{"id":20679,"date":"2016-05-13T19:58:04","date_gmt":"2016-05-13T23:58:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=20679"},"modified":"2016-05-13T19:58:04","modified_gmt":"2016-05-13T23:58:04","slug":"alleluia-the-devils-carnival-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/13\/alleluia-the-devils-carnival-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Alleluia! The Devil’s Carnival (2016)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Alleluia-The-Devils-Carnival\"<\/a>I assume somewhere down the line we had to fill in the holes and explore how the battle between heaven and hell ensued. I\u2019m just not sure we had to spend the majority of the sequel doing so. \u201cAllelulia!\u201d is mostly a misfire of a sequel to the raucous and wonderful \u201cThe Devil\u2019s Carnival\u201d that fills in the questions from the first film. In the duration of the follow-up, we get to discover how the war began, how the battle became personal for hell\u2019s minions and heaven\u2019s warriors, and there\u2019s even the origin of one of the Devil\u2019s Carnival\u2019s most infamous minions who we see a great deal of in the original film.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mind watching how these minions and warriors became the characters we know them as now, but I wish the writers had a more interesting origin and series of conflicts in mind to build in to a compelling crescendo. By now it\u2019s been accepted that \u201cThe Devil\u2019s Carnival\u201d movies are a series of horror musicals folding in to one another, and I\u2019ve been anxiously awaiting the second chapter for a while now. Sadly, \u201cAlleluia!\u201d doesn\u2019t do much to progress the narrative and chooses to oddly go backward and continue forward. The first film was admittedly a bit gimmicky and a touch of the anthological where we meet a trio of characters we learn might go to hell if they resist hell\u2019s minions and temptations.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost like the second film really doesn\u2019t know how to top such a fascinating narrative and series of high energy moments and approaches the follow up with a much more low key effort. Plus there\u2019s the consistent implication that we\u2019re due for a war between heaven and hell, but with the low budget on these films I\u2019m curious how they\u2019re going to pull that one off where it\u2019s satisfying and not anti-climactic. Even for a horror musical merely having hell and heaven engaging in a sing off would be very silly. In either case, \u201cAllelulia!\u201d is more centered on heaven and how it works from the inside, producing heaven\u2019s warriors like a conglomerate corporation, encouraging conformity and order, and greeting a lot of its hopefuls with up beat songs.<\/p>\n

We meet the rebellious June and the more eager and reserved Cora, both of whom are absolutely beautiful young women eager to please and trying to form their own paths in heaven. June inevitably begins forming an attraction to heaven\u2019s loyal Agent (Adam Pascal), leading both on a path that could disrupt heaven\u2019s battle with hell. Lynn Bousman\u2019s follow up is still a solid musical with some great choreography and the usual fantastic make up effects, it just follows up the bang of \u201cThe Devil\u2019s Carnival\u201d with a narrative that probably should have been reserved as a B story for the sequel rather than becoming the central premise. I hope Darren Lynn Bousman and co. deliver a fine third installment, as the series of cult musicals really have offered a unique and whimsical take on the battle of good and evil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I assume somewhere down the line we had to fill in the holes and explore how the battle between heaven and hell ensued. I\u2019m just not sure we had to spend the majority of the sequel doing so. \u201cAllelulia!\u201d is mostly a misfire of a sequel to the raucous and wonderful \u201cThe Devil\u2019s Carnival\u201d that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[50,276,349,420,477,700,874,922,1008],"class_list":["post-20679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-a","tag-demons","tag-fantasy","tag-gothic","tag-horror","tag-musical","tag-romance","tag-sequel","tag-supernatural"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20681,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20679\/revisions\/20681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}