Inner Demons Review (Film, 2014) The Archives
content warning: drug abuse, gore, religious content
Inner Demons is a possession/exorcism film and a satire of docudrama reality series. Carson Morris is a teenager addicted to any injectable drug she can find. It is revealed that Carson was a perfect little Christian, even a national champion in Bible verse competitions, until she attended Catholic school. She believes that using heroin and crushed, boiled pills keeps a literal demon from emerging. The new production intern for the reality show is the only person to believe that she may actually be possessed.
Writer Glenn Gers is rightly critical of this style of reality entertainment. At its best, there’s an educational element to it. People who have never seen an addict or learned about treatment might learn something new. Everyone else is watching a person’s worst moment amplified and edited to create the worst possible impression for the audience. These shows rely on shock factor to get ratings and critical appeal.
Celebrity Rehab is the worst offender, actually entering the rehab facility and interfering with patients’ treatments by encouraging the once-known figures to amp up any interpersonal drama. The doctors are asked probing questions about patients they might never even think of by behind the scenes reality show producers, which obviously has an effect on how they are treated. Their backstories are also, once again, heightened to create an uncanny representation of actual human beings.
Inner Demons has its best moments when brutally confronting this blatant manipulation and abuse of addiction recovery patients. The head doctor, for example, is routinely threatened with losing funding from the reality TV production company if he refers Carson for a mental health evaluation. He’s also asked repeatedly to entertain Carson’s belief that she has an actual demon living inside her.
The patients are manipulated, too. The lead producer tells another patient, another subject of the reality show, about Carson’s belief in demons. The patient refuses to play into the producer’s ploy, but still the other filmed patients learn all about Carson’s case. They are clearly instructed to bring it up during group sessions to trigger Carson during her detox.
Less successful is the literal Inner Demons of the title. The possession story adds nothing new to the genre beyond the docudrama/reality rehab satire. The scares, the makeup, and the hidden camera effects are all lifted from other recent (or not so recent) haunting/possession films. Carson’s possession choreography is lifted straight from The Last Exorcism and The Exorcism of Emily Rose and her full-blown possessed makeup is Linda Blair in The Exorcist with some veins popping out. It’s disappointing that a film so committed to a different angle on the genre fails to innovate at all within the standard elements of the genre.
The light in the film is Lara Vosburgh’s excellent performance as Carson. The normal teen to goth to heroin addict to possessed person elements would provide any actor with an excellent arc in a normal horror film. The nature of Inner Demons as a film about addiction and control means Vosburgh is required to shift instantly between any combination of these roles in every scene she’s in. Sure, some are defined clearly—black eye makeup and splotchy purple lipstick indicate a starting position of goth, bare face means all American teen—but the clarity of which Carson you’re seeing is just breathtaking.
Inner Demons does so much right as a film. The satire is some of the strongest from an indie film since God Bless America and the cast’s commitment is pretty much unparalleled in modern horror. It’s almost possible to forgive the all too familiar scares and exorcism/possession tropes because of the ambition and intelligence of the screenplay.
Inner Demons is streaming on Screambox and available to rent or buy on all digital platforms.
