I expected very little, and while it possesses not only people but also faults and cliches, "The Cleansing Hour" (a.k.a. "The Devil's Hour") is a fairly entertaining and technically effortful exorcism horror romp.
The filmmakers here take up the good old possession horror shtick, with stereotypes and all & puts in our modern millenial all-internet world. A live-stream show about exorcisms, secretly a hoax, gets visited by an actual demon and the many confrontations can start. The story has layers, backstories, twists, but the problem with all that is that it all (including the characters) resembles seen and expierenced horror trappings, cliches & has a pretty high predictability factor. Too much familiarity. In the end, "The Cleansing Hour" proves to be less original (in almost all aspects of filmmaking) than it might appear in the beginning. However, I wish to compliment them on the visuals - the camera work is dynamic and interesting enough, there's enough gore and various enjoyable fx, both practical and cgi, none of which stand out as bad or effortless. The movie has its action side, without which it'd be even lamer. As for the acting, I thought it's quite okay, assuring enough, on the background of many other imperfections.
If I was you I would be weary of all the high ratings (and also the extremely low ones), "The Cleansing Hour" is sort of unique on the surface, but after spending the 90 minutes closely together with it, I can surely say that it's nothing much more than another mainstream take on the exorcism horror subgenre, just visually well enough done to appeal to the masses. My rating: 5/10.
The filmmakers here take up the good old possession horror shtick, with stereotypes and all & puts in our modern millenial all-internet world. A live-stream show about exorcisms, secretly a hoax, gets visited by an actual demon and the many confrontations can start. The story has layers, backstories, twists, but the problem with all that is that it all (including the characters) resembles seen and expierenced horror trappings, cliches & has a pretty high predictability factor. Too much familiarity. In the end, "The Cleansing Hour" proves to be less original (in almost all aspects of filmmaking) than it might appear in the beginning. However, I wish to compliment them on the visuals - the camera work is dynamic and interesting enough, there's enough gore and various enjoyable fx, both practical and cgi, none of which stand out as bad or effortless. The movie has its action side, without which it'd be even lamer. As for the acting, I thought it's quite okay, assuring enough, on the background of many other imperfections.
If I was you I would be weary of all the high ratings (and also the extremely low ones), "The Cleansing Hour" is sort of unique on the surface, but after spending the 90 minutes closely together with it, I can surely say that it's nothing much more than another mainstream take on the exorcism horror subgenre, just visually well enough done to appeal to the masses. My rating: 5/10.