With Halloween around the corner there’s currently an abundance of horror being released. This week alone sees a bounty of releases across cinemas and digital. One film arriving onto digital as well as select US movie theatres is Devil’s Workshop.
Written and directed by Chris von Hoffmann, Devil’s Workshop mixes struggling actors and demonic possession with interesting results. It stars Timothy Granaderos as Clayton, a jobbing actor without an actual job. His life consists of audition after audition after audition, but he is finding it hard to get any bookings. One reason for this is that his rival, Donald (played by an especially smarmy Emile Hirsch), is somehow getting all the work. The pair cross paths at an audition for a film about a demon hunter and when both receive a callback, their rivalry intensifies. Desperate to nail his second audition, Clayton decides to contact a real-life demon hunter. Eliza (Radha Mitchell) invites Clayton to stay for the weekend and it doesn’t take long for things to get strange.
Timothy Granaderos is better known to audiences as having played Monty in 13 Reasons Why. Since the show ended he has been steadily building a name for himself within the horror genre. First came the fun, meta, Zoom-set Untitled Horror Project, and most recently Who Invited Them. Both projects leaned into humour, granting Granaderos the opportunity to demonstrate a lighter side than he had been able to as Monty. In Clayton comes a character that tonally fits somewhere in the middle. Devil’s Workshop isn’t a horror comedy, but nor is it a straight-laced horror. There are plenty of opportunities for fun, though most of these are provided by Emile Hirsch’s egotistical douche. As Clayton, Granaderos provides a darker dryer humour, one that juxtaposes against the crassness of Hirsch’s character.
Scenes with Granaderos and Mitchell sizzle. Clayton is immediately out of his depth and Eliza relishes this fact. Eliza toys with both Clayton and the audience; the character’s intentions are muddy and hard to pinpoint. The intrigue around the character – what her background is, what her agenda with Clayton is, form the heart of the story. Watching the two circle each other is wonderful to watch. Their conversations go deep and Clayton is instantly sharing the darkest aspects of his life with the stranger. Her hold over him raises further questions and as the riddle is slowly unravelled, Devil’s Workshop enters an entirely new arena.
Hirsch’s Donald punctuates conversations between Clayton and Eliza. The appearance of the character diffuses any dramatic tension in favour of pushing the comedy. Hirsch has always been good and here is no exception. He has been enjoying his time in the horror world since his turn in the fantastic The Autopsy of Jane Doe and it doesn’t seem like he will leave the genre any time soon. Whilst his character doesn’t interact with anything traditionally frightening, Donald himself is a nightmare. He is exactly the kind of self-absorbed, talentless, loud and delusional personality that created the actor stereotype. Hirsch cuts free in his performance and is clearly playing an amalgamation of people that he has crossed paths with during his near thirty years in the industry.
The title, Devil’s Workshop, may suggest some kind of exploitative torture nightmare, when in reality it’s far more sophisticated. The torture here comes from the pressure that Clayton puts upon himself and the weight of things that he is keeping locked up inside. Eliza seeks to help rid him of these inhibitions and in doing so forces him into some dangerous situations. The real Devil’s workshop that von Hoffmann is presenting is the wasteland of the film industry. From the opening audition to scenes in an acting class, von Hoffmann highlights the futility of everything. The anxieties of struggling actors is personified through Clayton and the extremes that he pushes himself to act as a great foil to the lengths some will go to in order to secure a role. There is a real sadness in this situation and it’s one that translates to Clayton through Granaderos’ performance.
In a similar, though slightly less extreme way, Devil’s Workshop taps into the same space as Starry Eyes in terms of its analysis of the pressure to be a star. It’s a more subtle approach to that of Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kolsch, and so the theme might be lost to those without a familiarity to the industry. Those that dig deep enough though will find plenty of discourse to discuss and digest. A film made by the committed performances by Granaderos, Mitchell, and Hirsch, Devil’s Workshop deserves a spot on that coveted Halloween countdown watch-list.
Devil’s Workshop
Summary
A well made and acted horror analysis of the Hollywood machine.
Devil’s Workshop is available in select cinemas, on demand, and digital September 30 in the US via Lionsgate. Devil’s Workshop will also be available on Blu-ray and DVD in the US from 8th November, with a UK release still TBC.
