The original English title of this Russian-produced film was Succubus, named for a mythic female demon who gets her power from seducing human male victims. Thatâs sort-of the gist of the story, too, though this particular demon appears to be happy with men and women, as gobs of female nudity will attest.
In fact, every female character gets naked at one point or another while the men remain more-or-less covered up, even during numerous voyeuristic sex scenes. If boobies, booties and boinking are your thing, you have a kindred spirit in director Serik Berseu. However, The Demoness falls apart as a horror movie - even an erotic one - partially because of the languid pace and an abundance of tired tropes, but mainly the perplexing decision to shoot the damn thing in English.
Too bad, because the basic premise is okay. Four bickering couples arrive at an island retreat to participate in a program that promises to salvage their rotten relationships. But that turns out to be a ruse instigated by the titular creature, which can assume any form in order to do her dirty work (no pun intended) while turning these couples against each other. But aside from an admittedly cool revelation about the main protagonist, The Demoness is mostly skin, sex and jump scares.
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Hey, thatâs great, and far be it from me to question your tastes in horror. However, not only is The Demoness plodding and damn near bloodless, it suffers from a major distraction that repeatedly sucks you right out of the movie: This is a Russian production and a Russian cast, yet it's shot in English, with the actors obviously dubbed to get rid of those pesky accents. The results are awful and itâs entirely possible that some of the cast had minimal understanding of their own lines, which canât help but affect the performances. Iâve previously seen other Russian productions go this route, but to what end?
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