There’s a type of film—I don’t have the vocabulary for it—where the action is loud, brash, and in-your-face. Colors are often lurid and, in horror, gross sounds are emphasized. I’m not sure what it’s called, but it’s the style used with Night of the Demons. I didn’t realize until after I’d seen it that it was a remake of an earlier film by the same name. The one I saw was the 2009 version. I’d just finished a book about demons, and I was looking over Amazon Prime and what I could watch without spending any more money. Well, I did learn something. But first, a little plot reveal: a group of friends are going to a Halloween party in a haunted mansion. Mainly they’re looking for controlled substances and uninhibited sex. The party hostess has rented said haunted mansion for the night.
Once they get there the final girl, Maddie (and you can tell from the beginning that she’ll be the final girl) starts to realize that there seem to be supernatural forces at play. The cops show up and break up the rave, but seven kids remain behind since they’ve been locked in. They find a hidden room where the bodies of six previous victims have decomposed. This leads to the possession of the woman hosting the group and these demons are transferred either by bite or sex—they are sexually transmitted demons. So, naturally, all the friends except the final girl fall victim. These demons dissolve in the sunlight unless they get seven victims, so when Maddie makes it through Halloween night, the demons are defeated.
What makes this moving interesting is the type of demons on show. These seven demons are so bad that they’ve been kicked out of Hell—they don’t follow the rules. This made me think. Logically, no demons in Hell follow the rules. The root of the word “pandemonium” means “all demons.” If none of them obey rules, how can any be kicked out for breaking rules? Laws and rules are what preserve any civilization. Those who use their money and power to flaunt the law are, in their own way, demonic. These demons are kept at bay by spells written on the walls of one room in the house. Those rules they must obey. Is this a parable about free will? It doesn’t seem sophisticated enough for that. Night of the Demons is one of those fast, loud, lurid movies that need a monster. Demons, which have no basic form, seem to be purpose made to fill such gaps.