Whether you love it or hate it, audiences who saw the 2012 horror film The Devil Inside typically have a strong reaction to the movie, with that film’s director, William Brent Bell, recently confirming that he’s developing a prequel to the adventure. In the wake of the success of the Paranormal Activity franchise, the film was crafted in a documentary style, committing so strongly to that premise that the film even ended with a URL that audiences could visit to learn more about the events they just witnessed. The film’s trailer and January release helped it win the box office in its opening weekend, though the poor reactions to the film’s ending saw it quickly lose steam in subsequent weeks.
“I don’t even know if I’m supposed to say this,” Bell shared with Bloody Disgusting‘s The Boo Crew podcast. “We’re developing ideas for a prequel to [The Devil Inside] right now. It’s so cool. It’s so fun to be able to go back to stories like that and then build on something. It’ll be like current day because it’s kind of book-ended with Maria Rossi – today – and it’ll be like Centrino Mental Facility current day.”
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He added, “But it’s nice to have … 10 years have passed … to kind of play around with what that story can be.”
The original film is described, “In 1989, emergency responders received a 9-1-1 call from Maria Rossi (Suzan Crowley) confessing that she had brutally killed three people. 20 years later, her daughter Isabella (Fernanda Andrade) seeks to understand the truth about what happened that night. She travels to the Centrino Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Italy where her mother has been locked away to determine if her mother is mentally ill or demonically possessed. When she recruits two young exorcists (Simon Quarterman and Evan Helmuth) to cure her mom using unconventional methods combining both science and religion, they come face-to-face with pure evil in the form of four powerful demons possessing Maria. Many have been possessed by one; only one has been possessed by many.”
One reason the original film stands out is it earned a rare F CinemaScore, with only 21 movies earning such a distinction in the more than 40 years since the organization was founded. The service polls audiences who attend movies in their opening weekend and asks their opinions of the film, so with the film ending abruptly and with a plug for a URL to learn more about the fictional narrative, it’s easy to see how audiences could have left feeling immensely disappointed.
Stay tuned for details on the possible The Devil Inside prequel.
Are you looking forward to the prequel? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!
