[Review]: Diabolic

With the constant renewal of interest in the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) largely in part to investigative documentaries such as Netflix’s Trust Me: The False Prophet (2026), it was only a matter of time until the historic traumas of past members of this religious sect was used as fodder for a horror film. This is where Daniel J. Phillip’s Diabolic takes centre stage. The film centres around a young woman who, after suffering devastating blackouts, decides to return to the fundamentalist group who once cast her out in exile.

Elise (played by Elizabeth Cullen) experiences debilitating trances and missing points in her memory caused by her childhood upbringing in a fundamentalist Mormon sect. Joined by her boyfriend Adam (John Kim) and best friend Gwen (Mia Challis), Elisa travels back to the compound in the hope of finding a cure, and the answers to her memory problems. After ingesting hallucinatory drugs and performing a ritual, it is revealed that Elise is a vessel to the spirit of a vengeful witch, sentenced to death by the church years previously. Now Elise not only has to come to terms with her own trauma associated with her time in the church, but she must also contend with the witch who is hellbent on using her body to insidiously exact revenge on those who have wronged her.

Terror caused by religious trauma is a rich subject explored time and time again by the horror genre in films such as Aislinn Clarke’s The Devil’s Doorway (2016) and Immaculate (2024) directed by Michael Mohan. Whereas both the aforementioned films centre themselves on the evils of the Catholic church, Diabolic explores the often mysterious lives of members of the FLDS, and pairs it with the “evils” of witchcraft. This pairing is unfortunately somewhat confusing within the context of the film, with a murky understanding of whether the film condemns women who step outside the confines of the church’s rules. Elise, as a teenager, is cast out from the compound due to her burgeoning relationship with another girl, namely the bishop’s daughter, and as an adult, becomes entwined with a woman who was murdered by the church due to being a murderous witch. It becomes quite confusing as to whether the filmmakers are equating a queer woman with the witch, or whether this is from the perspective of the church elders. It becomes, unfortunately, a downfall of the film, to utilise a symbol of historical female oppression as the evil antagonist, with possibly the only positive being that she eventually brings about the downfall of the oppressive church. 

Diabolic largely presents itself as a psychological horror, leaning heavily throughout the majority of its runtime on the central character’s fractured mind. Yet the last few sequences of the film, this flips on its head and we are presented with more of a typical possession movie, which dips its toes into The Evil Dead (1987) sensibilities, and whilst this is perhaps one of the high points of the film, it unfortunately feels like little too late. 

With shimmers of an interesting subject matter exploring the lasting effects on survivors of extreme fundamentalist cults, Diabolic doesn’t quite stick the landing. With an unclear point of view and no characters that an audience can align themselves with, it just falls short of any sort of efficacy within the subgenre of traumatic religious horror.

2 Screams out of 5

Diabolic will be available on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital from Monday 25th May.