Horror Movie Review: Demonica (2014)

A comedy horror (gulp), Demonica is set in the 80s and tells the story about a group of young adults who get trapped in a skating rink overnight while partying. That doesn’t sound so bad now, does it? Well, this skating rink has a problem…a demon related problem.

Sounds fun, right? Well, it’s not.

Seriously low budget, to the point of looking like a school film project, Demonica doesn’t deliver in any department. It’s not scary, it’s not horrific, it’s not funny…it’s just not good.

The very first thing the film gets wrong is the era it is set in. It’s supposed to be the 80s, 1986 to be exact but you wouldn’t really know it. It misses the mark with the visual style, outfits, conversations and character actions. If you didn’t know it was set in that period you would never know. Not that it matters as it doesn’t make a difference to the plot.

Then we have our bland teen characters all clearly being played by actors and actresses older then they should be. They’re stereotypes but not good ones partially because of how bad a lot of the acting is. Even legendary scream queen, Linnea Quigley puts in a lacklustre performance here.

If you’re hoping the mind-numbing beginning that sees the teens stealing a necklace from a witch will improve when the demons arrive, you’re going to be very disappointed. Demonica wants to be on par with classics like Night of the Demons but doesn’t even come close.

Rubbish make-up, horrible effects, terrible puns and one-liners, the unleashing of the hellish creatures does nothing to improve this slog of a movie. It drags and drags and drags until we reach a roller derby battle for the fate of the world. This could have been a fun ending but once again, Demonica falls to stick the landing by just being so unfunny. The writing in this movie is so bad and most will desperate for the end credits to roll just so they can be done with it.