The Seventh Day – Horror Movie Review

Is it awful that the mere thought of writing a review for the 2021 horror film “The Seventh Day” is making me sleepy? It’s bad enough when somebody sees a disappointingly boring film, should they have to spend more time thinking back to the experience and write about it? Sounds like double punishment.

Directed by Justin P Lange, “The Seventh Day” had the potential to be “The Exorcism” meets “The Karate Kid”, so instead of training to fight bad guys, they battle demons. The plot is pretty simple – newly ordained Father Daniel (Vadhir Derbez) is put under the wings of master exorcist Father Peter (Guy Pearce) and the two are on the mission to purge evil from the bodies of the innocent. Their search leads them to a 12-year-old Charlie who murdered his parents and sister. The duo is pretty sure that the kid was possessed, the rest is about them trying to solve the case.

Guy Pearce looks a little too suave for the role of a priest and they try to make the character a little ‘too cool for school’. So he is a religious dude who smokes, then smokes out malevolent spirits by intuition, he doesn’t need distress calls from victims to tell them where the devil is. Vadhir Derbez as Father Daniel also looks a little out of place in the film. He has the kind of face that would look better in a super-hero film or a romantic comedy, and his acting range seems quite limited. It’s child actor Brady Jenness who plays Charlie,the possessed boy, who shines out the most among the cast, despite his limited screen time.

The exorcism sequences with the guys chanting out verses from the bible get a little tedious. As far as the ‘scary quotient’ is concerned, there are a few scenes that manage to get you on the edge of your seat, but nothing is memorable. Some of the jump scares are too flat and weak. To the writers’ credit, the climax does have an interesting twist, some viewers will be able to guess what’s coming in the end, but only because they foreshadow it a lot. Unfortunately, all the build-up to the climax is just not gripping enough. It’s a 4/10 from me.