I'm going to try regularly recommending pieces of pop culture and media on this blog. These aren't reviews, since a lot of these are not things that I have consumed recently, but you can probably assume that I would give most of these recommendations 10/10 stars. (I suck at grading things. I am very indulgent.)
Demon is a perfect movie. It's an allegory about willful ignorance and the rationalization of tragedy. It's a horror movie about people ignoring horror. It has an incredible lead performance from Itay Tyran as a man on his wedding day being tormented by a dybbuk (a demonic spirit from Jewish folklore) while everyone tries to downplay the madness of what is happening.
I don't know why this movie seems to have disappeared from the cultural consciousness. If there was any justice in the world, this would be up there with The Babadook and Hereditary in the modern canon of great horror films. Perhaps the lack of discussion around it is due to the tragic death of its director, Marcin Wrona. While you might think that a director dying around the time that his horror film is being shown in festivals might lend it an air of notoriety and lead more people to seek it out, Wrona's death by suicide was deeply tragic in a way that does not lend itself to Exorcist-style urban legends. I think that ironically, a movie about people trying to ignore the suffering elephant in the room ultimately fell by the wayside in part due to a horrible tragedy.
And worth noting in our current pop cultural climate, movies get buzz because people want to ask the question "What's next?" What's the next movie in this superhero franchise going to be? What book will be the next Hunger Games? What's going to be on Disney+ next year? We live in this strange state of hungering for the next big thing, like we're afraid that our endless supply of content is somehow going to run dry.
And I think that means that the swan song of Wrona is unfortunately going to remain in obscurity for a little while. With Ari Aster and Jennifer Kent, you can ask "What's after Hereditary" and "What's after The Babadook?" You can't do that with Wrona, and that's a terrible tragedy.
So please, if you're a horror fan and you enjoy the little intellectual renaissance the genre is undergoing, please watch Demon. It's a brilliant movie that deserves to be seen.
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