Felix and Sol and their two children, Adolfo and Sara, are on a family trip to Tijuana. The children ask for permission to go and explore caves in some nearby hills, but don't return when they should. When they finally are found the next day, it quickly becomes clear to their parents that something happened to them in the caves to change them somehow, and things quickly go from a parent's worst nightmare to something much more unimaginable.
Here Comes The Devil might as well have as a subtitle A Freudian Film, because my gods the symbolism is strong in this one. The film opens with a scene of energetic lesbian sex, and while that is by no means a bad thing, knowing that the movie is set in Catholic Mexico immediately sets a tone of secret transgressions and forbidden desires. We then continue to pile on the symbolism; Sara has her first menstrual period while they are on their trip, symbolising an end of childhood and innocence. When the children go off to explore on their own, the parents take the opportunity for a little sex in the car, telling each other of their teenage experiences for titillation. And finally and most directly Freudian, the children disappear after walking hand-in-hand into a dark triangular cave in the hills. And all of this is in the first 10-15 minutes.
Now I've never really been one for Freud (I'm more of a Jungian myself) so you might think that all of this psychosexual symbolism piled on so early might lead me to be rather negative about this film. Far from it. Here Comes The Devil is a gripping, dark film, and while its topics might not be to everyone's tastes (it deals with such topics as child abuse and incest, so if you are sensitive to such topics this may not be the film for you), you find it very difficult to look away as Felix and Sol fall deeper and deeper into the dark pit of knowing that something is terribly wrong with their children, and the horrendous revelation of just what has happened. And as genre-savvy as you might think you are, you're still unlikely to guess the final revelations of the film, which make it quite a refreshing change from so many other films where I can figure out everything that's going to happen within the first 20 minutes. It also reminded me, in parts, of Picnic at Hanging Rock for some reason - maybe it was the strange otherworldly implications of going into the Yoni-Cave, or just the sleepwalking qualities the children develop after their trip into the cave.
The director, Adrián García Bogliano, is relatively new on the scene (or at least the mainstream scene). Of his work, the only other thing of his I've seen was his short in the horror anthology The ABCs of Death. His short film, B is for Bigfoot, was somewhere in the middle in terms of quality in the anthology, but considering some of the other shorts there, that makes it practically award-winning. But from what I've seen of his work so far, I'm certainly interested in catching some of his other films now.
Here Comes The Devil is a dark film, a disturbing film, and one that you can tell pretty early on is not going to have a happy ending, so if any of that isn't your cup of tea you'll probably want to give it a miss. For everyone else though, I highly recommend it.
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