In better moments, director Scott Leaver's hot-and-cold running Satanism chiller has echoes of the thrillers of Jordan Peele, combining traditional horror situations with creature-feature twists on the African-American experience (though horror fans might say the vibe goes back to black heroes Duane Jones or Ken Foree in George Romero's Living Dead films).
In a small town, a battered black man (Ryan Allen) breaks into the house of a deceased preacher, keeping cell phone contact with a cohort on the outside. When the intruder surprises a (white, Jewish) local woman Amy (Adrienne Kress), who is frightened and barricaded inside the place, viewers get the exposition in the piecemeal form: the burglar says he is Ben Ricks, a disgraced ex-boxer and badly estranged son of the abovementioned preacher. Ben wants to grab a family fortune supposedly stashed on the premises, but locals he encountered in his sortie into the neighborhood have been acting bizarre - more than usual, even for an Anglo community with a suspicious big, black male in their midst. Amy says the town has become twisted and menacing under the malevolent influence of bully Mason (Jason Martorino).
Amy was a caregiver for the Rev. Ricks, who turns out to have been obsessed with demonology and the occult. A major clue: a tape-recorded attempted exorcism ceremony from decades ago (it sounds more like an old shock theatre radio show) that went badly wrong. The result is the bloodthirsty Mason and his Satanic cult (significantly, wearing white sheets) surrounding the home, which happens to be on holy ground; they cannot enter to perform their foul ritual.
Principle actors collaborated on the script, which wanders unevenly from provocative stuff on good versus evil and race to flat-out f-word marathons (well, to be fair, everyone is under pressure). A main objection — besides who gets protagonists who get considerably bloodied and savaged throughout the evening, yet recover in time for more — is a trick-ending climax that, while satisfying emotionally, means that much that has preceded it...makes no sense. Admittedly, the offense is lessened by the obvious fact that the feature was pulled off neatly on restricted Canadian locations with a modest budget; Hollywood's dark lords would have sacrificed millions.
Buyers may appreciate that the sex and nudity quotient is zero, and gore is more inferred than directly shown (a bonus of much of the action taking place in murky darkness). Religious angles might even make this a conversation starter for the spiritually inclined, though it is much more of a boo! horror piece than, say, shockers like Frank Peretti/Ted Dekker adaptation House (2008) with evangelical roots. Consider a deal with this Devil as a strong optional Halloween-season item.