Director Neill Blomkamp is a connoisseur of science-fiction, having been a professional animator and visual-effects artist since he was 16. He wrote, directed, and co-produced the movie Demonic which was released on August 20, 2021.
Demonic takes the audience into a simulation created by advanced, futuristic technology in the story, something Blomkamp is fond of showcasing in his works, and masterfully ties it with religious elements such as demons and exorcists.
It follows the story of Carly (Carly Pope) and her troublesome relationship with her homicidal mother Angela (Nathalie Boltt), who was possessed by a demon. Carly interacts with her mother, whom she initially despised, via a simulation as Angela was in a coma.
The movie has a unique setting, tying the past with the future, Supernatural with Black Mirror. Conceptually, it was quite ambitious, even for an experimental director like Blomkamp. Was he inspired by another such story? Did he base it off of a book or a real life event? Keep reading to find out!
Is Demonic based on a true story?
No, Demonic is not based on any true story or series that came out prior to the conception of the film itself. It is solely a brainchild of Neill Blomkamp (Elysium, District 9), who, without a reference project, got the opportunity to diversify his creativity for the theme and plot of Demonic. It was born from several ideas.
Blomkamp desired to work in low-budget and self-financed movies for a long time. And, he wanted to venture into horror. With science-fiction being his area of expertise, he entered new waters with this combination of science-fiction, supernatural, and horror.
He was recently interviewed by SYFY WIRE where he said –
“I was always heavily influenced by Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project, and I knew — even going back years — I knew that at some point I really wanted to try to self-finance a small horror film to just go through that experience and see what that would be like.
I always had that in the back of my head, and then I think of this movie like a whole bunch of puzzle pieces that were all sort of separate elements that came together.
So I had the sort of love affair with these low-budget horror films that filmmakers had just shot themselves in locations that they had access to, which I thought was really creative. Then the pandemic happened, and any bigger project was on pause until people knew what was happening.”
Blomkamp had developed how the movie would progress before the global pandemic caused all filming plans for bigger projects to go on hiatus. Initially he had planned to film in New Mexico but with that option out of the line, Blomkamp’s desire to work on a self-financed film in a familiar location came to the forefront and the shooting began in British Columbia itself.
Demonic went on to become an amalgamation of several concepts Blomkamp had been toying with. The movie also required CG effects but being self-financed, Blomkamp had to rely on quirky, early technology for the movie as he had over 16 minutes of CG footage alongside a pretty tight budget.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he said –
“I don’t remember anything I considered a reference but I used a lot of different, different ideas that were collected for the movie. I wanted to use volumetric capture, and I wanted to have Demonic like a scary trope. So they all got into a melting pot.”
Blomkamp wanted to toy with the idea of a demonic possession and intertwine it with elements of real-time computer graphics. His ideas were floating for over a year and he had been deliberating how he would use real-time graphics for his movie for a considerable period of time.