Sean Parker
Exclusively premiering on Screambox this November alongside Cryptids is a found footage film from writer/director Jenni “JWoww” Farley. You may be asking yourself, “JWoww? Like Jersey Shore, JWoww?” And I’m here to tell you, yes, Jenni Farley made a horror movie. I would also say it’s a commendable first endeavor into the genre. Found footage films are never very flashy, but they are alluring. Devon caught my attention last month when Bloody Disgusting released its trailer with a full cacophony of screams in a stylized “breaking news” approach. The sentiment evokes a comparison to the original marketing behind The Blair Witch Project and genuinely pulls you in.
Devon’s plot is a bit of Session 9 or The Honor Farm combined with the House on Haunted Hill remake and a true crime angle. Enticed by the desperate final plea of a young girl’s parents struggling to cope with how their daughter went missing in the mental health facility where she was receiving treatment, a group of strangers volunteer to enter and film their experiences in the shuttered, dilapidated place before its scheduled demolition. Of course, the $100,000 reward for their footage is also rather enticing.
Farley’s setup is a genuine thing of beauty. Since there’s a lot of true crime and cold case interest, the idea of offering help on a long-dead investigation isn’t really a stretch. That amount of money to hire amateur sleuths is a little bit of a head-scratcher, but luckily, Farley was graced with one hell of a spooky location, both inside and out. Architecturally, institutional places like the hospital in Devon have a clinically cold presence all their own, and the long-defunct innards consider the anxious chaos that dwells internally. The film’s location quickly becomes a character in the movie, and it’s a stunning metaphor for mental health issues: looking composed outwardly but internally downtrodden.
It’s also rather obvious the writer-director spent a lot of time considering the film’s ensemble. Steven Etienne, Rotisha Geter, Lauren Carlin, Tara Rule, and Hank Santos genuinely embody this group of crime scene clue seekers, each with differentiating elements in their characters that provide uniqueness you’re unable to confuse. It isn’t archetypal Breakfast Club characters or anything, but not many found footage films do it well, and some don’t bother developing their characters at all. For the most part, they’re all pretty likable. Some are in it for the money, and some aren’t, but the tired dramatization that typically stems from that mechanic ultimately isn’t present. Robust dialogue choices also help separate Devon from the pack.
Another well-crafted part of Devon is the way it incorporates its ghosts. Once the characters enter the building, the game is on. There are small sightings of children that will make you question whether a viewer actually saw anything at all before they’re just standing in front of the camera—caught on tape but unseen by the camera operators. By making use of this technique, Farley fills the atmosphere and further adds to it with graffiti that changes to torture the group psychologically.
But for all these features of the film that are very well done, there is also one big problem: Devon is predictable and mostly on the rails when it comes to found footage.
Working in tandem with the footage portions of the film are intercut scenes of a police interrogation. At the very beginning of the film, two individuals break into the hospital, unknowingly setting clues in motion for a bit of a twist at the end of Devon. But through the overt hostility of the unseen police and some camera angles that clearly can’t be anyone in the group’s footage, the later developments become readily determinable. This provides a last-minute lackluster ending to a film that generally has some good things going for it.
What’s more, Devon also suffers from a discontiguous timeline. Our POV character leaves out a chunk of information to make their story more credible for the police, then shifts the timeline back to include new details when challenged. The effect is jarring as it takes a minute to realize we’ve left an action sequence with missing characters and arrived back inside of a set-up scene. It’s a bit frustrating since the audience gets prepared for the mayhem portion of the film and are then brought back in time to re-witness the events with the missing pieces. At seventy-two minutes, Devon is brisk, but the effect comes off as less twisty and more like wasted time, making the film feel longer than it needs to be.
When the scary parts begin happening, the film becomes trope-heavy. The Blair Witch Project aspects come back, with one character documenting their “I’m so scared” confession with the camera a few more inches from their face than Heather Donahue. There are psychological reasons for some of the character endings, too, particularly concerning their backstories, but it doesn’t hit as potently for each individual.
My first thought after the film had ended was how well that setup could have worked if the idea had been better fleshed out. A reward for information on a website provides a remarkable open door for a multitude of personalities to come and claim it. It felt like a mousetrap, luring people into a place that would never let them out. The ending manipulates that. To some extent, that’s what is happening. Still, in trying to expose the exploitation of people with mental health issues, the writing favors a somewhat less rational storyline against leaving things ominous.
Devon has a lot of problems. I can’t argue with its level of convolution, but I try to write about the good. The good part of Devon is Jenni Farley. She may not have gotten it right this time, but that’s rare anyway. With the heavy thematic material and some of the rigorous plot points Farley attempts to assert, the film doesn’t provide a cohesively fulfilling time. But, for context, this is a first-time writer and director putting it all out there, and I’m sure she’s learned quite a bit in the process. Regardless, Devon is highly watchable. You may be yelling common sense at the characters throughout, but you’ll likely want to see how things shake out. It won’t be for the casual horror fan, but for those who like deep dives, Devon has its moments. And if Jenni Farley has another story in her, I’d like to see what she does with it.
Devon streams exclusively on Screambox on November 26.
DEVON (2024) | Official Trailer
Watch FREE horror streaming 24/7 on Bloody Disgusting TV! https://bloodydisgusting.tv Never miss a horror headline, follow us on Instagram – https://instagram.com/bdisgusting Twitter – https://twitter.com/bdisgusting Facebook – https://facebook.com/BloodyDisgusting Your #1 source for all things horror since 2001! https://bloody-disgusting.com
