The story is very well paced, a deliberate crawl through Matt’s house and his psyche, as the trust between he, Steve and Karen soon breaks down. Matt shows his visitors his murderboard (bright red crisscrossing thread creates fractal pentagrams across a drab attic wall, in a highlight of the film’s wonderfully eerie production design) as he attempts to explain to them why he has a hostage in his home. Steve and Karen have their own ideas about what’s going on. They each take turns approaching the cellar door, only to succumb to the seductive tones of the disembodied voice beyond it.



No spoilers here, but there are some terrific little twists along the way, and each of them feels earned. The plot is tight, Lobo’s script sparse enough to allow the visual elements to tell the story, and the final act benefits from an injection of surrealism, as the linear narrative appears to break down completely, a mechanism reminiscent of Lucio Fulci’s ‘Gates of Hell’ trilogy from the early 1980s and various offerings from the Satanic Panic subgenre of the 1970s. The climax does not disappoint, as Lobo chooses not to give us an outright resolution, but leaves us to determine whether to trust our eyes or our instincts. Films of this nature risk everything in their closing moments, as the desire to retain a level of ambiguity risks alienating audiences who crave a definitive answer to the questions posed. In this writer’s opinion, Lobo just about pulls it off.



There is a danger, in this new age of the horror blockbusters, that smaller films such as I Trapped the Devil might be overlooked by audiences. Next weekend, genre fans have an opportunity to see a little sprinkle of independent cinematic magic as it drops in theatres and on-demand simultaneously 26 April (check press for details). Please go out and show this little genre gem some love!