Too much of everything

Simply Perfect

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The Diabolical is a horror movie about a mother, protecting her family against manifestations in her house. But those manifestations turn out to be something else than ghosts, when she accepts help from a friend who approaches this from a scientifical view.The only redeeming factor is that the movie somehow succeeds in trying something brand new, instead of your regular ghost story, or family secret. Unfortunately, even for this genre, the acting is so horribly bad, that it becomes painful to watch. The story and editing are messy, so at some point, you may loose the feeling of coherence.Too bad, because an interesting premise gets dragged down for the wrong reasons. Bad acting is partially accepted as a part of the genre, but even here there should be limits. Diabolical crosses those.

If you like Ali Larter you won't mind what I or anyone else for that matter will be writing about this movie. If you do care about story, you may find that there are better horror movies out there of course too. But you can't deny the movie that it does create a really nice (scary) atmosphere with some fine scares scattered along the way for the viewer to enjoy and be scared by.Ali Larter may not have the meatiest role to play with, but she does the best she can with a situation that is anything but ideal (pun intended). Her character has a lot to go through and while there may be some easier solutions to some of the issues she's facing, that doesn't mean you can't enjoy the movie nevertheless

This film is exactly like it's title....diabolical. That may be unoriginal but it's a very apt way to start this review.This is another classic example of why you shouldn't take movie trailers at face value because as soon as I saw them I wanted to see this film. It looked like a really decent, creepy film and when I saw such low ratings everywhere I couldn't understand why. After seeing the film, I do now and unfortunately it's just the exact opposite of what the trailers make it out to be.Amazing how the studios can fool you with a 2 minute trailer isn't it? The Diabolical is VERY slow and sometimes I don't mind that in certain movies as long as the story gets your interest and KEEPS your interest. However, this is not only very slow but it is extremely dull to boot mainly because of the boring story. Actually, scrap that. The overall story isn't that boring...it's the execution of it that makes it boring and for a supposed Thriller there's not very much thrills here at all.I also feel that nothing is really explained properly at anytime throughout the film either. It just feels like it's been put together to allow the audience to come up with their own theories on what is happening. That works - sometimes - but definitely not in this case. It just poses too many questions and leaves them unanswered.Suspenseful? Nope. Mind-bending? More like confusing and mind-numbing. Chilling? MAYBE one or two scenes at the very most but nothing more.Honestly, if you're thinking about watching this film, I'd suggest you just give it a miss. You're not missing much if you choose not to see it and it will save you about an hour and twenty minutes of your life.

Diabolical is insanely dull. It portrays so many haunting stereotypes in alarmingly uninteresting ways. The focus on drama is appreciated, although it dawdles needlessly for half the runtime, and even then it falters with lackluster attempt in horror and poor design for the creature. At the end it tries to pull off a nifty twist, but unfortunately audience would already be disenchanted by the clumsy execution.An entity binds a single mother and her two children to a particular house. What follows is average haunting gimmick which other movies have done better. It often stays too long on certain scene or abruptly changes tone with several supporting characters, either ways it doesn't pay off in the slightest.Ali Larter as the mother does a decent job on creating some family drama, however the tired theme of single mother struggling grows old too fast. She faces mortgage issue, visits from social services and even bullied by strange entities. It becomes mundane later on, not to mention the other characters seem like extras without much personality and the things they do sometimes defy logic as they wander aimlessly.All of those flaws can be forgiven, as most horror tend to skimp on narrative, but The Diabolical is simply not frightening. Practical effect is poorly done and the special effect looks awfully fake. The design for creature might be decent for the first or second time it appears, but this is the case of not showing too much can be more effective, which doesn't help much since the movie can't set up any suspense regardless.The effort to create drama is decent, but it soon becomes repetitive and tedious, especially when the movie can't deliver any horror, thrill or even the slightest tension.