Being Film #5 for Hooptober 2025
The full weight of history lies just under the surface of Demon, the stunning final film from Marcin Wrona, who tragically took his own life during the film’s run at the festival circuit. With no jump scares and little in the way of violence or gore, the film manages to burrow under your skin, taking what on the surface is a possession film and running with the term as a scathing indictment of ignoring the past and the passive evil of possessing that which was ripped away in violence. A day later it still lingers in the front of my mind.
THE QUICK SUMMARY: Piotr is a young man returning to his native Poland to marry Żaneta after a brief but vivid virtual courtship. His future father-in-law gifts the couple an old, abandoned estate Piotr plans to renovate and turn into their future family home. Clearing the area he accidentally knocks over a tree, revealing the skeletal remains of…someone. Soon family and friends have gathered for the nuptials, but something is pulling at Piotr. Whose bones were those? What does Żaneta’s father and grandfather have to do with it? And who is Hana, the dirt-covered bride that Piotr keeps seeing? The more sinister things come to light, the more the revelers want to just drink and dance and push it all away. I think maybe that’s what got there here in the first place…
It’s hard to think about Demon and not consider it against Wrona’s suicide. The film refuses to provide a cut and dried ending, and works in spite of that due to the incredible performances, most notably Itay Tiran as Piotr, who takes some wild swings in his performance, and that’s even before some of the climactic possession scenes, of which the image on the poster is so indelible it’s been stuck in my mind for a decade, keeping me at arm’s length from watching the film all this time.
That was a shame, because Demon is a stellar piece of work. Using the legend of the dybbuk, a Jewish mythological spirit who possesses a host in order to complete some unfinished business, Wrona creates a startling commentary on Poland’s treatment of its Jewish population before and after WWII. The possession at the heart of the film has multiple layers: on the surface this is very much the story of a murdered Jewish woman possessing a young man to regain the marriage she lost decades ago from the violence and hate of the war. It’s also a critical spotlight on Poland’s role in “possessing” the lands and property of those Jewish people slaughtered in the war, and the way this dark history is shoved under the rug.
That deeper meaning almost feels like it’s the main point. What can initially come across as black comedy – the bride’s family aggressively keeps people drinking and dancing to shut out the increasingly desperate condition of Piotr – becomes something more disturbing as the flushed partiers are only too happy to ignore the screaming and contorting of the groom.
The end can be taken in a number of ways, but a careful watch shows just how Piotr’s disappearance near the end of the film is resolved, and the final scene of someone leaving town, reflecting Demon’s opening where Piotr arrives by ferry, leaves a sour, all too knowing taste in your mouth.
That’s entirely intentional. You’re meant to be disgusted by what happens, and it leaves me in its aftermath digging further into history, and the lengths we go to to not confront our complicity in the world.
Cinema Dual 