Movie Review – 13 Demons (2016)
Do you enjoy playing board games with friends? Do you frequent Ren Faires wearing garb? Was or is Dungeons & Dragons a source of fond memories for you? If you can’t answer “yes” to at least two of these questions, 2016’s 13 Demons is not the film for you.
The low-budget film revolves around three geeky slackers who come into possession of an old board game which had been banned years ago, as it was believed to have contributed to a string of odd murders. The film cuts between the trio getting high and playing the game, to losing themselves within the game’s narrative, while also showing two of them later on being interrogated by police, covered in blood and believing themselves to be Golden Paladins on a mission to slay demons.
The plot of a board game connected to strange deaths conjures the memory of the hysteria surrounding D&D in early 1980s, exemplified in the strange made-for-TV movie Mazes and Monsters (1982), starring Tom Hanks in one of his earliest film roles. That film depicts a college student who loses touch with reality while playing an RPG, and generally suggests that people are compelled to play such games due to an unfulfillment of deep psychological needs. It was based on a fictionalized adaptation of the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III, a college student who disappeared and subsequently committed suicide, but whose motivations were inaccurately reported in the media as being linked to playing D&D. The 1988 murder of Lieth Peter Von Stein by his step-son also had true crime adaptations written and filmed about it which tried to link D&D to the crime. Let us not forget as well the many Christian groups who have linked the RPG to devil worship and witchcraft, especially during the years of the Satanic Panic.
13 Demons was no doubt inspired at least in part by D&D’s reputation during that time, though in a far more superficial sense than what I detailed above. It’s a film with an intriguing premise, however, as a piece of entertainment it barely misses being a critical failure. The fantasy scenes are distractingly unconvincing, with poor demon makeup, bad choreography, and an epilepsy-inducing amount of flashing lights. The film builds to a third act and botches the roll, ending the film abruptly after an unintentionally comical exchange of two characters repeatedly yelling back and forth at each other, “It’s a game!” “It’s not a game!”
13 Demons is not a good film, but I’m not writing a review of it to shit on it. The thing is, I can answer “yes” to all of the questions I posed before, and the film is written for and about a very particular geek demographic of which I am a part. These are characters I recognize as I drink beers and play board games into the night with friends (I even host a charity gaming marathon at my home in the summer), or take my kids to the Ren Faire, or look back fondly at those high school and college nights playing tabletop RPGs and, even now, crave an opportunity to try out D&D 5th Edition. My friends and I are more well-adjusted adults than the film’s central characters, but I feel I understand what the filmmaker was going for even if it doesn’t reach a modicum of the premise’s potential.
That being said, there were aspects I rather enjoyed. The gradual transformation of the characters is fairly well done, and I liked the scenes where their voices change and the game pieces move of their own accord. The game’s text, read aloud by the characters, is actually decently written and engaging. The score, of both contemporary and medieval-style music, was excellent. In terms of gaming as a central premise, I think it understands the early 1980’s fantasy games better than 2016’s Beyond the Gates understood the VHS board games it sought to emulate. Had certain aspects been better handled, the film would have been something which I would be more compelled to recommend. For instance, I feel it would have been better if more mystery was left as to what was going on, if it played more with perceptions and ambiguity while upping the violence to effectively portray these characters’ acts. In short, there’s potential that’s been discovered here but that’s gone unmined.
Would I recommend 13 Demons to another fantasy-gaming geek? Not really. It’s not a successful film but I can’t bring myself to fully dislike it. If you recognize yourself in anything I’ve described, you may want to check it out. But if you’ve never even heard the name Gary Gygax, you are not the audience for this film.
Grade: D
The Revenant Review 
Leave a Reply