Devil’s Five

The next chapter of Devil’s Five is Choke. Written and directed by Edwin M. Figueroa, this narrative tracks the revenge of a hotshot director’s wife, Lillianna (Megan Penn), against her husband for infidelity and telling his friends how she likes to have sex. The plan involves her making a sex tape with the cinematographer of the director’s latest production. But as she’s getting into it, something possesses Lillianna leading her to murder everyone standing in her way.

Choke begins rather awkwardly, with still images from the movie’s premiere and voice-over by the DP. As a result, it feels stylistically at odds with the rest of the film, and I genuinely thought my screener was broken as the image had stopped moving. But, once the plot gets underway, it is enlivened by fantastic editing and a fierce performance by Penn, who goes all out to be as terrifying as possible.

The final story is Stash, which absolutely rules, despite being a bit predictable. Wickham is back at the helm here, though Timothy David Clark wrote this segment. Faith (Almog Pail) is spearheading a fundraising event for a local church that was recently vandalized. Minister Malcolm (Jonathan Weirich) receives a phone call from a mysterious benefactor, who will match the current amount raised, if, and only if, the church members undertake a geocache hunt. Faith takes the gig as the “Stasher” and must go into the nearby woods late at night to find all five hidden items.

“Pail is fantastic as the frightened but helpful Faith…”

While the true nature of everyone at the church and their fundraising is pretty easy to figure out, without a doubt, this is the best segment Devil’s Five has to offer. Pail is fantastic as the frightened but helpful Faith, while Weirich exudes creepy confidence and charisma that dutifully masks his true intentions. And, yet again, the cinematography and score are top-notch.

Of course, interspersed throughout the flash drive videos, the wraparound mystery unfolds until everything comes to a head. And despite various issues, like the ending of one segment and the beginning of a new one being somewhat murky, the way each thread converges shows true creativity and serves up some solid scares.

While imperfect and far too long, Devil’s Five is an ambitious undertaking that looks great and consistently puts the audience on the edge of their seats. Now, if only we could get an editor to trim up a few scenes here and there, and we’d have a new horror classic. But, alas, what we have is a good, though uneven, offering.