'Here Comes the Devil' is an excellent example of how to stretch your hard-earned dollars to make a small film that is entertaining. Thankfully, and gratefully, someone made a horror film without drunk teenagers in a remote cabin in the woods where cellphones don't work and the local gas station has Ted Bundy for a clerk.I've been enjoying the depth and quality of foreign horror for a long time. Somehow, they seem to get it right, from 'Interior' to 'Dogtooth' to 'Man Bites Dog'. The frat/sorority/high school clone movies you see these days have no story or tension. Hell, you can see more blood from a skinned knee than from some of these travesties. 'Here Comes the Devil' is not a masterpiece but it is time well spent.The basic story has been told many times before so there's no need to write a synopsis here. What is interesting, though, is the way the movie evolves. It's unpredictable and well-acted. It's very refreshing to see a horror movie that doesn't turn out to be a waste of time. Yes, 'Here Comes the Devil' is no 'Exorcist', but in this day and age, it'll do.

Parents Felix and Sol take children Sara and Adolfo on a trip. Sara starts her first period, which is a temporary alarm. After visiting a medic, they return to their motel, and the kids want to go exploring again. While waiting, the parents get interested in each other, and the time gets away from them. The sun goes down and the children have not returned from their trek to a steep, rocky hill. The police wisely advise to restart the search in the morning. The next morning, the police return the kids.However, not all is well. Sara draws some disturbing art. Both Sol and Felix get unexplained bruises on their bodies. Sara has an unexplained seizure when she sees a man who was around just before the kids went missing. The parents do a dastardly violent crime at night. The babysitter has an horrific blackout. That is just the beginning of the family's descent.Is the family doomed, or will they find a way back to sanity?-----Scores-----Cinematography: 8/10 Good, but not great.Sound: 7/10 The actors were well-miked, but I was paying more attention to the sub-titles. The music was only mildly helpful for setting mood.Acting: 3/10 Some people were in front of cameras while they hit their marks and said their lines. I would not call any of this good acting, however. There was way too much time spent with the camera on Laura Caro's stone face while someone off camera spoke. Francisco Barreiro was quite unconvincing.Screenplay: 2/10 The film does tell a story, but it is neither interesting nor well told. The SFX and the hallucinations were not convincing at all.

A married couple lose their children while on a family trip near some caves in Tijuana. The kids eventually reappear without explanation, but it becomes clear that they are not who they used to be, that something terrifying has changed them.This is the tenth film from Spanish director Adrián García Bogliano, but likely the first one that will be widely seen by Americans (thanks to it streaming on Netflix). The only other bit we have seen of his work thus far is in the "ABCs of Death" (he had B). And yet, Bogliano is only 33, so a great many things are ahead of him -- onward and upward! Lest you thought this was going to be a fun, kid-friendly film, the opening shot is a fairly explicit lesbian sex scene. And while it never quite hits that mark again, it sets a tone that is easily maintained throughout. If this is not something you care to see, turn it off now.When watching, keep in mind that Bogliano is influenced by 1970s and 80s exploitation and sleaze, something that ought to lend itself to excellent visuals, not unlike Ti West's embrace of the same era. He specifically has called attention to Nicolas Roeg's "Don't Look Now", a horror classic and a great film in its own right. Does Bogliano live up to his Roeg influence? Perhaps. It would not be fair to say he has become the master, but he is nothing if not an excellent pupil.My colleague Richard Ostrom has called the film "delectably demented", as well as "moody and unapologetically graphic". Not only is he the master of the apt adjective, but he's also spot on. The film is saturated with a sexuality that dangerously walks the line between erotic and pornographic, both in its imagery and its sensuality. There is plenty of blood, too, but this actually gets overshadowed by the sex -- something not completely foreign to horror, but on a whole new level here.Jen Chaney, writing on Roger Ebert's website, gives the opposing view, offering the film only one star. She writes that Bogliano lacks sophistication and deems the movie "a 98-minute mess with misogynistic undertones", pointing out the film's questionable obsession with female sexuality. She raises a good point, and an interesting one, but her low rating is overall unfair. With the endless parade of rubbish that passes for horror, this is more than a one star film. Love it or hate it, it is the type of film that gets people talking.

Honestly i don't understand how it's possible that this movie at the moment got so many good reviews and a general decent response. The screenplay is just dull and the characters makes stupid things for all the time. Really. What kind of parent would leave their children go alone for a walk in the creepiest spot in the world while doing a quick bang in a car parked? Or again what kind of parent would bring their children to see who was supposed to be their harasser just after a psychologist have told them that their children needed support because they are experiencing a traumatic event? The movie is full with this kind of nonsense plot things, completely unnecessary nude scenes (like the lesbian scene at the start of the movie), plain dialogs and the ZOOMS. There are lots of zooms and all of them are really really annoying. In conclusion "Here comes the devil" it's just a mess, avoid it if you want to see a good horror movie, but if you are looking for a comedy keep it in mind because like "Manos:hands of fate" it's so bad that eventually you can even found it funny.