Rent Devil's Night (2014)

Spoilers follow ... - Devil's Night review by NP

Brooke Anne Smith plays Kaylie, the sardonic, bored, scratchy voiced precocious ex-self-harmer who has been lumbered with a baby-sitting job because the original baby-sitter, and Kaylie’s friend, is ill. Actually, her friend isn’t ill at all, and ends up as the first throat-slashed victim of a killer.

Anyway, a masked miscreant breaks into the house and gets caught up in the inevitable mild violent exchange with feisty Kaylie. With the baby long forgotten, the two then strike up an, ahem, unlikely bond, and are soon charging round the neighbourhood enjoying some Hallowe’en, trick-or-treat pranks. The misunderstood unmasked man and the dough-eyed wildcat blond strike up a bond of profound stature, two bland posers psycho-analysing each other to the sound of tinkling synthesised music. Two misunderstood youngsters flirting heavily whilst drinking all the alcohol in the house of the parents of the baby no-one cares about.

As the unnamed man behind the mask Marc Valera makes the most of the emotional backstory he is given, but an audience is being asked a lot to suddenly be required to relate to someone who it seems has just cut the throat of a local girl. It is all rather more than a little twee and seems to be setting itself up for some highly unlikely self-analysis between two pretty shallow people.

However, I believed this film was setting itself up in certain way. What resulted is something a lot more intelligent than I gave it credit for, and although others may guess the outcome, I found the storyline surprising in all the right places. It might occasionally seem like a struggle to get through at times, but ‘Devil’s Night’ is worth sticking around for until the very end.

Malcolm McDowell, who plays a curious, extrovert local –‘do-gooder’ appears to have a great time with what it little more than a cameo. So much so that his various out-takes actually crop up after the end credits.