She Devil review

By Simon Thompson

Director/co-writer Allie Perison’s She Devil is a well-directed short film, that, while being pleasant enough to look at, suffers from both cheesy and predictable dialogue as well as an ending more obvious and hacky than a Jimmy Carr punchline.

She Devil follows Gemma and Mae (Paula Andrea Placido and Phoebe Voss) a couple attending the break up party of Sarah (Jackie Gonzalez Durruthy) that is being hosted by Lake (Taylor Owen). To cut a long story short, Lake is an incredibly insidious bitchy school bully type, and as the party continues long into the night Sarah begins to realise that Lake is some kind of Goop brand Charles Manson-like cult leader who wields a sinister amount of control over the rest of the guests.

The main issue with this short is the characters themselves. Gemma and Mae aren’t particularly interesting characters and feel more like paper thin cut outs from some early 2010s mumblecore movie than they do three dimensional human beings. The issue with Perison’s and co-writer Matt Almquist’s script is that all of the dialogue given to the supporting characters in Lake’s influence largely consists of a cacophony of woos and shrieks that outstays it welcome in less than a minute.

Now I know that Lake and her equally vapid & irritating friends, are meant to be disliked by the audience but the characters themselves hit so close to the bone that I was wishing some kind of friendly neighbourhood eldritch horror, masked serial killer, or disgruntled attack helicopter pilot would swoop in and murder them all before the credits rolled.

From a directing standpoint however, She Devil has a lot going for it. Perison clearly knows how to light a horror movie and create a sense of atmosphere via a visual backdrop, the camera is well positioned, and Persion’s extensive use of tight and intimate angles complements the movie’s house party setting nicely. Cinematographer Ellin Aldana employs a mixture of bright colours for the party sequences, but as the inciting incident kicks in switches to an eye catching 1970s giallo-style bold red filter that correlates with the change in tone.
Overall, She Devil is a well-made but generic short horror film that is let down by its script. At 15 minutes long, it hits its story beats steadily enough so if you’re curious enough to see it and make your own judgements She Devil isn’t going to take hours off your day.

She Devil screened as part of Grimmfest part 2.