Here Comes the Devil

(2012)

While their parents make love in the parking lot of a Tijuana truck stop, a girl and her younger brother enter a cave (symbolism!) that’s supposedly cursed and don’t emerge until the next nerve-wracked day. Although Sol (singer Laura Caro in her movie debut) and Felix (Francisco Barreiro, the original We Are What We Are) are overjoyed to have their kids back, they can’t help but notice differences in their offspring. As the title of this Mexican horror film has it, Here Comes the Devil — and he needs no invitation.

Writer-director Adrián García Bogliano, who wrought so much suspense out of 2010’s Cold Sweat, ups the discomfort ante by marrying the possession angle with a sexual one. It’s suggested that had Sol and Felix’s daughter not experienced her first menstruation in the opening scene, none of the terrible things that happen over the next hour and a half would have happened.

I take that back. Let’s capitalize to emphasize:

Terrible Things.

Here Comes the Devil takes a cue or two from several American films of yesteryear — most notably 1982’s The Entity — yet never feels like a retread. In fact, it’s genuinely unnerving and, better yet, unpredictable. — RL