Adult children caring for aging parents is a stage of life so familiar it’s not surprising horror filmmakers have tapped into its more uncomfortable, dread-filled aspects. Relic, The Visit, and The Manor are all recent examples—but it’s hard to call up a title that tackles the theme so gruesomely as Australia’s The Demon Disorder.
The Demon Disorder is co-written and directed by Steven Boyle, making his debut behind the camera after a storied career as a special effects artist; among his many credits include stints in the Star Wars, Matrix, and Hobbit franchises. But even if you know that going into The Demon Disorder, it still won’t prepare you for how visceral it is—emphasis on the body horror and “slithering, oozing creature horror”—sometimes separate, often combined, and executed with the loving care of someone who knows exactly how to freak out an audience.
The main story unfolds across just two locations: an auto body shop run by Graham (Christian Willis), and the run-down farmhouse Graham fled with no intention of ever returning, but which is still occupied by his older brother Jake (Dirk Hunter) and younger brother Phillip (Charles Cottier). When Jake shows up at Graham’s garage to drunkenly insist it’s long past time for a visit—with the ominous mention of a “blood oath”—it’s clear Graham would rather do anything but return to his childhood home. Its walls and outbuildings, particularly a chicken coop, drip with memories of the family’s troubled patriarch (Lord of the Rings‘ John Noble), whose death precipitated Graham’s departure.
But the past, it seems, still has a strong hold on the place—and the violent vibes Dad left behind have begun to take on a decidedly supernatural tinge, with Phillip now displaying violent mood shifts that exactly mirror his father’s downward spiral.
It would be an easy route to make the story be “Phillip is possessed by his late father” or even “Phillip is possessed by the demon that previously possessed his late father,” but The Demon Disorder proves less than interested in delineating exactly what kind of occult nightmare has been unleashed here. (There’s a touch of When Evil Lurks in the way its menace appears to be a spontaneous rather than conjured intrusion.) Instead, it’s focused on how the brothers must move past their estrangement—particularly Graham and Jake—and work together to protect their family, despite already being exhausted from years of dealing with drama and trauma. “You see enough strange, weird shit, it just starts to feel normal after awhile,” Jake admits at one point.
If the movie’s dementia/terminal illness metaphor is conveyed perhaps a little too obviously, pairing it with a narrative about healing broken sibling relationships gives the story a welcome complexity. It helps that the performances are excellent; Noble’s character, glimpsed in flashbacks, is outright terrifying, and Willis and Hunter have a lived-in chemistry that brings authenticity to the love-hate extremes of their sibling relationship.
But really, the main reason to check out The Demon Disorder is for what Boyle brings to the table in the special effects realm. John Carpenter’s The Thing and the Alien films likely provided some inspiration, with maybe even a little Evil Dead II thrown in there too. What appear to be mostly practical effects—hideous wounds, flesh-splitting atrocities, eviscerated animal carcasses, vats of blood—elevate the terror exponentially, particularly when it comes to the various creatures that slither into the story.
The Demon Disorder arrives September 6 on Shudder; it will also be available to stream on AMC+.
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