• Straight to Video
• Director: Todd Michael Smith
• Written by: Eric Enck
• Running Time: 90 minutes
• Language: English
• MPAA Rating: UNRATED
• Cast: Alex Rosa, Michele Hogsett, Jim Hogsett, Ben Kacon, Lady Fist, Todd Michael Smith, Eric Enck

Thanks to an eerie soundtrack and a confusing, intense and absolutely unrelenting visual style, Smith’s “Devotion” takes on an ever-increasing nightmarish quality that, like the characters in the film, you feel helpless to get out of. Like grazing an exposed nerve, this film absolutely nags at you, eventually wearing you down until you actually want to cry. With the exception of maybe Wolfgang Lehmkuhl’s "Cannibal" or Peter Weir’s “Fearless”, both films that took on many of the same qualities as “Devotion”, no film has left me so emotionally abraded.

The story concerns four friends, Damian (Ben Kacon), Brian (Jim Hogsett), Jen (Michele Hogsett) and Mark (Alex Rosa), each of which has grown increasingly disillusioned with their lives and are looking for something – anything, to fill the void. Each has a story of heartache, something of which seems to pull them together; Jen lost her adoring father during a roofing accident and is forced to live with a verbally abusive mother; Brian watched his father kill his mother during a murder suicide and has been floundering in a seemingly meaningless day to day existence ever since; Damian has become a social reject due to a nasty self-inflicted burn scar on his face and Mark feels displaced from society due to his overt homosexuality, a homosexuality that he and his closest friends are okay with but, sadly, the same can’t be said for the local community. Recognizing in each other their individual beauty and uniqueness, they have grown close over the years – a closeness that they themselves refer to on more than one occasion as, 'Devotion'. Following a verbal scuffle outside of a plaza, highlighting briefly the social exclusion they feel daily, an agitated Mark and Damian quickly meet up with Jen and Brian at a local pub. Over a game of pool, they engage in some absorbing discussion about suicide and about visiting that old abandoned and, supposedly, haunted house known as ‘The Devotion House’ -- a place where, only recently, a young woman, Heather Phelps (Lady Fist), was brutally murdered. Like a moth to a flame, each feels inexplicably drawn to it -- drawn to its darkness and mysteriousness. Brian levels the conversation with a revelation so shocking that each of his friends is taken by complete surprise. "I have cancer," he tells them.

Overcome by their barren future prospects, and their lives, so desolate and sadness filled, these four friends on this night, cautiously agree to a suicide pact. On a whim, they acquiesce to carry out the gruesome event at the old “Devotion House”. The first to arrive at the old house that night is Damian. He's alone and what happens to him works to only foreshadow the horrific events to come. What he sees and experiences inside the house; a bloodied naked woman, cackling, dancing inside a pentagram; a strange masked individual hovering about with an axe; a spindly nude cannibal and a decaying but animated corpse – these nightmarish incarnations, clearly ascended from the bowels of hell itself, await his three friends. No strangers to the house Jen, Brian and Mark had visited it earlier in the film but were frightened off by a pile of bones in the middle of the floor, as well as, the sound of a screeching woman - maybe Heather Phelps herself, from somewhere inside the house, and a window that seemed to mysteriously close on its own.

Frightened but intrigued, the group hesitantly return to house later that night to carry out their grisly pact. Right away they notice some odd things, like the electricity, which suddenly works; a saw blade, which juts ominously out of the ceiling, and that the pile of bones from a few nights earlier has strangely disappeared. Jen surmises that it must have been the police. Settling into the moment, the three chat about life and death, with Mark drawing up a chilling and thought provoking existentialist scenario about their lives having no meaning and an after life void of Heaven, Hell or a purpose. At best the conversation, which feels genuine and authentic maybe because it’s propagating Enck and Smith’s own philosophies about life, as it conveys a truth that time in conjunction with life destroys everything. It's inescapable and these characters know it. Later, they ascertain that Damian, who, unbeknownst to them, had arrived earlier but had since disappeared into the bowels of the house, has chickened out, leaving them alone to carry out their pact. This sets up what is possibly one of the most painful and intense slices of independent cinema that I can ever recall as these three friends engage in a game of Russian roulette with Brian's handgun.

Some I sense will feel that this scene, or at least their reasoning for suicide, strains for credibility, but I bought into every second of it. I think Smith goes a long way in showing how disenfranchised these young people are by emphasizing their friendship and their unique love for each. Mark’s reasoning, which is the weak link here logically, is believable simply because Rosa is such a talented actor and you can't help but sympathize with his wishes. They run into problems, sadly, as they endeavor to carry out their death wish. Wrestling with the idea of watching each other die and who will be the last to go - this scene is just heartbreaking. Brian’s final prayer to God, asking for forgiveness and mercy, adding, “We love you,” brought a tear to my eye. Note the haunting image of an Angel emerging from the sea earlier in the film and factor it into this segment. What does the Angel represent? Salvation?

Sadly, the film loses steam in the final moments as the three are swallowed up by the demons in the house in a series of gruesome and ultimately meaningless sequences that move away from originality and veers into the usual slasher film conventions. The ending, which is ambiguous to a fault, never clearly establishes what has happened. Symbolic images of pentagrams, of bloodied bodies being hacked up, only work to betray the earlier part of the film, which felt both inventive and original. The avenue that writer Enck, and director Smith, opt to travel down feels shallow and empty and the arrival is not as provoking or powerful as it might well could have been. There are a series of subplots, or maybe they would be better categorized as back-stories, regarding the various entities which reside in the house, each seemingly representing - maybe coincidentally - an aspect (or a quality) of the four friends. Because of the way in which their stories are presented - disjointed and fleetingly, it’s hard to get a genuine feel for them. We have a sense of what they are doing but we’re never entirely sure why they are doing it. The Satanic angle, which emerges early on, is almost entirely forgotten until the final moments where it is re-introduced but seems contrived.

Alex Rosa, playing the openly gay, Mark, a guy who is devoted to his friends to the point that he is willing to end his life rather than exist in a world without them, is an absolute stand-out. This guy has a magnetic, almost James Deen like quality, about him that draws you to him whenever he’s on the screen. Far from a caricature, Rosa feels honest and real. Real-life couple Jim Hogsett and Michele Hogsett, members of the Delaware indie band, Semiblind, have a very lengthy and very dramatic sequence in which they pour out their hearts to each other. The scene, although powerful, feels uneven at times simply because of their lack of experience as actors. This isn’t to say that real honesty doesn’t flow through at times. When working, you get the sense that this is a real couple delving into some emotional areas they might not want to have delved into in an attempt to offer a performance that feels genuine. Ben Kacon, as Damian, a martial artist by trade, has very few lines and is relegated to a scene with Alex Rosa that feels awkward and strange due mainly to the Enck’s dialogue which is, in at least their scene, uneven. Sadly, Kacon is nearly forgotten in the late stages of the film. Regarding the gore, the film features a never-ending onslaught of gruesomeness and brutality and the blood flows by the bucketful. A scene where a woman is violently raped by a decaying man as worms dribble from his vacant eye-socket is sure to offend. The most contentious issue of the film might just be in the way it seems to illuminate the repressive nature of religion and the evil that can arise from such constraints.

Interesting to note, Todd Michael Smith seems to end the film on a note of poignancy with a real estate agent (Eric Enck) and the head of a wrecking crew (Todd Michael Smith) discussing tearing down the place thanks to a bunch of fresh murders. Note the film’s writer and director play the roles. Is this a nod to the film itself? Such is the theme running through the narrative that life, or time, destroys all. I was wondering if Smith and Enck were suggesting that even their art will not endure the rigors of time. Will it, like the characters in the film, be swallowed up in the proverbial "Devotion House" known as time?