I started watching Devil in Ohio from Netflix which has really interesting premise. In fact it reminds me somewhat of The Chidren of Red Peak by author, Craig DiLouie. In DiLouies book, children, now adults, go home to face their demons after escaping an apocalyptic cult. Great book. In the case of The Devil in Ohio, a girl escapes from a Satanic Cult and takes refuge in the family home of the psychologist treating her.
It has my attention until the end, but there are two things I find extremely annoying about it. The Netflix writers tripped all over itself to display wokism throughout and it distracts from an otherwhise interesting storyline.
I haven’t read Devil in Ohio, but I am considering doing it to compare it with the Netflix adaption. The other criticism I have is that it feels like a pre-cable movie. No one is swearing. Not even the detective, investigating a cult that carved a pentagram into a girls back. Also the detective looks more like a fragrance model than a detective.
Now, I don’t care what a characters gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation is, but when characters start feeling like product placement, it distracts from the story. Big time.
Comparably, Sundance TV did a fantastic adaption of Joe R. Lansdale’s Hap and Leonard, picking great actors to portray excellent characters. The characters are two men, Hap and Leonard, cemented as brothers when a horrible car accident kills both their fathers. They grow up together, fight for each, and others, against a myriad of interesting villains.
Hap Collins, played by James Purefoy, is a working class Texas Cowboy who has deplorable taste in women, and Leonard Pine, played Michael Kenneth Williams, a Vietnam veteran, gay black man who isn’t afraid to take up arms against evil people. I’ve read some of these books and sorrowly disappointed when they cancelled the series. It was fantastic. I think the lesson is that you can have characters in story who are gay, who are straight, who are white, who are whatever, but you have to make people like or identify with them. And you can’t display them like a box of laundry detergent or a can of beans to tick off a demographic checkbox. It’s lazy, and it’s lazy.
As I said, I’m going to finish it, and try and ignore the glaring distractions in an otherwise interesting scenario.
Thanks for Listening
PS:
I’m hard at work on the new book. I will be making an announcement once I get a look at the publishing timeline. While your waiting, I’d be honored if you’d check out my books, and if you already have, please tell a frien or a bunch of friends. Word of mouth means everything in this business, friends. Oh, and so do reviews, so if you haven’t dropped one, please do.
Thanks
MJ
