Devour



Meet Jake Gray, a bored and directionless 20-something college student with a lot going on in his life. His boss sucks. His mother is in a care facility. And his dad is a recovering alcoholic who almost seems detached from the world. And just to make everything worse, Jake has been having these very disturbing and vivid waking nightmares for years now, ones that usually include a lot of blood and violence. Feeling that he can’t turn to his family, his only support system are his two friends, Conrad and Dakota.

To try to lift Jake’s spirits on his birthday, Conrad signs Jake up to The Pathway, an online ‘game’ wherein the player gets a call from an unknown source who then gives the player some arbitrary task to do. With nothing more exciting going on in his life, Jake agrees to participate. But the silly game that Jake assumed would be nothing more than an entertaining time-waster is slowly revealed to be something more sinister. As the participants in the game progress the tasks become more and more gruesome, eventually leading to murder, with the ultimate goal being the player’s suicide. As Jake slowly discovers the stakes, the ultimate goal of the ‘game’ is revealed to him, forcing him to discover the mysteries of his own past.



So for my next ‘game’ inspired horror movie for the month we have Devour, an American, Direct-to-Video horror film from 2005 (not to be confused with the more recent film of the same name from 2025). Devour is a film that almost has some decent review scores on various places on the internet. Emphasis on almost. Which actually kinda confused me when I finally read a few of them, because honestly… I didn’t think the movie was all that good. I mean, I thought parts of it were good and that it had a few interesting ideas. But overall? Meh. I can only assume the scores are being skewed by Jensen Ackles’ rather rabid Supernatural fanbase. Those people… kinda scare me. But, to their credit, Ackles probably IS the best thing about the movie. Because I do think he does a good job here (and I’m not just saying that so that the creepy Supernatural fangirls don’t come at me with torches and pitchforks.) So at least that part checks out. I just don’t think he does a good enough job to elevate the film into ‘good’ territory.



The movie sort of feels like a more teen-centric version of David Fincher’s The Game, which came out in 1997. Neither ‘game’ has a discernible goal, both of them involve the ‘game’ being conducted by a mysterious unknown entity, both suggest that a great conspiracy is involved, both have a character named Conrad, both screw with the player’s sanity, and both occasionally put the lives of the ‘player’ (and others) in mortal jeopardy. Except that Devour is A) aimed at a much younger audience, and B) a lot more dark, thanks to the film’s ending and all the death and supernatural elements contained within.



Or are they supernatural elements? Because we’re never actually 100% sure about that. Hell, even Jake isn’t sure about that in the end. He even goes so far to say as much. Because the entire film is structured to mess with both Jake and the viewer by making them constantly question what it is they’re seeing and whether or not it’s real. This is actually the part of the movie that I liked. Because I could tell that the film went to great lengths to try to tie everything together. All the visions Jake (rather randomly) sees throughout the film have a purpose and an explanation at the end. So they’re not just casually throwing weird scenes at you just for the sake of throwing weird scenes at you to gross you out. There’s a reason for all these random snippets we become privy to throughout the film. The only thing left in question at the end is whether or not those things actually happened the way Jake thinks they did, or if Jake is nuttier than a flippin’ fruitcake and most of the movie was all just one big hallucination brought about by a deeply disturbed mind.



So that part of the film is nice. But the main problem I had with the movie was the majority of it was just…rather boring, actually. The pacing, especially for the first half, feels sluggish as hell. And it’s not even that important things aren’t even happening during this time. Because they are. The film introduces all the main characters and establishes their personalities, their hang-ups, and even their interpersonal conflicts. We get introduced to the ‘game’ and get to witness some more of Jake’s visions. So important things are happening.



The problem is, you probably won’t care. Like, about any of it. Just about any time something interesting happens the film throws in some sort of extended discussion, halting any momentum it was building up to. Which might have been okay if any of the characters had anything interesting to say. But most of the characters are either boring, or annoying. So it’s hard to develop any kind of emotion in regards to what happens to them. And because of the way the film is structured we’re sort of thrust into the middle of personal conflicts that we have no reference to, which can make things confusing. For instance, Conrad has some sort of beef with a fellow student. To the point where he nearly pulls a gun on him at the start of the film. But since we’re given no context as to why these two don’t seem to like one another it just feels like we’re missing something. The guy hadn’t done anything at that point to warrant a gun being shoved in his face. So instead of feeling justified or understanding of his behavior, Conrad just comes across as an irrational dick. Which…he is, don’t get me wrong. But the lack of any reasoning for his behavior sort of takes the emotional ‘umph’ out of his pre-eminent scene later on, which was otherwise very well done. The film’s continued lack of proper build-up causes several emotional scenes to feel rather flat.



Another problem: how the hell is this ‘game’ even supposed to work? I mean, I get the whole ‘calling and getting weird tasks to do’ part. It’s like an online game of Truth of Dare, I guess. Cool. I can follow that. But, like, what are the players supposed to get out of doing these random tasks in return? What’s the ultimate objective? What does one get if they win? Is it some sort of point system? Or are people simply looking for self-satisfaction? Just something to do? I mean, the movie does explain what the true purpose of the game was at the end (which seems really convoluted to me, but whatever), but in general I suppose I’m just wondering what it was that enticed people to even play to begin with. Because other than a grand total of ONE instance, all we see from the game is the end result, which winds up being some sort of murder/suicide. So again, the film’s lack of ‘build-up’ in certain areas comes into play to further bork what would otherwise be an interesting idea.



Ultimately, I’m rather torn on Devour. The film looks pretty great, and the overall acting ranges from decent to good. And I do like a lot of the ideas found in the movie. I think there was a rather solid foundation there. I’m just… I don’t know. I think they bungled the execution, is what it is. Instead of showing us what was going on, or even having Jake discover it on his own, most of the movie ends up being explained by unnecessarily long conversations. Which I found to be boring. I think if they’d done more showing and less telling it might have worked better. And I think the film was also trying to be a bit too ‘edgy’ for its own good, though that may very well just be me. But as it is the film is still decidedly ‘okay’. Not great, but not necessarily bad, just… kinda there. Fans of Jensen Ackles will probably want to watch it just for him. And if you like supernatural horror and don’t mind a lot of annoying ‘teen movie’ tropes then I guess you might want to give this a quick watch. But to everyone else: you probably won’t care.

Devour is available on a variety of streaming services.

Devour is also available on DVD.

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