THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT
A small town in New England is the scene of strange phenomena: a silent young girl finds her voice and declares that she has witnessed an apparition of the Virgin. The city quickly becomes a sanctuary as the Vatican and an unscrupulous journalist (excellent antihero choice) attempt to uncover the truth.
The film by Evan Spiliotopoulos (a young screenwriter who signs his first production there) stands out from the current horror production. It is based on a paradoxical idea: to make extraordinary and listed situations (the apparitions of Lourdes, Fatima or La Salette) the reverse of their meanings. Miracles are here a ruse of the devil who tries to lose those who nourish their faith in them.
Thus arising from a clever dialectical inversion, The Devil’s Chapel seems to give a facelift to a genre that it also regularly feeds with a classic rhetoric consisting in startling the viewer by usual means including the recurring appearance of a draped, infernal and deadly creature. We can regret, however, a touch of final “religiousness” which seems to contradict everything that has happened previously.
American film by Evan Spiliotopoulos. With Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Katie Aselton, William Sadler (1 h 40). www.sonypictures.fr/movie/la-chapelle-du-diable