The first teaser for Oscar-nominated filmmaker Neill Blomkamp's Demonic has just been released. Blomkamp has also written the script for what will be his first directorial effort in 6 years. Blomkamp received his Oscar nomination for his 2009 film District 9, which was adored by fans and critics alike. After his last film titled Chappie didn’t receive the best press or reviews, Demonic in some ways will be a new introduction for Blomkamp. Distributed by IFC Midnight, Demonic is a smaller scale and lower-budget film due to the pandemic shutting down the possibility of creating larger-scale projects.
Demonic was shot in Canada during the pandemic last summer. The fact that the film had to be made with fewer resources seems to have creatively challenged Blomkamp. The director told IndieWire that he decided to make the project while living in the country, noting that he had always been interested in films like Paranormal Activity and other low-budget productions.
Blomkamp then explained that they made use of the locations available and filmed the project throughout the previous summer, doing the best with what they had. So, it seems that the limitations of the pandemic were the extra push Blomkamp needed to make Demonic a reality. The film’s genre is a mixture of sci-fi combined with horror and from the short teaser that was released, the horror aspect seems to be much more prominent.
Although the teaser is only roughly a minute long, it is filled to the brim with eerie laughter, hellfire, and a demon who is hiding in the closet. According to the official synopsis provided by IFC Midnight, Demonic centers around “a young woman who unleashes terrifying demons when supernatural forces at the root of a decades-old rift between mother and daughter are revealed.” The fact that Blomkamp is choosing an intimate, out-of-touch family dynamic to be the crutch of the film tells fans that Demonic will not just be all bloody guts and a symphony of jump scares throughout the duration. The main character is played by actress Carly Pope, and the teaser shows what looks to be a virtual reality world that she is entering.
The sci-fi aspect of the film will most certainly be linked to this virtual reality world, yet it’s not even mentioned in the synopsis. The teaser does not entirely reveal the connection between the virtual reality world and the mysteriously eerie past between the mother and daughter.
Through the teaser alone, Demonic seems as though it may surpass audience expectations and maybe even those of critics as well. This would be welcomed by Blomkamp fans, who hope to see his work return to the levels of District 9.
Demonic will be in theaters and available for streaming on August 20th, 2021.
Source: IFC/YouTube, IndieWire