Where the Devil Roams (2023): The latest production from the Adams family begins with a long litany. The narrator tells a story of the genesis and the passing down of evil. The recital is unrelenting, and the filmmakers keep us locked in this prologue for over a couple of minutes. Suddenly the film swerves into an immediate dose of outrageousness. The enormity of gore comes bursting out. A kid rams into her mother with spectacular nonchalance. The coldness in her gaze is cutting and merciless. The scene, despite an overfamiliar edge, is an excellent peek into the wild eruptions that pack the film’s modest runtime.
The film shifts into a group of traveling sideshow performers. Each has its own quirky forte. The filmmakers don’t quite etch the distinctiveness of the varied motley characters that spring through these introductory scenes, mostly just relying on the visual oddity of their outfits, makeup, and tricks. Therefore, quite early on, one can detect ample characterization issues propping up.
Quickly enough, the focus settles on a family of three, Maggie, her husband, Seven, and their daughter, Eve. We follow them and their exploits through the length and breadth of the American countryside, blanketed with heavy snow that is rendered in blanched cinematography, which grabbed a prize at Fantasia.
The world the film constructs stitches bleakness and vulnerability together in an attempt to continually reshape and alter one’s life and prospects. Murderous people populate the film. But the filmmakers keep our sympathies and interest invested in them entirely, no matter the nastiest things they orchestrate or execute on an impulse.
We glimpse the profound scars Maggie and Seven carry with them of their lives preceding their current status. Seven’s war trauma especially barges into the narrative, in frequent nightmares that haunt him. He can no longer see the violence at the moment of it being committed.
Eve blindfolds him right before any such moment. It is a striking detail, of which not many are however present in the film. The film collapses specificities in pursuit of capturing a certain mood. These characters do not start out as being reflective of the nature of their family, foregoing the consequences of their actions while indulging in the worst imaginable severity with gleeful abandon. We almost feel as if they have no other path but this, whereby their life gains a sense of purpose and rhythm, something that the film consciously invokes in its structure.
The family of three travels the countryside in a bitter winter, never hesitating to chop off anyone who declines a favor or help they seek. Seven is the more passive member, while Maggie is quickly spurred into her raging fits of violence. Eve, who mostly stays mute except when she has to sing in their circus performances, dutifully records the site of violence on her camera. But the film, while regurgitating the violence unabashedly, does not truly reckon with nor sharpen the characters’ decisions and inner tumult.
There is a thick patina, a considerable remove between the viewer and characters, where we are not allowed a way to fully understand why they do what they do. Of the three, Eve gets the short shrift. Her character acquires importance when she puts the knowledge of the devil’s pact to use that Tibbs shared in helping her family recuperate after things go awry. But the film keeps doggedly refraining from articulating her perspective.
It makes for a frustrating experience since the filmmaking chafes while striving to elicit some sense of history for its characters to enable a clearer portrait for the viewers. After a point, Seven’s nightmares begin to blur, and so does Maggie’s reckless proclivities for punishment.
Where the Devil Roams increasingly projects an unsure and thoroughly confused attitude to violence and redemption and emotional scars. The narrative stumbles due to an utter lack of focus, and the scenes of wretched murderousness do not even blaze. The listless filmmaking frequently fails to meet the gusto that it wants its characters to possess.
Where the Devil Roams screened at the Fantasia Fest 2023.
Where the Devil Roams (2023) Movie Links: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes
The Cast of Where the Devil Roams (2023) Movie: John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser
Where the Devil Roams (2023) Movie Genre: 2023, Horror, Runtime: 1h 33m
