It’s been a while since we last heard from director Neill Blomkamp. Since his career crash-landed with the tense-as-hell alien apartheid allegory District 9, critics and fans have been somewhat confused by his choices. He went all-in on video game-style action with Elysium and helped the world better understand Short Circuit with the pseudo-remake Chappie. Nevertheless, his movies have been steadily getting worse reviews and his box office take has steadily declined. During this time, he’s been locked away, presumably under the control of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, writing an Alien reboot or one of those “forget about the other sequels” soft reboot/sequel thingies. Though ever since that fizzled out (it’s still kind of unclear whether they’re making any Alien movies at Disney), Blomkamp took a chance on doing a RoboCop sequel, which also didn’t pan out, and even hinted at doing District 10.
But before all that, it looks like he’s ready to scare people again.
Leaving Chappie somewhere in a dank alley, beaten and bloody like that friendly robot that was collectively murdered by the city of Philadelphia, Blomkamp returns with Demonic, a supernatural sci-fi thriller about a woman who enters a haunted computer program. At least, that’s what we can glean from the trailer. The logline on the movie is “a young woman unleashes terrifying demons when supernatural forces at the root of a decades old rift between mother and daughter are revealed.” Sounds interesting, but the teaser trailer doesn’t give us a whole lot of information. There are hints of The Matrix, A Nightmare On Elm Street, and Insidious throughout this minute-and-a-half teaser, and honestly, that sounds pretty sick. The logo is also spelled with an upside-down cross instead of an “I,” which is also pretty sick. All in all, this teaser gets a “pretty sick” from the “how-sick-is-this-trailer” commission.
Demonic comes out in theaters and VOD on August 20.