Controversial Horror Movie Now Streaming on Netflix

With the first day of October comes not only brand new waves of content across the many streaming services but a fresh batch of horror titles that all of them are eager to get in front of horror hungry audiences for spooky season. Though Netflix will be debuting some original horror content throughout the month it’s the controversial movie they added today that audiences should be aware of, 2012’s The Devil Inside. Unlike movies like I Spit On Your Grave or Cannibal Holocaust which made headlines and became infamous because of gratuitous violence, The Devil Inside reached its infamy levels for a different reason. Spoilers follow!

Released in the wake of the success of Paranormal Activity and in the heyday of Hollywood studios chasing cheap found footage horror movies, The Devil Inside debuted in January of 2012 and quickly achieved jeers from audiences around the world. So what earned it so much hatred? For context the film tells the story of a young woman reuniting with her mother who allegedly had killed three people twenty years prior while an exorcism was being performed on her. When the film reaches its conclusion though the action cuts off quickly in a big moment (not unlike other films of the found footage subgenre like The Blair Witch Project). Afterward though a title card seemingly implying that rest of the movie had to be seen on the internet once the audience got home appeared on the screen. This is one reason the film would mark the rare feat of an “F” CinemaScore.

From there the “ending,” or lack-there-of from this movie pushed the film into legend. Audience members that were there can’t forget it and how they felt cheated while those that weren’t aware of it all sometimes can’t believe that’s how the film wrapped up.

But what if that wasn’t at all what the filmmakers intended? What if for the better part of a decade audiences had it all wrong?

Speaking previously in an interview with  The Movie Crypt podcast, The Devil Inside director William Brent Bell opened up about the conclusion, noting that the film was produced as an independent film that the decision to end the movie abruptly came well before they were acquired by Paramount Pictures. Even after the studio nabbed the rights to distribute the film, and the relentless test screening process began, the tests continuously came back positive with audiences really responding to the quick ending.

On the podcast, Bell noted: “Then, at the last second, the last thing that the president of Paramount said is, ‘There’s a couple of storylines that aren’t wrapped up and I think they’re going to be confused. What if we put a card at the end of the movie that says, ‘Go to this website’ and then it’s basically the DVD extras on this website?’…I remember another one of the execs there was like, ‘We’re going to break the internet with this.’ None of us looked at it as if the movie’s not over and you have to go watch this to understand the rest. This was just DVD extras, cut scenes, it was just in addition.”

The filmmaker further revealed that when it came time to add this title card the executive that made the suggestion didn’t show up, prompting a debate about where it should appear. Bell argued that it should pop up at the end of the credits, with someone else arguing for right after the cut, and in the end, as we know, they won. He went on to say that if they had done what they’d done before and tested this cut they’d have known how poorly it played to audiences.

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“It’s one thing to end the movie abruptly but then to throw that up was like insult to injury,” Bell said. “When it was a bold choice to end the movie like that but then to say that it gave the wrong impression and people took it the wrong way. Had we put it at the end of the credits it probably would have been a non-issue, that part of it, and it just would have been a bold ending.”

In the end, The Devil Inside still grossed over $100 million at the global box office. Tragically, the website that hosted “The Rossi Files,” the URL that viewers were directed to at the end of the movie, is no longer functioning and the title card at the end of The Devil Inside has been relegated to the history of ill-advised movie moments.