Goddammit I love me some Satan movies. Although, having “Devil” in the title doesn’t always necessarily mean that Satan has anything to do with the movie and is sometimes a metaphor. I first heard of Here Comes the Devil a little over a year ago when it had played at Fantastic Fest and people fucking loved it. All it took was a little over a year and now it’s finally getting released! Good job, you motherfucking movie! I had seen writer/director Adrián García Bogliano’s previous movie Cold Sweat and wasn’t super into it, but I dug his segment “B is for Bigfoot” in The ABCs of Death, so who knows, maybe this movie will be pretty sweet? GUYS. IT WAS PRETTY SWEET. I’ll try to play it cool on the spoilers, but if you don’t want to read anything else, then Here Comes the Devil is worth checking out for fans of revenge thrillers, creepy kids, and motherfucking Satan.

This is symbolic of a vagina, right? Vaginas are weird rock looking triangles? I’ve seriously never even seen one before.

While on a family vacation in Tijuana, a married couple let their kids go hiking in nearby caves while they hang out in the car. The parents start fingerblasting each other, making them both quite tired, so they fall asleep and can’t find their kids. The kids don’t turn up until the next day, seemingly unharmed. When mom remembers that her daughter got her first period the day before and doesn’t seem to be bleeding anymore, she takes her to the doctor. The doctor explains that her daughter no longer has a hymen, so combine that information with the detachment that her children seem to be going through, she brings the information to the husband that their kids might have been sexually assaulted. The parents remember a strange man who seemed to take an interest in the children at a nearby gas station and decide to take matters into their own hands. Once their plans unfold, these parents realize that maybe there re bigger forces at play, as a number of mysterious and violent events surround the mountains in which their kids went missing. Moral of the story is to not let your kids wander around alone in the caves of Tijuana because NOTHING good can come of it.

Oh shit, the babysitter is high as fuck again.

This movie takes a few different turns in tone and all of them really work well. The opening scene has a lesbian couple having sex with some exploitation influenced music and cinematography as one of the women is violently attacked. There’s then the revenge aspect of two parents following through on something that most would consider to be their worst nightmare in the wellbeing of their children, and the film plays into their paranoia of being caught by the authorities. The last act of the film focuses more on some supernatural elements, playing more into some familiar possessed children tropes, and each different tone of the film is enjoyable. By the end, everything ties into these mountains, but the tones are distinct enough that they could have been three different sets of characters. However, the way everything ties together and focuses on the one couple, there’s a lot more weight with everything involved. The cast does a decent job and the look of the whole movie has a really interesting quality to it, but I’d have to say the biggest strength of the movie is just the story itself. It’s cool to find a movie that doesn’t really need to rely on style, even though this film has plenty of it, or gory effects or anything like that, but has a story that’s interesting and unique on its own to make it really entertaining. Can’t really find anything to point out that wasn’t up to par, and it has one hell of a downer for an ending, so I highly recommend Here Comes the Devil to any and all horror fans looking for a fresh take on a few familiar concepts.

Wolfman Moon Scale