Asmodexia (Movie Review)

We’re so accustomed to seeing cult leaders as all-out villains (Sacrament, Red State) that it’s both difficult and intriguing to be asked to accept Asmodexia’s priest Eloy as the anti-hero it needs him to be--at least for a while. The abusive founder of a corrupt, now-defunct cult, he also appears to be the only person positioned to fend off the end of the world. It’s a twist with potential, and the movie is loaded with atmosphere and backstory, but it soon descends into a mythology so goofy it feels like it was concocted on a fan-fiction message board at 3 in the morning.

Eloy was once the head of a powerful sect, but now he’s reduced to traveling rural Spain with his granddaughter, Alba, herself a gifted exorcist, purging demons from the bodies of the possessed. She may be the only person available to listen to his apocalyptic visions, but that doesn’t dissuade him. All around them there are vindicating omens, from outbreaks of ritualistic violence in other parts of the world to a heat wave in the middle of December. That’s December 2012, to be exact, though Asmodexia wasn’t released until 2014--a plot detail that’s now unintentionally quaint.

Meanwhile, two of Eloy’s former disciples, Ona and her sister Diana, have reconnected years after the trauma and resentment surrounding the cult’s collapse drove them apart. Ona, who caught the worst of Eloy’s violence, self-medicated with drugs and ended up in a mental asylum. Diana joined the police force, and is now in pursuit of Eloy and Alba, as well as the unmarked vans and hooded men that seem to be following them. Much of their story takes place from Ona’s perspective, showing the hospital in increasing disarray as the staff is wiped out by illness and Ona and the other patients are plagued by otherworldly forces.

Director Marc Carreté shoots his sets with the skill of an experienced documentary filmmaker, making gorgeous and effective use of abandoned structures, unusual rural architecture, and most exceptionally the sprawling, graffitied complex where the remnants of Eloy’s homeless followers hide from the world. Though this lush cinematographic style has a tendency to make horror movies feel too self-conscious (Look! We can be high-brow!), Carreté lingers on the gory aftermaths of possession and murder with so much lurid detail that it cuts through the stuffiness. When it comes to editing and scoring, however, this baroque quality is heavy handed: Carreté has never met a tilted camera angle he can’t accompany with the sound of a fist banging on an out of tune piano, and as the movie goes on, the moodiness doesn’t distract enough from the hammy overacting.

The ending is so jarringly incomprehensible you’ll probably worry you missed something important, but you also probably won't care. At that point the whole affair has crumbled and it doesn’t feel worth picking through the poorly edited pieces to figure the particulars out. Asmodexia utterly demolishes, in its final scenes, any hope it had of being an above average possession film, but that doesn’t mean its better sequences won’t whet the appetites of fans looking for something different.