The best thing going for The Irrefutable Truth About Demons is that it has, to use an accurate description, a good dose of Clive Barker mixed through it. The worst thing working against the film is that it has, well, a good dose of Clive Barker mixed through it. I rarely say this, but this is a film that might have worked better if reworked to be a part of the sprawling and uneven Hellraiser franchise. There's definitely something worthwhile here, but it's hampered by the fact that it cannot show some truly horrific visions of a dark underworld running parallel to our own everyday lives.
Karl Urban stars as an anthropology professor, Harry Ballard, who becomes the focus of attention of a satanic cult. Harry has spent a long time denying the existence of powers and demons that the cult believes in, which may explain why they have some very specific plans for him now. The cult leader (Le Valliant, played by Jonathon Hendry) is a powerful foe, but Harry receives some unexpected assistance from a troubled young woman named Benny (Katie Wolfe).
The first full feature from writer-director Glenn Standring, who followed this up with the mediocre Perfect Creature, this is an admirable attempt to present some old-fashioned and traditional horror movie tropes with fresh coat of paint on them. Let's face it, the core of the plot is very much in line with the likes of The Devil Rides Out and Night Of The Demon, as well as something like Lord Of Illusions (funnily enough), but it doesn't quite manage to be as good as any of the tales influencing it.
Urban is a big plus in the lead role. It may be a few years before he would become a fully-fledged movie star, but the talent and charisma is all there. He's a good lead, and he tries his best to sell even the silliest moments. Wolfe doesn't do too bad alongside him, although she's asked to be consistently twitchy and quirky while viewers quickly get to figure out just why she's such a bag of nerves. It's a shame that Hendry isn't as good as the main villain, and he's not helped by the fact that a number of his minions are ripped from the pages of "spiky loonies dressed by Hot Topic in the year 2000".
I kept wanting this to impress me, but it sadly failed to manage that. Instead of building up to anything spectacular and impressive, it stumbled from one weak sequence to the next after an opening that had me hoping for something smarter and wittier. The character played by Urban showed a lot of promise, especially if given the kind of intelligence and attitude that exemplified other sceptical heroes of horror/sci-fi (I'm thinking of people like Quatermass and Kolchak here), but that's all undone by Standring making the mistake of removing ambiguity far too early in the runtime.
The Irrefutable Truth About Demons ends up being distinctly average, but who has time to watch a horror movie from the year 2000 that doesn't manage to be more than distinctly average? Okay, there's me, but most people are much more discerning than I am.
5/10
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