Devil in Ohio – Series Review
It was okay at best.
Plot
Lives are changed and past trauma resurfaces as a mysterious patient enters the life of hospital psychiatrist, Suzanne Mathis (Emily Deschanel).
With a giant pentagram carved into her back and abandoned by her parents, Mae Dodd (Madeleine Arthur) reminds Suzanne of herself as a child. Going against the requests of her husband and daughters, Suzanne brings Mae home and legally becomes her guardian. Issues arise when the satanic cult Mae escaped from try to coax her back, and Suzanne puts the safety of Mae over the safety of her family.
Will Mae return to the cult she was raised in? Will Suzanne’s marriage be able to survive the tension placed on it? Will Detective Lopez (Gerardo Celasco) get caught as he blatantly investigates the cult? Find out by watching Devil in Ohio.
My Thoughts
This one could have been better. It’s a series about a teenage girl escaping a satanic cult that is out to get her back by any means necessary and it somehow became boring. Even with a little “twist” at the end, the characters were very one note. Even though things were happening in the show that would evoke emotion in someone experiencing them, the acting and writing doesn’t draw its audience to feel those feelings with the characters. It’s like we are told the characters are experiencing complex emotions instead of being shown. Without resonating with the characters, they seem more hollow and less likable. I think that’s essentially what made the show feel boring. Without really rooting for the characters, it just seemed to drag on.
But wait, there’s more. The cult in Devil in Ohio was a joke. There was a “scary” police officer whose only scary trait other than being a bad guy was being able to take a ton of mace point blank in the face like it was water vapor. The other cult members whose only personality traits were “cult members” seemed more like people playing dress up and pretending than people actually in a cult. The show relied on weird sayings like “we must rely upon,” and “the chain shall not be broken,” to show us they were “other”, and it just felt gimmicky.
We were also led to believe that the cult was super dangerous but really they were super inept. First of all, they let this super important “chosen one” escape and even after tracking her to the hospital gave up because they couldn’t find her room. After she was placed with Suzanne they knew where she was but just kinda lingered menacingly in the shadows. Okay, so there was some pretty large scale arson but let’s be honest, that was more of a favor than anything.
Finally, the most annoying thing was how the “good” cop was tailing cult vehicles from like THIRTY FEET AWAY and they never noticed him. Plus he was photographing the cult goings on from pretty close up without trying any kind of camo and once again, they never noticed him. The whole time I would be afraid someone was going to come up behind him and… nothing. If these people were as paranoid and secretive as we were led to believe, there is no way he would have been able to do all that without getting caught.
One last complaint and I’ll wrap this up. In Lord of Misrule, there was a song at the end that very nicely summed up the cult’s lore in a folk theme that made sense for the movie. In Devil in Ohio, they tried to do this but picked a weirdly upbeat theme. This resulted in the utter fail (in my opinion) of playing this upbeat song while someone is marched to become a sacrifice to Lucifer. Like excuse me, what? I literally laughed, it felt so out of place.
Anywho, if you like thrillers involving cults or are a big Emily Deschanel fan, check out Devil in Ohio. Let me know how you like it!
