JP Nunez
I first saw the trailer for Devil’s Workshop about a month ago, and I was instantly hooked. The film looked like it was going to feature great acting, a really enticing mystery, and some excellent supernatural horror, so it seemed right up my alley. I couldn’t wait to check this movie out, but after finally getting the chance to see it, I’m sad to say that it didn’t live up to my expectations.
Devil’s Workshop was written and directed by Chris Von Hoffmann, and it stars Radha Mitchell, Timothy Granaderos, and Emile Hirsch. It’s about a struggling actor named Clayton who’s competing with his rival Donald for a role as a demonologist in a movie. To get a leg up on Donald, he contacts a real-life demonologist named Eliza to help him prepare for the role, and while at her house, he undergoes a strange exorcistic ritual that may or may not lead to his downfall.
As you might be able to tell from that plot synopsis, Devil’s Workshop is all about the struggles of being an actor, so if there’s one thing this film absolutely needed to get right, it was the performances. And thankfully, they’re all fantastic. Even the side characters are played really well, so I had no trouble at all connecting with this entire cast.
But obviously, the standouts here are the three leads, and for my money, they’re hands down the best thing about this movie. Let’s start with Emile Hirsch, who plays Donald. He’s one of my favorite actors working today, so he was one of the big reasons why I wanted to see this film. I could watch him read out of a phonebook for two hours, so I fully expected him to nail this performance. And he absolutely does. As always, he just feels totally natural in the role, so I completely believed everything he said and every emotion his character went through.
In contrast, I didn’t really know what to expect from Timothy Granaderos. I haven’t seen any of his previous work, so I didn’t know what kind of performance he would give but he won me over in the very first scene of the film. He plays Clayton, and Devil’s Workshop opens with him giving a monologue at an audition. He delivers every line with the perfect emotional inflection, so I ate up every word that came out of his mouth. I knew right then and there that I was really going to enjoy this character, and he didn’t disappoint me a single time throughout the rest of the movie.
Last but not least, we have Radha Mitchell, who plays Eliza, and she’s just as good as her two costars. She delivers her lines with a very soft-spoken, almost ASMR-like voice, and that creates an air of mystery around her character. You can tell there’s something different about her, but you’re not sure what it is. Is it just a result of her unusual line of work, or is there something a bit more sinister going on with her? Mitchell’s performance is ambiguous enough that it could go either way (until you finally learn the truth, of course!), so I found the mystery surrounding her character super intriguing.
With three excellent lead performances, you’d expect Devil’s Workshop to be great, but unfortunately, it makes a few crucial mistakes that end up ruining it. For starters, it uses Donald in a really weird way. Soon after Clayton goes to Eliza’s house to prepare for the demonologist role, the movie begins to feel a lot like A Dark Song. It’s just two people in a house preparing for a ritual and then performing it, and I found this part of the film pretty interesting. I had no idea what was going to happen to Clayton, so I really wanted to keep watching to find out.
However, there are a couple of times when the movie switches back to Donald and shows us what he’s doing, and that choice didn’t work for me at all. While those scenes do flesh out the character of Donald a bit more, and they do ultimately contribute to the film’s overall theme of the struggles of being an actor, they also damage the story. And the way I see it, the story is more important than anything else. Movies simply are stories, so everything in them has to either flow from the story or contribute to it.
But those scenes with Donald sacrifice the story for the sake of the characters and the theme, and that’s a huge faux pas in my book. They feel completely out of place, and every time Devil’s Workshop switches to them, it kills a lot of the story’s momentum and forces the film to build it back up again.
To be fair, that only happens a couple of times, so if it was the worst thing about this movie, I could’ve easily forgiven it. But unfortunately, it’s not. At the end of the day, what really killed Devil’s Workshop for me was the final act. The horror didn’t work for me at all, and I felt like the story didn’t go anywhere interesting. It kind of just fizzles out at the end, and that retroactively makes the entire journey there seem almost pointless.
Sure, I had a good time for most of it, but it’s not the kind of journey that can stand on its own if the destination isn’t good. Rather, it’s the kind that needs a satisfying payoff to fully work, and since we don’t get that, the movie ends up being pretty forgettable. So at the end of the day, I’m sad to say that I wouldn’t recommend Devil’s Workshop. Sure, there’s enough to enjoy here that it’s by no means a waste of your time, but with so much other exciting new horror content coming our way this Halloween season, you’re much better off giving this film a pass and spending your time and money on something else.
Devil’s Workshop was released on VOD and in limited theaters on September 30.
