Devour starts out with a somewhat interesting premise – that of the deadly internet game. Here Devour starts to suggest it is going to be along the lines of films like Brainscan (1994), Killer Net (1998), .com for Murder (2002) or FeardotCom (2002). This proves potentially intriguing at the outset but the idea soon falls prey to a slow and an eminently predictable pace where the whole film feels that it is arranged around a series of scares delivered up at timed intervals. The shock effects are not terribly interesting – there’s only the silly image of Jensen Ackles trying to cut off an oversized tongue with a knife or the schlocky image of a finger turning up in a bowl of fries, which has been stolen from The Hitcher (1986). There is a demonic creature that is briefly glimpsed but never gets up to much.

However, in mid-film Devour takes a surprise detour and turns into something else entirely. The sinister internet site angle gets largely forgotten about and the film leaps off into Satanic conspiracies. Here Devour seems to get serious and buy into an earnest Christian line – indeed, in some of this it is hard not to believe that Devour is not intended to fall into the new Christian fantasy genre that has emerged of recent – The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) etc. It does result in a very peculiar film. Although, at least Devour does reach an interesting double twist ending that one didn’t see coming.