The wedding and the subsequent reception are already fraught with no shortage of expectation and stress, so it kind of makes the perfect place to toss a dybbuk into the mix. Writer/director Marcin Wrona, who passed away before the film premiered in Poland, uses that backdrop to ramp things up in “Demon” to horrific effect.
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Starring Itay Tiran, Agnieszka Zulewska, and Andrzej Grabowski, the story follows a young couple who seemingly unleash something evil when renovating their new home, and it all comes to a head on their wedding, which they won’t soon forget. Here’s the synopsis:
Newly arrived from England to marry his fiancee Zaneta (Agnieszka Zulewska, Chemo), Peter (Israeli actor Itay Tiran, Lebanon) has been given a gift of her family’s ramshackle country house in rural Poland. It’s a total fixer-upper, and while inspecting the premises on the eve of the wedding, he falls into a pile of human remains. The ceremony proceeds, but strange things begin to happen…During the wild reception, Peter begins to come undone, and a dybbuk, the iconic ancient figure from Jewish folklore, takes a toehold in this present-day celebration—for a very particular reason, as it turns out. The final work by Marcin Wrona, who died just as DEMON was set to premiere in Poland, is part absurdist comedy, part love story that scares, amuses, and charms in equal measure.
Our own Kimber Myers called the film “a chilling, modern version of a folk tale” with touches of Polanski. If that sounds up your alley, “Demon” opens on September 9th.