DIABOLIC (2026)

New on BluRay and available On Demand from Lightbulb Film Distribution!
Directed by Daniel J. Phillips.
Written by Mike Harding, Ticia Madsen, Daniel J. Phillips.
Check out the trailer here!

Elise (Elizabeth Cullen) grew up in a community of Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints, but ger recollection of her time in the community is foggy. Now she is suffering from nightmares and hallucinations, along with blackouts and other unbalanced behaviors. Instead of institutionalizing herself, Elise takes her doctor’s advice and
decides to do some immersive therapy and return to the community and confront these demons from her past. With her boyfriend Adam (John Kim) and her best friend Gwen (Mia Challis), Elise returns to be cleansed by the local healer Alma (Genevieve Mooy). The thing is, Elise doesn’t know that the demons of her past are actual, real deal
demons!

DIABOLIC is often effective even though it’s treading down some well worn trails. At its core it’s a possession movie with a holy person chanting around a person whose soul has been overwhelmed by an invading benevolent spirit. There is the usual chanting and flinging around of body grossness for the sake of saving the possessed’s soul.

What differentiates DIABOLIC from the herd is that it focuses on the Christian Fundamentalist religion. Yes there is an adherence to the conventional in this society. So Elise’s complex past involving a schoolgirl crush on one of her classmates of the same sex is problematic in the elders’ eyes, so their cleansing involves more modern social issues. But this weakening of Elise’s spirit is exactly what the evil spirit of a witch is looking for so she can slide into Elise’s psyche. So in a way, it is the exorcism ritual of something culture sees as beyond the norm that actually allows the evil spirit to take over. Still, the return for a cleansing later in Elise’s life follows the tried and true exorcism path. It’s my interest in this strange culture, the Fundamentalists, that felt somewhat different. br>
Also setting DIABOLIC apart is a strong lead in Elizabeth Cullen as Elise. She looks a lot like THE INNKEEPERS’ cutie pie Sara Paxton and for that, Cullen kept me completely interested. She also juggles the emotions well, conveying a person who has been tormented by something, be it mental illness or supernatural force, for most of her life. So there’s an exhaustion in her eyes that is heartbreaking. The rest of the cast is ok, but Cullen is the standout here. It looks like she will be starring in the upcoming EVIL DEAD: WRATH, the one coming up after BURN, which is out soon. So it’s great that she’s keeping to the horror genre, yet moving on to bigger things.

The evil force is scary, but just your typical witch design. The film borrows a lot from past possession films, reminiscent of EVIL DEAD, actually, in the way the possessed act. There is a very effective scene where someone is trapped in a dark closet with the witch. And a grody cleansing scene that borrows heavily from more extreme gore flicks like SONG OF SOLOMON. Much of what is in DIABOLIC has been seen in better movies, though.

While nothing new, DIABOLIC has enough smaller details going for it to make it a possession/exorcism flick worth a watch. It’s not going to spin your head around, but if you’re a fan of the subgenre, you’ll find it works more often than it doesn’t.