Directed by Lamberto Bava

Starring  Paolo Malco, Virginia Bryant and Sabrina Ferilli

Rated R

A woman believes her vacation villa is cursed when her childhood dreams and nightmares come to life in the form of a creature that lives in the basement.

A female horror writer and her family move into an Italian villa/castle for a little getaway and peace and quiet so that she can work on her novel.  Upon arrival though, her nightmares are tense throwbacks to her childhood fear of an ogre living in her basement. 

Kiss me, I’m irish?

If you take a quick peek at my reviews for the previous Demons films (part 1, part 2) then you may notice that I make many references to the fact that there are, in fact, demons in the films (or at least demon-like zombies?)  What we have here is a movie with a title that’s meant to be confusing.  Are there demons in this flick?  Nope.  Is there an ogre?  Yes, though it might be a big troll. 

This is actually a film made for Italian television and it was simply called, “The Ogre.”  The “Demons” title was slapped on when released in North America because the director, Lamberto Bava, was known for doing both previous films so there’s your connection but it has absolutely nothing to do with those movies…so why confuse people and called it “Demons 3” when it doesn’t have the titular demons?  Sigh.  So is this ogre any good?  Absolutely not.

My agent is totally fired.

First off, it’s boring as hell.  A good chunk of this movie is devoted to people quietly lurking around until something scary is supposed to happen.  If no one went into the basement there’d be no movie. The next problem is that it’s not scary at all.  In fact, the ogre doesn’t look all that great when you see it’s full form later in the film, but it looks fantastic when compared to its early form we see emerging from what looks to be a cocoon many times and it looks incredibly fake.  Finally, the movie had one song that played throughout and while I dug it for the first few minutes, it was grating by the end of the film.  I could go on but those are the main points that will drive you to shut the film off before it’s over.

Just a little story twist and this could’ve been watchable.

If you’re a fan of the previous films in the series, avoid this one with the misleading title as it’s not officially Demons 3.  There is a film that’s about as close to being an official Demons 3 and I’ll get to that soon, but you’ll have to believe me when I say that this ogre stinks.

TL;DR

Story:  3 – A cursed home brings a woman’s childhood nightmare to life.  Sounds decent, execution is brutal.

Blood: 3 – Made for television means we won’t be seeing too much red stuff.  The film does show some slightly shredded up bodies later in the film but the scenes with the attacking ogre are almost as clean as Sesame Street.

Nudity: 3 – Made for television also means we do get a quick tit shot and some cleavage. 

Overall: 2 – Unless you want to be the person to say “I saw Demons 3: The Ogre” then there’s no reason to hunt this down for a viewing.  It has nothing in common with the awesome original Demons and its less-than-thrilling sequel but I’d even take Demons 2 over this waste of time.

Trivia

-There’s another film with the title “Demons 3” that was directed by Umberto Lenzi.  In North America, it was called “Black Demons.”