Why Cinema Audiences Are So Furious About The Devil Inside

[Brendon Connelly]

Despite it winning at Friday's box office with almost $17 million, and being on track to close out the weekend in the number one position, the found-footage horror film The Devil Inside is leaving audiences up in arms - and I've heard first hand of several crowds pretty much flipping out as the end credits roll.

The market research company CinemaScore use exit polls to grade audience reaction and publish the results and, for the first time that I can remember, they've attributed a film the bottom-tier F grade. This just doesn't happen. In CinemaScore terms, any F is an epic F.

A Paramount exec has responded to the F grade, e-mailing Deadline to say:

People love us or hate us but I think evil spirits corrupted CinemaScore?s model. Because the breakdown was ?A? = 16%, ?B? = 18%, ?C? = 24%, ?D? = 23%, ?F? = 19%. I?ll admit I went to public school but I think this should have got us a ?C?!

Whatever the grade, these numbers show an unusual swing towards lower results. And it seems there's a pretty simple reason why the audience are reacting this way - but to tell you what it is, I have to deliver a spoiler, of sorts.

Now, I haven't seen it with my own two eyes but the film apparently ends in a very unorthodox and abrupt manner.

Very unorthodox and abrupt. And then a URL and message appear on the screen, directing the audience to "find out more" online.

You may recall a similar debacle with the Red Riding Hood tie-in novel, where the final chapter was missing and only published on the web after the movie had opened.

But this isn't a tie-in piece of merchandise, this is the actual primary artefact. This is the film itself. You'll pay your ten dollars - or even worse, pounds - and you take your seat and you give it the benefit of the doubt. And then, in the end... you'll be spat out and told to go online to scratch around in the search for a conclusion to your experience.

The URL that appears on the screen is The Rossi Files. Should you visit it you'll see that there's a series of fake newspaper articles and bits of backstory bric a brac, and a few more video clips.

Interestingly, none of them offer any kind of resolution. Little Bleeders have confirmed that even after they went home, logged on and trawled through this site, they were still left without any kind of narrative closure.

Anecdotal evidence canvassed by Bleeding Cool suggest that audiences are errupting into booing and leaving the cinema angry. Many people have been seen asking for their money back. We've called in reports from five separate screenings and every single one, we've been told, ended with the audience enraged.

Now, I haven't seen The Devil Inside and, really, until now, I hadn't much wanted to. But now I'm curious. Is this ending as flat-out insulting as the widespread dissatisfaction suggests? Or is it a misunderstood provocation (cf. The Last Exorcism)? Mob mentality certainly has a history of getting things wrong.

Please, keep sending me your accounts of The Devil Inside screenings, your reaction and those of your fellow audience members.

[Joe Kalicki]

I'll probably torrent it in a few months.

[Matt Spatola]

Tried to see it last night. Went to the theater and all the showings were sold out. Saw Sherlock Holmes 2 instead.

[Hannah Shaw-Williams]

The woman in that photo looks like a fish I saw in an aquarium once.

It swam right the f**k out of nowhere and scared the pants off me.

To find out what happened next visit my website and donate £20.

[Monetta]

To be fair, all of these "found footage" movies end with the slightly disappointing "That's it!" moment. Plus, now they all want that Paranormal Activity franchise possibility.

[tbdeinc]

To be fair, all of these "found footage" movies end with the slightly disappointing "That's it!" moment. Plus, now they all want that Paranormal Activity franchise possibility.

Apparently TROLLHUNTER is the only found footage movie that ends with an audience satisfaction... everything else... since the Blair Witch have copp out endings...

[Rootfireember]

Troll hunter was FUN. Also demon possession causes a rise in Visine sales. Who knew?

[trippingmartian]

The trailer for this was hilariously bad.

These people got what they deserved.

[Birmy]

Went to the movies for a late show on Friday night, and the place was packed. I was apprehensive about this, but it turned out everyone was there for this (signs indicated multiple sell-outs) and we were there for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, so it was okay (we did have a couple of walkouts anyway).

Has there EVER been a good exorcism movie since The Exorcist? And they're rarely hits anyway, so I don't know why studios bother. For that matter, "found footage" horror has about as good a track record since Blair Witch (am I supposed to be glad that Paranormal Activity is the twenty-year high of the genre?).

[The Xenos]

I heard about this crap. That's pretty damn insulting. Did they think this was some multimedia crossover? I guess even the web site doesn't have much content anyway.

Has there EVER been a good exorcism movie since The Exorcist? And they're rarely hits anyway, so I don't know why studios bother. For that matter, "found footage" horror has about as good a track record since Blair Witch (am I supposed to be glad that Paranormal Activity is the twenty-year high of the genre?).

I ended up seeing a matinee for that The Last Exorcism after a friend missed waking up for another film and I was already at the theater. I liked it. I went in not knowing what to expect, but I enjoyed it. It had an interesting character arc, with the fake exorcist finding faith. It had that abrupt ending, but they brought that arc to a close and has resolution that way. Plus the ending was pretty big, not just some car crash. An atheist friend hated it because he wanted it all to be fake in the end, not an actual demon. Still, at least it was a little different approach of the exorcist film with the guy being a fake. Though at the same time, he wasn't a two dimensional villain as he was still trying to help people.

Meanwhile, a ton of these exorcist movies and paranomal hunters movies look sooooooo generic and pointless and just cheap. I saw Blair Witch in high school and it was just okay. I remember reading some tie in comics and those were more interesting than the actual film. I want to say the YouTube-ifacation of cinema is part of it too. Instead of making films look like actual film, they're trying to make everyone who watches YouTube clips at work come into theaters to watch things with similar crappy home cinematography. Chronicle coming up is this applied to a super hero / villain film. Is it a step up for cinema? A step down? Or maybe just a side step?

Of course, it is all in how this cinematic trick of 'found footage' is done. This Devil Inside sounds like it was done in the dumbest and most insulting way to the audience.