deMonica is one of my new favorite possession stories, striking a special chord in me with its story of sisterly love and sacrifice. Written and directed by Miguel Angel Ferrer, deMonica quickly but efficiently crafts its sordid setting and personas for its characters, building anticipation with foreshadowing and mystery before diving head-first into horror.

deMonica, besides the clever play on words for its title, also has some of the best-looking cinematography I have seen in a short movie this year, comparable to any project that I can recall. The lighting seems dim, capturing the darkness of the situation, but at the same time, the film seems colorful, vividly capturing its horrifying moments in raw detail.

Beginning with a perfectly executed cold opening, deMonica tells the tale of a young brothel worker named Monica (Claudia Serven) who becomes possessed by a demon that causes her to suck the life from people. Her sister Maye (Daniela Azuaje), a woman with a past and a closet full of demons of her own, blackmails a famous exorcist into helping her, getting him to begrudgingly agree to the job. However eventually, the sister and the priest realize that freeing Monica from her sexual captivity will be just as difficult as freeing her from her demonic possession.

deMonica is sure to turn the heads of those interested in demonic possession, boasting some truly terrifying imagery. Often, director Ferrer seemed to play with the innocence and fragility of femininity and contrasted it harshly with the anger and aggressiveness of demonic possession, taking the sweet visage of a female and quickly converting it to something terrifying to produce a jarring effect — it was a very effective method throughout the film.

It is obvious that the societal stain of sex trafficking continues to grow more visible as more stories of family members saving family members from the hands of sex traffickers seem to trickle into film. deMonica frames this issue within demonic possession, where it seems rightly placed, having victims who are constantly on the edge of death become susceptible to possession. Though a female possession is typical and there was not any extreme body acting or contortion, deMonica was still a memorable story, one worthy of being fleshed out in feature-length.

7.75 out of 10