’s the terrain the film explores more than anything else. Thankfully, her boyfriend Adam (John Kim, The Librarians) and her adoptive sister Gwen (Mia Challis, Outer Banks) are understanding. Trouble starts when they take a camping trip to get away and bring drugs along, hoping to knock down the walls Elise has built so she can finally feel whole and free from her past.
When Elise finds herself back where it all started, nothing feels the same. As memories surface through flashbacks, other thoughts and revelations creep in, too. The women of the compound have feelings for one another, not the men who control them. As for what the priests are trying to suppress, I kept thinking the old crone Larue might be Lilith instead. This 19th-century witch beats to her own tune, and keeping her restrained won’t be easy. That said, this is only my read of the entity the church wants buried, and others want to reawaken.
What’s presented is about fundamentalism and control more than anything else. With past and present competing for screen time, I felt a bit nonplussed. The film works harder to make the history matter than to deepen the current timeline. Still, I wasn’t disappointed once the supernatural begins to bleed in.
That’s where Phillips’ style kicks in, and the cinematography, with its Evil Dead-style distortion, gets properly visceral. Those moments mattered more to me than the larger shape of the story. If you told me this was a grimy precursor to Raimi’s chaos, I’d believe it. The familiar ingredients are here: cabin in the woods, a lone survivor, and demons circling the edges. I was also reminded of Robert Eggers’ The Witch, partly because we’re watching people on drugs spiral in real time. As for who lives and who dies, that’s something viewers interested in semi-folk horror can discover for themselves.
3½ Stars out of 5
Diabolic Movie Trailer
