Critics reviews

Born of a decade renowned for excess, Demons trumps (sorry) most other film within a film conceits by having a Super-80s-Movie-Within-A-Super-80s-Movie. Not only is the flick that our heroine ends up at filled with amazing hairstyles and fashion, but it also turns out that the mere act of beholding this Pandora's Box irrationally unleashes an ancient evil.

Where A Blade in the Dark is a minimalist giallo, Demons is a ballsy maximalist gore film. Recalling Phenomena (1985) (Dario Argento also produced Demons), wall-to-wall 80s rock accompanies and enhances the film's abrupt tonal and rhythmic shifts from one scene to the next. A night at the cinema turns into a night of the demons.

Begat by genuine Italian horror royalty, Demons might play like a wink-wink meta experiment if it wasn't so masterfully crafted and so fucking fun to watch... Cinematographer Gianlorenzo Battaglia bathes his classical frames in equal amounts of blood and neon light. Goblin's own Claudio Simonetti provides the eerie, pulsing score, paired with a head-banging 80s metal soundtrack. It's a perfect example of exceeding through excess.

This self-referential sense of the narrative eating its own tale is intentional and essential to Demons's claustrophobically narcissistic sense of terror, which director Lamberto Bava exacerbates with a gift for color coordination that would've made his legendary father, Mario, proud.