Filmmaker Andrew de Burgh seems to have questions of the human existence on his mind. In his debut feature, The Bestowal (2018), a suicidal man sits with Death, debating life, the universe, and everything. In his follow-up, The Seductress from Hell (2024), questions of morality arose within spousal strife leading to murder in the embrace of dark forces. With his latest feature, The Demoness, de Burgh abandons all pretension and goes straight for the jugular in a narrative that centers a succubus on a mission to terrorize as many humans as possible, setting the stage for a series of tales in which murder is the order of the day, every day. In an era of Art of the Clown, where violence can occur for the sake of it, sometimes mayhem can scratch an itch something more cerebral can’t satisfy; yet, in the absence of intellectualism, even creature kills lose their luster.
L-R: Bella Glanville as Sara Lallana and Xander Bailey as Jack Gerrard in THE DEMONESS. Photo courtesy of Sacred Ember Films.
Somewhere in L.A., a couple (Xander Bailey and Bella Glanville, respectively) fight over their individual problems, their marriage dissolving between his boiling frustrations at life and her unwillingness to be his proverbial punching bag any longer. By the time the couple realizes that they’ve being manipulated by a succubus (Sydney Culbertson), it’s too late. The succubus uses them to make a deal with the devil (Mark Pontarelli) to create a human-like personage to use to find more victims. Can anyone stop her roaring rampage or are the streets of L.A. about to run crimson?
Mark Pontarelli as Satan in THE DEMONESS. Photo courtesy of Sacred Ember Films.
By opting for more of an anthology approach wherein the central character is not a victim trying to survive (think: Halloween (1978) or Smile 2 (2024)), de Burgh ends up creating a sense that the victims are intended to represent a larger moral issue with humanity. Granted there is some connection between the victims, enabling the film to flow fairly naturally from one set of victims to another, but they (the victims) are more a matter of convenience/natural consequence than random. This infuses the film with a sense that L.A. is less of a hunting ground of disparate victims and more an interconnected web by which one’s own foibles and moral failings are related to another’s. This is an interesting notion, especially as it relates to the idea that we’re following a demon who delights in causing pain but only seems to do so to those who express some kind of moral failing. However, it’s unclear through the proceedings if the succubus would harm an innocent or if innocence is a relative term that this demon can find any way around in order to justify the harm it does. While one can see where the weaknesses in the initial couple were exploitable for her gain, the next victim seems to only have the crime of being a techbro (Riley Nottingham) who comes from money. While this type certainly does seem to be a blight on humanity for their continued instance to build the murderbox their favorite author clearly instructed not to build and thereby destroying our natural resources just so they can have A.I. answer questions anyone with free access to the Internet and patience can obtain (but I guess it’s not fuckable so who cares?), we’re not given any specific evidence to support techbro’s immediate demise. Without the specificity, any sense of meaning in the murder (result of envy, greed, lust, etc) as it relates to larger concepts of morality became absent and, unfortunately, dull.
Riley Nottingham as Steve Urden in THE DEMONESS. Photo courtesy of Sacred Ember Films.
This is, unfortunately, where the film falters the most as de Burgh doesn’t make it quite clear what all victims have done to deserve punishment. For a supposed mortality tale, this is critical. In the first sequence, it’s quite clear and none can argue how both parties walked into the proverbial trap set even if it does seem like an encapsulation of the narrative from The Seductress from Hell down to the angry AC salesman and spouse unable to find work. Even within the third sequence, one can quite clearly view the succubus as delivering a sweet comeuppance in brutal fashion (the makeup work here, especially, impresses and demonstrates a clear and powerful consequence that makes the horror elements pop). But, using our techbro as an example, his crime is less obvious as he demonstrates no threat or aggressive tendency toward the succubus, called Charlotte in her human form, beyond being lured into her “lair.” It’s possible that the exposition utilized in the initial summoning of Lucifer was meant to clarify this, seeding the reason for her choices, as well as any other moments in which the succubus reveals their true form, but there’s so much distortion added for dramatic effect that it’s difficult to understand Culbertson’s dialogue. Without this understanding, much of the succubus’s actions and the brief inclusions of Lucifer come across as less cerebral than de Burgh’s past works and more pedestrian as the focus on violence for the sake of violence through the view of all humanity is lost so let’s torture who we can because “demons do that sort of thing.” With the absence of reason, the whole of The Demoness is reduced to the pile of horror thrillers which lean so hard on Christian theological stereotypes without the interrogation of what they represent or why they matter from a moral perspective.
Sydney Culbertson as The Demoness in THE DEMONESS. Photo courtesy of Sacred Ember Films.
If you’re just looking for some carnage, The Demoness does deliver in its own low-budget way that elicits some fun Re-Animator (1985) vibes. It’s a shame when the editing tries to hide the brutality through fading to black because when it doesn’t use any tricks beyond the in-camera variety, there’s some cleverness to the violence that implies intention and creative thoughtfulness, even down to the shadow play that introduces the succubus through its clever simplicity. But if you’re looking for more, for some kind of wrestling with the punishment humanity brings upon itself, some hint of the philosophical present in past works, you’ll have to look hard through the rest to discover it.
In select theaters October 30th, 2026.
Final Score: 2.5 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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