The Devil You Know: A Horror Play
“Deep in the depths of Brentley Wood, a woman preys on the young and the good; listen close and you might hear, four friends alone scream out in fear.” A rhyme recited by children, four teenage friends have decided to make a film for which they need a subject; better the devil you know, suggests the director, the Faceless Lady of Brentley Woods.
Their ill-fated efforts recounted in The Devil You Know: A Horror Play, now running at the Edinburgh Fringe and written by Emma Summerton, the four friends are the condescending and bullying Quinn (Sally Johnston), timid Lex (Charlie Basley), whiney Bailey (Lillian Race) and jumpy Charlie (Zendell Crichlow).
With no script and nothing beyond the most basic concept, they venture into the woods to begin principal photography with no equipment other than a camcorder and torches, annoying children whose awareness of the horror genre seems to stretch from The Blair Witch Project to low budget straight-to-streaming knockoffs with no knowledge or understanding of the classics or why they work.
Clueless idiots drinking, shouting, taking drugs, fumbling with a Ouija board and stumbling about the trees and getting lost while they have a bad trip, The Devil You Know is astonishingly less appealing than it sounds, and even more terrifying than the frightful amateur acting is the drawstring corduroy pants.
Created for apparently less than a shoestring budget, lighting flashes are ineffectively simulated by turning a spotlight on an off, and while the use of ultra violet light to reveal exposition via secret writing is a good idea, with the main lights turned up it remains almost illegible to the audience in the feeble torchlight.
The videos of the woods projected on the set blocks and the use of the Donnie Darko soundtrack carrying more atmosphere than what is occurring on stage, there is no sense of the audience being drawn in by a compelling mystery or the possibility of danger to the characters so much as a desire for them all to die as swiftly as preferably as silently as possible.
The Devil You Know continues until Saturday 25th August
