'Devil's Advocate' - Demons Go to Court

Hello, and welcome back to Second Chances where the maligned and forgotten get their day in court.

It's October, and I spend the whole month celebrating Halloween. While most people spend Halloween partying and wearing costumes, Ally & I celebrate with horror movie marathons. It was one Halloween a few years ago that I showed her one of my favorite mostly forgotten horror movies, 1997's The Devil's Advocate. While it was profitable at the box office and won some awards when it was first released, it's a movie that has largely faded from public memory. It isn't regularly mentioned in "Best of Horror" articles like The Exorcist, The Shining, or Scream are. However, it deserves to be remembered. It provided a unique genre mash-up, it's as enjoyably over-the-top as The Omen, it's as atmospheric as Silent Hill, and it featured my favorite performance from the legendary Al Pacino. There are reasons I named it #26 on my favorite movies list. Court is now in session.

The movie focuses on a young defense attorney named Kevin Lomax, played by Keanu Reeves. (For the record, while I do concede that Reeves isn't a great actor, he is an enjoyable one.) He's a lawyer that's never lost a case, and he'll do anything to keep that winning streak going. After he successfully defended a child molester by destroying the victim's credibility on the stand, he's invited to go to New York to join a prestigious firm led by a man named John Milton (Al Pacino). (Yes, his character was deliberately named after the author of Paradise Lost.) As he gets pulled into deeper cases that call his ethics into question, his wife Mary Ann (Charlize Theron) starts to lose her mind to the point that she starts seeing demons everywhere. By the end, Lomax sees that his success could be costing him his soul.

This is a genre mix that nobody could have expected to work. How the hell could anyone mix a courtroom drama with a supernatural horror film? Thankfully, both elements are engaging on their own, and they feed into each other brilliantly. That's largely thanks to great performances all around. Reeves is energized in his courtroom scenes, especially in one very tense moment where he has to square off with one of his clients (Craig T. Nelson in a rare antagonist role). Charlize Theron may not be at her Oscar-winning level at this point, but she is extremely sympathetic, especially during her nightmare scene (which I won't dare spoil). Then there's Al Pacino playing Satan. (That's not a spoiler; the trailer gave it away.) Pacino just looks like he's having the time of his life throughout the movie. He'd proven he can do evil thanks to The Godfather and Scarface, but here he absolutely relishes it. His anti-God rant near the end of the movie is one of the greatest villain monologues ever, right up there with Cochran's from Halloween 3.

As I mentioned when I talked about the Silent Hill movie, atmosphere is the most important thing for a horror movie to have, and The Devil's Advocate nailed it. The editing keeps the audience on their toes with some embellishments like time-lapse shots and quick cuts. The score by James Newton Howard is particularly ominous, especially during the quieter moments of the movie. The special effects like the demon reveals can be nightmare-inducing; just look at that screencap up there! CG was still new in 1997, and this movie made great use of it without going overboard. Even though the movie keeps a tense atmosphere throughout the majority of it, it also knows when to go absolutely over-the-top. In fact, it pushes so many envelopes that I'm amazed it didn't get the NC-17 rating. This movie does feature sex scenes just a couple of steps below late night Skinemax, extreme gore that's used sparingly, and Charlize Theron and Connie Nielsen (who plays Kevin's colleague Christabella) in full-frontal nude scenes. While some horror movies may be safe for pre-teens, this sure as hell isn't one of them.

The Devil's Advocate is one of my favorite horror movies of all time. It got so much right that the fact that it's been largely forgotten over the past twenty years is just unholy. It's tense, energized, over-the-top, not subtle in any way, and thoroughly entertaining throughout its lengthy two-and-a-half-hour runtime. Even my parents enjoy it, and they've never been fans of horror movies! This one deserves to be on the same pedestal as The Omen and The Exorcist. Check it out!

Anything else that deserves a second chance? Let me know! Court is adjourned.