Lo

2009 romantic comedy

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Justin's girlfriend April has been abducted by a demon, and he has to use a book of spells she left behind to call upon Lo, a demon who looks a heck of a lot like Lord Voldemort, to get her back.

I wanted to like this extremely low-budget independent romantic comedy because the concept is kind of neat, maybe more for the stage than the screen, and the director Travis Betz is a fellow Hoosier. The modern take on the myth of Orpheus unfortunately just isn't clever enough or entertaining enough to keep a person's interest. At the start, I thought I was watching low-grade horror until the titular demon shows up, starts calling the guy Dinner, performs a demon-head-busting-open magic trick, tells the main character to clean the shit from his pants, and asks, "Where the fuck am I?" He's got a little Beetle Juice in him. And he really does look like Voldemort, but that's just probably the lack of nose. I don't think my problem with this is the single setting with a few flashbacks mixed in. The problem was more to do with the Lo character being a little too dopey. There was also too much dopiness in the asides with gay Nazi demons busting into songs (though I imagine "Demon Girl" with a demon saxophonist is deservedly a big hit in hell), a random dancing demon waiter that made me ask "Why is this happening?", and a flashback scene complete with canned laughter. It wasn't until a second flashback scene featuring these weird gold-painted heads sticking out of the wall that I figured out that I'd already seen this movie, nearly fifteen years before it had even been made. There's also a scene where the guy talks to his hand, but it's not nearly as entertaining as when that happens in Evil Dead II. I do enjoy scenes in movies where a bunch of characters laugh in creepy ways at another character, and this does have a nice one of those. The demon costumes probably aren't bad for the budget this movie had, but I think I've seen better masks on trick or treaters. There's just too much exposed flesh in the eye-holes. In the end, this isn't funny enough to work as a comedy and not emotionally compelling enough to work as anything else. A scene at the end is supposed to be touching, but I was distracted because the actors just couldn't pull it off. This movie does contain a line that reminded me of something I said when I proposed to Jennifer though: "Tell me you won't eat me, and I'll make you my wife."