'Diabolic' Review: Mediocre Religious Horror Puts Mormons in the Crosshairs
#Diabolic#Daniel J. Phillips#Religious Horror#Mormonism#A24-style#Awoken#Film Review
📌 Key Takeaways
Diabolic aims for elevated religious horror but falls short of A24-style quality
Director Daniel J. Phillips follows his 2009 Catholic-themed film Awoken with this Mormon-themed horror
The film uses religious terminology superficially for mood rather than meaningful exploration
Characters make illogical decisions to facilitate scares, undermining the narrative
📖 Full Retelling
Director Daniel J. Phillips released his second horror film 'Diabolic' in 2025, attempting to create an elevated religious horror experience centered on Mormonism after his previous Catholic-themed effort 'Awoken' in 2009, though the film fails to deliver on its aspirations of A24-style depth and instead relies on familiar scares and character decisions that defy logic. The film presents itself as a thoughtful examination of religious extremism, particularly focusing on Mormonism's mysterious elements, but ultimately uses religious terminology superficially to create mood rather than meaningful commentary. Phillips' career pattern of exploring different religions through horror continues with 'Diabolic', which features characters engaging in 'blatantly stupid things' merely to sustain contrived scares and jump moments. Despite the rich potential of Mormon theology for horror narrative, the film reduces complex religious concepts to somber jabbering about 'the elders' and 'eternal praise to the King Emmanuel' without genuine exploration or insight, leaving audiences with another mediocre addition to the religious horror genre rather than the elevated experience it promises.
🏷️ Themes
Religious Horror, Film Criticism, Cultural Representation
Mormonism is the theology and religious tradition of the Latter Day Saint movement of Restorationist Christianity started by Joseph Smith in Western New York in the 1820s and 1830s. As a label, Mormonism has been applied to various aspects of the Latter Day Saint movement, although since 2018 there ...
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Original Source
Diabolic wants 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.
