The Demons in my Head (1996) — Triskaidekafiles

THE DEMONS IN MY HEAD

WRITER: Neil Johnson

DIRECTOR: Neil Johnson

STARRING: Matthew Mariconte as Travis
Greg Bowman-Miles as Regis
Jane Rowland as Marcia
Amber Allum as Larissa/Dream woman
James Dobbin as Bill
Damien Peppin as David
David Vallon as The Wise Man

QUICK CUT: A down on his luck guy digs up some trash in his backyard, and tries to make his luck turn around.

THE MORGUE

Travis - Your average guy having one bad week. The girl he likes isn’t interested. He has no job. His high school bully is repossessing all his shit. AND sleeping with the girl Travis likes. Oh, and a strange alien artifact crashes in his backyard.

Regis - Travis’ roommate, a young gay man who is very interested in Travis. And he needs to learn the meaning of no means no.

Larissa - Travis and Regis’ other roommate, and the aforementioned girl Travis is crushing on. But she’s more interested in guys who are successful.

Marcia - A missionary who runs into Travis when he’s trying to figure out the space widget. Her insight into religion proves invaluable though, and Travis shifts his desires from Larissa to Marcia in an instant.

Bill - Marcia’s missionary cohort, who has a nasty stutter, and is good with the books.

I’m paranoid of people, and it’s starting to show.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! This week takes us technically back to one of the Pendulum 50 packs I've been acquiring, but I ended up buying the movie as a single before I realised I already had it. There's a reason I'm doing this movie, but we'll come to that later. For now, this week, I am gonna pick apart Neil Johnson's movie, The Demons in my Head.

The movie starts off in space, and lemme tell ya, the recurring theme of space movies has been entirely accidental this year. It just keeps happening. But I digress.

We are at the planet Nephili, and witness a red blast shoot off into space, and then comes crashing down to Earth in Travis's Australian backyard. Don't worry, I'm sure the local fauna will take care of whatever it was.

Travis gets distracted before he can check out the space debris hurtling towards him, when a guy shows up at his door to repossess some things he is late on payment for.

Making matters worse, the guy who shows up is Travis' high school bully AND stole the girl he was sweet on.

Uhhh, I’ll just let you two have some space.

Travis is not having a good day, and it's only gonna get worse from here, friends.

Which is when Travis' flatmate Larissa shows up. She is yet another woman he has a crush on, and I bet you can see where this is gonna go.

Next, their other flatmate, Regis, walks out of the bathroom, covered in shit, because the house also has plumbing issues. See what I mean?

Oh, as you can see, there is weirdly random black and white flashes as the camera cuts around, for no particular reason.

Finally, Travis has a moment to himself, and heads out to poke at whatever fell from the sky. He tries to get a good look at it in the dark, but whatever it is, keeps making his flashlight turn off when it gets close.

Dude, that should be a giant flashing neon warning sign to get away. You're probably sterile now. Not that this is a problem, but I digress.

He heads out the next morning, following a dream about his fantasy woman, but as Travis is trying to chisel his way into the rock, some missionaries show up. Oh great, just when this week can’t get any worse.

Marcia gives it a go though, and inside the rock they find a new pair of headphones! Bonus! Or some sort of alien headdress artifact.

Later, Bill shows up with some religious books to help translate the markings on the headset, since they seem familiar.

Also, a probe from Nephili shows up, shoots a few things back to the home planet, and this is all rather unclear. I guess they send out the artifacts, and then send probes to do follow up interviews if they get found?

Scanning for intelligent life…scanning…scanning…

Travis and Marcia have a deep meaningful conversation on the front porch, about her beliefs about the stars and planets, and how aliens are just demonic possessions. Also, her belief that our minds are a sort of radio transmitter that other entities can tune in on.

And I am angry with how right she ends up being. But more on that later.

Bill figures out the writings are related to the Nephilim, fallen angels who sometimes visit Earth, and no one really knows what happened to them. Get ready to find out!

Later, Larissa is getting ready for a date with David, and the movie drops none to subtle hints that Regis has the hots for Travis.

Following an attempted three way with a prostitute to cheer him up, Regis and Travis have a talk, and things don't go so well. You know, I am getting the impression that polyamory could solve at least the Earth-based problems of this movie.

But since polyamory is off the table for Travis, he distracts himself by checking out if the alien headset fits. Oh sure, just put the strange alien device that fell from space on your head, that can't POSSIBLY go wrong.

And cue the INSTANT jumpscare screaming visions.

The following morning, Travis is just casually wearing the headset around the house, and oh no! David has eaten his cereal, drank all his milk, slept with his flatmate, AND will repossess the house if Travis can't pay some bills in a few days!

All he can do is help Regis not have black coffee, so he just...casually uses the Nephilim device to create milk. Or a vaguely milk adjacent substance. That came outta nowhere.

Bill freaks out as Travis summons more objects, because this is all connected directly to the Nephilim, and probably Satan. Smartest guy in the room.

Every object Travis summons or creates is flawed. It's deformed, it doesn't taste right, or smell right, and is just...wrong.

He even tries to create a stack of 50 dollar bills for Regis, and they look vaguely money-like, but are all squiggly, like they were created with ChatGPT.

So, he has basically become Firestorm, but lacking the knowledge of Professor Stein. Also, I like the idea that Travis can create whatever he can imagine, but since human memory and mental images are imperfect, they're all just...off.

He tries to create gold bars, and even that goes horribly wrong. He doesn't even get lead.

I have created a bar of the purest green!

Following a few more experiments, Travis tries to create the dream woman in the poster on his bedroom wall.

He manages to not summon out a lump of sludge, which is something of an improvement. Still, it misses the mark, and he got a Nephilim instead.

As desperate as he is, this woman is still a little too freaky, even for Travis. So, he sends her back from whence she came, and tries again.

Travis makes another attempt, and this time he pulls a man out of thin air. Hmm, maybe Regis is onto something here.

Our new visitor is from the future, or another dimension, or something, recognises the technology Travis is toying with, and tries to warn the guy. But it's all technobabble to him, and faster than you can say BORING! he zaps the wise man back to wherever.

He tries one more time, and trust me, the third time is definitely not the charm. This time he gets a violent, cruel, Nephilim who captures the entire group for purposes unknown.

Australia has a problem of Mad Max extras roaming wild.

The demon attacks a few of the group, and eventually Travis gets the headset back on his head, then uses it to zap his friend back home.

So, Travis explains his powers to everyone else, while leaving them tied up, and David starts yelling about this. Travis solves his David problem by zapping him to the cornfield.

You can definitely see a shift in David's attitude, be it because he's toying with vast power, or because the Nephilim are corrupting him. Almost certainly the later, but it is a pretty classic “power corrupts” allegory.

After many attempts, and much begging, Travis finally brings David back, but he unfortunately brings the leather daddy Nephilim with him.

In all this chaos, Bill gets torn to little pieces, before Travis can send Nephfrey back home. David and Larissa take this as their cue to get out of the movie.

Throughout all of this, Travis' power has been growing. The more he uses it, the better he gets, the more he 'transforms', according to the warnings from the Wise Man. And after all this, he finally creates a perfect gold cherubim statue.

He is now more connected to the Nephilim, and he addresses Marcia, saying they want her as their queen, someone the bible refers to as "the whore of babylon". And you wonder why you don't have a girlfriend?

But if Marcia doesn't work out, I hear you can find Betty Cooper in Riverdale, USA.

While all this is going on, a spaceship is approaching, and Regis sneaks behind Travis, and steals the Nephil-helm. All of which adds up to a scabby piece of work suddenly appearing to ruin their already terrible night.

Aww no, they summoned Deadpool from Wolverine: Origins.

Regis and Travis make a run for it, and encounter another Nephilim, who zaps Travis back to the homeworld and oops! All methane!

Travis uses his own Nephil-helm to summon the Wise Man back, so he can FINALLY deliver his exposition uninterrupted.

He gives Travis the advice to not use the headset anymore, don't let them inject their poison into you, or it will fully transform you, and oh, if you want to go home, you will have to trust me with your headset.

Since there's no real other option, Travis hands over the headset, and gets zapped back home. Unfortunately, this strands the wise man on Nephili. I guess the wearer can't use the device directly on themselves.

Before dispatching Travis back to Earth, Wiseman gives him some relationship advice, and oh, you can defeat the creatures with baking soda or a brass weapon.

On Earth, Travis finds a weapon, and kills one of the Nephilim, while his friends are being tormented by the other.

Meanwhile, Marcia kills the second one, and then takes it's Nephil-helm for herself. She instantly ascends and zaps the remaining Nephilim to the cornfield.

Regis patches Travis back up, while Marcia has a chat with the Wiseman. She is instantly much better at all this than Travis is, but also much more corrupted. This will end badly.

Travis tries once more to hook up with Marcia the Goddess, but she doesn't feel that way about him. She points out Regis does though, and once more, Travis reminds everyone he is TOTALLY not gay!

But, that is no longer a problem, because Marcia went ahead and turned Regis into the spitting image of the fantasy woman from Travis’ poster..

This is not how I saw this movie ending.

Marcia and Wiseman leave the two lovebirds to do whatever, and return to the Nephilim homeworld, where her arrival is heralded with fireworks and cheers. I for one would like to welcome our new Marcia overlords.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: So I initially watched this on a disc it shared with three or four other movies, waiting for my single copy to arrive. It looked FINE but the quality was a bit lacking, and the colours were washed out. It was a coin toss if the single disc would just be a straight copy of that version, or if it would be improved, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it was a bit better. The blacks were deeper, and while that had the side effect of losing some quality, the colours are overall much richer and more vibrant, so I’ll take it.

Audio: This though, this was night and day. I had to CRANK the volume on the 50 pack version, the audio was SO low, and even then I wish I could have turned it up louder. The single disc has no such trouble. So while I normally dislike double dipping, especially accidentally, this is at least a decent upgrade.

Sound Bite: “Have you been a bad boy??”

Body Count: For a movie about an impending intergalactic/otherdimensional invasion, this has a shockingly low number of deaths.

1 - 49 minutes in, and the demon of Pride and what have you, rips off Bill's arm, and devours his stomach.
2 - Travis kills a Nephilim
3 - And Marcia kills another

Best Corpse: Bill’s poor torn up body looks great.

Blood Type - C+: Not a lot of blood or special effects, and most of that is centered around Bill’s torn apart body. And like I said, it looked really good, especially for this budget. If I gave extra points for the design and execution of the flawed creations, I’d give it a B-.

Sex Appeal: More hinted at that anything else.

Drink Up! Every time the movie switches to black and white.

Movie Review: Grading this on the curve of, if not first time director, very early in his filmmaking career, this isn’t half bad. I’ve certainly seen much worse. And I appreciate big swings with big ideas. The movie does manage to pull off some decent stuff on a very small budget, although you definitely get the sense that a bit more money, and a bit more skill, could smooth out those rough edges. But I can only excuse inexperience so far, and the plot of this movie feels too big for this story. There’s a lot of big ideas here, and I appreciate the attempt, I just don’t quite feel they were brought to the screen. There’s a lotta lore I wish we got more background on, and this feels like a small part of a bigger story going on elsewhere. And in one sense, that’s true. I actually found Neil’s NEXT movie first, and found out it is loosely connected to THIS one, to the point that before his third movie, Neil reedited and rereleased these two films to put them more in line with the wider Nephilim storyline he’s building. And these ideas are so interesting and compelling, I am desperate to get my hands on THOSE versions, just to see how things changed. But that is not the version of the movie we have here, and yes it’s flawed, but it’s put together with some talent, even if the ideas get away from the plot a bit, so this ends up being a movie I like more for what it could have been/wanted to be, than what it is, so two out of five Nephil-helms.

Entertainment Value: Some of this movie’s humour hasn’t aged so well, but I can still appreciate it for ahwt it is. And it’s genuinely an interesting movie as you try to figure out just where all this is headed. The climax doesn’t quite pay that off as well as I’d hoped, but it was an interesting ride none the less. And the running gag of the Wise Man constantly getting sent away while he tries to explain the plot tickled me. A fascinating movie that intrigues me, three out of five blue space bananas.