The Devil's Curse (aka Credo)

THE DEVIL’S CURSE (AKA CREDO)

A slow-paced film from 2008, The Devil’s Curse (also known as Credo) follows a college student named Alice who (along with her four roommates) gets evicted and opts to take up temporary residence in an abandoned dormitory of a closed Catholic school where in the past four young adults committed suicide after apparently summoning a demon.  Alice and her friends hear odd noises, and then they find one of their party (a lesbian named Timmy) hanging in her room.  A fellow named Jock (who the others blame for driving Timmy to suicide) slits his wrists with broken mirror glass.  Alice and her two other friends (a girl named Jazz and a guy named Scott) attempt to escape from the building by crawling through an old sewer (earlier they found the main exit padlocked from the inside), and Alice and Scott find their way to a room that contains the journal of a fellow called Seth who was the only survivor of the earlier group that killed themselves.  Jazz inexplicably gets lost in the sewer and apparently dies down there.  Scott returns to the main dorm and throws himself out a window.  Alice heads back into the main building and confronts Seth, who has been lurking around the whole time.  Alice stabs Seth and then runs upstairs to try to get a cell phone signal.  There she encounters her dead father, who blames her for his own suicide.  A final twist ending (the nature of which I won’t spoil) forces the viewer to reconsider all of the events that have transpired up to that point.

The Devil’s Curse has a fine premise that’s hamstrung by flat characters, a glacial pace, and a finale that makes little sense.  It’s a competently-made film in terms of production value and performances, but the story itself lacks suspense and real scares (a major problem for an ostensible horror movie).  Steer clear.