Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (July 17, 2024)
Whenever an actor hits the big time, their old movies re-enter the public discussion. With Sydney Sweeney Hollywood’s new “It Girl”, this means a reissue of 2018’s little-seen horror flick Along Came the Devil.
After the death of their mother Sarah (Heather DeVan), young kids Jordan (Kyla Deaver) and Ashley (Lia McHugh) grow up under the boot of their abusive father (Mark Ashworth). Eventually adult Jordan goes away to college and leaves teen Ashley (Sweeney) to live with their maternal aunt Tanya (Jessica Barth).
At a party, Ashley participates in a supposed séance that leaves her with apparent visions of her late mother. This leads to additional paranormal activities that seem to bring demonic forces to the fore.
Though allegedly Along got a theatrical release in 2018, I can find no box office info about this – heck, Wikipedia doesn’t even feature a plot synopsis. In addition, the movie supposedly came out on Blu-ray in 2018, but I also fail to locate any information to support this.
We add to this the fact that the movie emerged in 2018 but apparently shot in 2015. All these factors add up to what we call “bad signs” in terms of the film’s potential to give us a quality product.
To date, writer/director Jason DeVan’s career consists of Along, a 2014 flick called Mindless and Along’s 2019 sequel. IMDB claims he has two movies in the pipeline, but five years between projects also falls into that “bad sign” category, at least in terms of whether we think a filmmaker might have the skills to create something good.
Despite all these warnings, I won’t judge DeVan’s other flicks based on a screening of this one. Heck, maybe Mindless and/or Along 2 provide compelling tales.
But Along itself? Not a good movie.
It always seems like a bad sign when a film opens with a text prologue to explain characters and situations. Sometimes these choices work fine and become necessary due to historical background or other complexities.
But Along doesn’t deliver a story with a lot of depth or need to explain much to the viewer. Let the characters toss out 20 seconds of dialogue and get us up to date.
Even without that clumsy launch, Along sputters. It stumbles from one awkwardly moody scene to another without a lot of real momentum and never threatens to get into a groove.
Really, Along comes across like a concept more than an actual movie. It flits with themes and plot points but it never develops them into a coherent package.
Indeed, it often feels like chunks of the film go missing. Not that the editing makes one sequence suddenly jump into another, but because the end product doesn’t explain much well, the movie often doesn’t make much sense.
Actually, the film occasionally does feel like DeVan forgot to include some scenes. For instance, we get a sequence in which an upset Ashley storms out of school after a traumatic incident.
Do we see this event? No – for reasons completely unknown to me, Along fails to let us view what happened, even though this serves no apparent dramatic purpose and the movie would feel more complete with that scene included.
Perhaps if Along managed to bring some actual terror, I wouldn’t mind the problematic stabs at story-telling. Instead, we wind up with little more than trite jump scares.
Don’t expect much from Sweeney, though that comes as no surprise. I have yet to see many signs that she can act, and her flat performance here doesn’t indicate that she showed much potential back in 2015.
It doesn’t help that Along’s third act devolves into a complete rip-off of 1973’s classic The Exorcist. The film doesn’t just echo that film – it almost literally remakes that flick’s exorcism scenes.
This just feels pathetic. I can swallow Exorcist influences but DeVan’s decision to steal blatantly really grates.
All of this leads to a clumsy and stiff attempt at supernatural horror. I don’t expect Exorcist-level terror from a low-budget effort like Along, but basic competence and a semi-coherent narrative would be nice.
