'Diabolic' Review: Mediocre Religious Horror Puts Mormons in the Crosshairs

Diabolicwants to be an elevated, A24-worthy, religious horror film, but really it’s just another underachieving, blood-soaked opportunity for characters to do blatantly stupid things in order to keep the scares coming. It’s the overdue second effort from Australian director Daniel J. Phillips, whose career strategy thus far seems to involve making horror movies based on various religions. His previous film, 2009’s mediocre but promising Awoken, features a heavy Catholic bent, while Diabolic’s jumping off point is the Mormon faith — the rather mysterious nature of which would seem ripe for religious horror treatment. But all the somber jabbering about “the elders” and “eternal praise to the King Emmanuel” is less a way to examine Mormonism or religious extremism in general than it is to create mood and set us up for overly familiar scares.

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