Finding out that your dream house is infested with a demon trying to possess your family is certainly a downer of sorts.  But trying to manipulate someone into becoming an unwilling sacrifice so you can enjoy your own life is something else entirely.  Shudder’s latest original film Sorry About the Demon tackles this very subject, and does so with a great deal of wit and humor.

Unholy Trade
As the Sellers family discovers their daughter possessed in their new dream house, the sleazy realtor parents get the idea to make a trade with the demon for another soul.  Enter our protagonist Will (Jon Michael Simpson), who’s recently down on his luck with a dead end customer service job that wears at his soul, as well as recently single from his breakup with his ex-girlfriend Amy (Paige Evans).

He begins to notice strange things happening and before Will know it, he’s simultaneously trying to repair his relationship, not get fired from work, and exorcise the demon in the house.  In the process, he enlists help from his friend Patrick (Jeff McQuitty) and Aimee spelled with two e’s (Olivia Ducayen), who has experience with spirits and mysticism.

Holy Mission
The first half of the film plays out like your typical haunted house movie, while the second half is the team effort to fight the demon itself.  But in a lot of ways, Sorry About the Demon is just as much as comedy as it is horror, and both genres work flawlessly together.

A lot of recent horror comedies go for the meta, self-aware humor and it has varying degrees of success.  This film never goes for outright satire or parody, but is just loaded with joke after joke, many of which land.

Much of it works because Will is incredibly relatable.  After all, who hasn’t been heartbroken and tired of working a terrible job?  Jon Michael Simpson plays the role with a lovable earnestness, that is put on full display when he forgives the Sellers family for the predicament they put him in.

Honestly, the only thing this movie could have used more of is the Sellers themselves.  They’re incredibly unlikable to a point that you love to hate them, and their callous disregard for other people’s lives is so over the top that they’re the perfect caricatures of everything wrong with the current housing crisis.  We mostly see them in the beginning and at the end, but I’m convinced the movie could have been even more fun had they been there throughout.

On the surface, Sorry About the Demon is a fun horror-comedy, and underneath is a heartfelt tale about an outcast finding his place in the most unlikely of scenarios.  Because it’s not relying on meta references, it will ultimately have a more timeless feel to it. And it just makes for a fun watch!

What did you think of Sorry About the Demon?  Let us know in the comments!

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