Demons Never Die Review

When a young girl takes her own life, Archie and the other Suicide Kids decide to follow her lead and form a pact. But as the group begins to die one by one, Archie realizes that they have all become the target of a masked killer and that his commitment to death has become a terrifying fight for survival and a battle to protect the girl he loves. But who’s the killer?

The film follows 7 college students and their attempt to deal with the death of their friend, Amber. So being the angst teenagers that they are, they decide to form a suicide pact, under the leadership of Kenny.

They plan to do the morbid deed, all together, at the same time. But before they can go ahead, one of them is murdered. The police start to investigate but seem to be baffled by the lack of evidence and motive for the killing. With the death of another friend and a relationship blooming between Archie and Jasmine, doubt starts to set in, as nearly all of the group decide not to go ahead with whole suicide thing.

This comes as a disappointment to Kenny, only making him angry and insane, to the point where the plan is revised. He’s going to murder the rest of them, then kill himself, all while being filmed with a camcorder.  Meanwhile the police still have no clue what’s going on and the rest of the group are already suspecting Kenny for the other murders.

In the mist of all of this, they decide it’s a good idea to have a party, as teenagers would. But, guess who’s going to crash? Kenny and his gun.  What they’re not expecting is the real killer to turn up, though.

This British movie comes from first time director/writer/producer Arjun Rose and, in all honesty, you can tell this is his first crack at film making. The interesting thing is that Idris Elba (The Reaping, 28 Weeks Later, Prom Night, The Unborn, Thor, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Prometheus (just to name a few) is the executive producer. It’s a shame he didn’t have a bigger influence over the film.

OK, the directing was at a decent standard, but what let it down was the story. It has nothing new to offer to the slasher sub-genre, whatsoever.  It’s predictable from start to finish and, quite frankly, it’s all been done before, but a lot better. It feels like a poor man’s version of Scream. This means that where it should have been scary, intense or jumpy was ruined by the poor writing. And there certainly wasn’t enough blood! It all got a bit over-complicated when part of the end sequence flips over to hand-held night vision cameras, giving it a “found footage” feel. There really wasn’t any need for it, in relation to the film itself, although it did relate to the script.

The only thing that saved this movie from being completely dire was the talented young British cast, particularly Robert Sheehan’s (Season of the Witch, Misfits) and Jennie Jacques’ (Shank, Cherry Tree Lane) respective performances. Acting wise, the weak links were Reggie Yates and Ashley Walters, who were both dull.

People who will like this movie are likely to be British, aged between 13 and 19, not a horror buff and “chavs” (it’s an English thing)!

Arjun Rose needs to go back to the drawing board and concentrate on his writing. With major improvements, he could deliver something more desirable to genuine horror fans.

Demons Never Die gets a below par 4/10

The Cast –
Robert Sheehan as Archie
Jennie Jacques as Jasmine
Jason Maza as Kenny
Shanika Warren-Markland as Ashleigh
Emma Rigby as Samantha
Jacob Anderson as Sachin
Andrew Ellis as Davey
Femi Oyeniran as Cain
Patrick Baladi as Hudson
Reggie Yates as Mason
Ashley Walters as Bates
Tulisa Contostavlos as Amber

Director & Writer –
Arjun Rose