HorRHIFFic 2023: ‘The Quantum Devil’ Review

Stars: Neil Dickson, Tyler Tackett, Ariadna Cabrol, Edward Apeagyei, Tamara Radovanovic, Mehmet Cerrahoglu, Helen Babic, Marcus Jean Pirae, Loris Curci | Written by Larry Wade Carrell, Zeph E. Daniel | Directed by Larry Wade Carrell

As seems customary in film now, Marvel often lead the way, even if it’s only in its influence on the film industry. When they started the ‘Marvel Universe’ many other studios and films tried to replicate this with their own characters (and continue to do so), with mostly unsuccessful attempts. More recently, they introduced a ‘multiverse’ to expand on this, and once again that became THE buzzword in the industry with more films trying to emulate it. And now with its latest phase of films starting with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, they have created something new for people to snatch hold of. Enter – The Quantum Devil.

There are no superheroes in sight here though as the movie blends together a mix of sci-fi, thriller and horror. It is ambitious though. There’s lots of ideas floated about and used, some interesting, some, not so much. And if the idea of having quantum in your title is to have lots of scientific and physics references in your film, then The Quantum Devil reaches that goal. But in truth the story, in which a team of scientists, who have never met before, are summoned together to ‘break the quantum barrier’ and travel to another dimension.

This is not explained particularly well, and when the scientists start talking about how exactly they will do this, they basically say a lot of long, complicated-sounding words and write lots of equations and sums on a big blackboard. It’s all very clichéd and this part of the movie didn’t engross me at all. This is all in the first forty-five minutes and it’s not a great first half of the movie. And oftentimes it’s comedic when it’s not supposed to be.

I won’t pretend to fully understand much of what went on but the ‘side effects’ of trying to get to another dimension seemed to be discovering each other’s sexual desires and getting naked quite a lot. There’s also a scene that goes on for far too long, where each scientist is introduced by the guy that bought them all together. But he does it in a way that makes it like he is introducing them to an audience on a TV game show. The second half of the movie leans towards the horror aspect and is more entertaining when it does. But the dodgy CGI and a ‘Cthulhu-like’ creature saying the word ‘banter’ got me laughing when it almost certainly shouldn’t have.

But, those horror moments I did enjoy. There’s a creepy-looking seal/human hybrid that pops up briefly, a character gets pretty much skinned alive in a cool-looking zombie-like sequence and there’s plenty of blood and gore. When practical effects are used, it all looks pretty great too. And even if it’s poor CGI, a giant Cthulhu figure is always cool to see. Maybe if The Quantum Devil had stuck with its horror influences and shown less of the science jargon, it would have been more entertaining. As it is, it’s a bit of a mess for much of its run time.

The Quantum Devil screened as part of this year’s Romford Horror FIlm Festival on Sunday, 26th February