Anvilicious: Dostoevsky's distaste for left-wing radicalism is not subtle, nor was it meant to be. He initially conceived the book as a "novel-pamphlet" on this theme.
The anti-Semitic portrayal of one of the radicals, Lyamshim, is all the more nasty given that a pogrom against Jews would be carried out in Russia just a few years after the novel was published, inspired by rumors that Jewish conspirators had been behind the assassination of Tsar Alexander II.
Hilarious in Hindsight: It's been pointed out that the radical agitator whose speech closes out the disastrous fête sounds an awful lot like Vladimir Lenin. Fitting for a novel about leftist politics in Russia written more than 40 years before the Revolution:
"He was short, looked about forty, was bald front and back, had a grayish little beard, and dressed decently. But most interesting was that at each turn he raised his right fist high, shook it in the air above his head, and suddenly brought it down as if crushing some adversary to dust."
Pretty much everyone seems to have a crush on Stavrogin—especially the male characters. Verkhovensky in particular delivers a speech which is hard to read as anything other than a Love Confession:
"'Stavrogin, you are beautiful!' Pyotr Stepanovich cried out, almost in ecstasy. 'Do you know that you are beautiful! The most precious thing in you is that you sometimes don't know it. Oh, I've studied you! I've often looked at you from the side, from a corner! . . . . I love beauty. I am a nihilist, but I love beauty. Do nihilists not love beauty? They just don't love idols, but I love an idol! You are my idol! . . . . I need precisely such a man as you. I know no one but you. You are a leader, you are a sun, and I am your worm...'"
Shatov gives a similar speech:
"'Stavrogin, why am I condemned to believe in you unto ages of ages? Would I be able to talk like this with anyone else? I have chastity, yet I wasn't afraid of my nakedness, for I was speaking with Stavrogin. I wasn't afraid to caricature a great thought by my touch, for Stavrogin was listening to me... Won't I kiss your footprints when you've gone? I cannot tear you out of my heart, Nikolai Stavrogin!'"
There are shades of this in the relationship between Stepan Trofimovich and the narrator, who seems to be a bit more devoted to his friend than is probably warranted by his (usually ridiculous) behavior.
It Was His Sled: If someone has heard of this book at all, the one thing they'll probably know about it is that it's a fictionalization of a real-life political murder. Given that the book is 700 pages long and the murder in question happens three chapters from the end, this knowledge takes a lot of the suspense out of the reading experience.
Moral Event Horizon: Any hope that Stavrogin might be redeemable goes out the window when he confesses that he once raped an underage girl and then stood by as she committed suicide. Even he acknowledges that this was a point of no return for him.
Slow-Paced Beginning: Dostoevsky spends about 200 pages just introducing all the characters and putting them in place before the real plot gets rolling.
"I will now set out to describe the somewhat amusing incident with which my chronicle really begins." (—The narrator, somewhere around page 60)
Values Dissonance: The depiction of the Jewish character Lyamshim is quite anti-Semitic, making any scene he's in very hard to read. Among other things, he’s shown to be greedy, cowardly, scheming, and dimwitted.
Claudio Simonetti's playful electronic score is proof that horror film music can be fun as well as scary. Especially the main theme.
The licensed soundtrack features kickass songs like "Night Danger" by Pretty Maids, "White Wedding" by Billy Idol and "Fast as a Shark" by Accept (which is used for the katana-motorcycle demon massacre combo).
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The helicopter that drops down through the theater ceiling completely out of nowhere. Yes, the rotors do prove useful for a low-speed Helicopter Blender, but that doesn't change the fact that it just pops up without any particular reason.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Tony the pimp is universally regarded as the best thing about the movie.
Fridge Horror: Strangely enough, one of the most terrifying things in the movie isn't the gore, the monsters or the spread of a demonic plague. It's that, given the explicitely "supernatural curse" aspect and a few hints mostly towards the beginning, there's a very good chance that anyone who falls victim to it is damned to hell for eternity.
Fridge Logic: No explanation is given for why the theater's doors suddenly became bricked up, trapping the audience inside: whatever evil force is behind the demon-plague presumably wants them to spread, and the ending shows that it only takes one to kick off a Zombie Apocalypse, so there's little to be gained by confining a first batch of victims until all of them can be infected. One possibility is that the theater was sealed to ensure that people outside, some of whom are presumably fighting back against the demon plague as well, can't get in if they trace the plague to its point of origin. Yes, stopping the filmstrip didn't end the invasion, but that doesn't mean there can't have been some clue to foiling the demons hidden inside the theater, which the protagonists just plain didn't find.
Nausea Fuel: The first person to turn into a demon grows a gigantic boil on her face, which then pops.
Nightmare Retardant: Depends on whether or not you really consider the film to be horror in the first place. It's really more of an action film with horror trappings.
Sequelitis: Several unrelated Italian horror movies such as Black Demons and The Ogre were given the Market-Based TitleDemons 3. The closest thing for an official part three, The Church, is considered Non-Canon, despite involving Argento. The actual sequel, Demons 2, mostly averts this.
Too Cool to Live: Tony. He's very clever, is the first to take charge of the group when all hell breaks loose, and is badass enough to fight off one of the demons with a switchblade. So naturally, he gets killed halfway through the movie.
2009 ITV series:
Designated Hero: Galvin and company seem committed to smiting half-lives because they're half-lives, regardless of whether or not they are actively dangerous to humans, which did not gounnoticed by Diamanda Hagan when she reviewed the show.
Fridge Logic: Hold on. So in the last episode, did Galvin really kill Father Simeon after all?
So Bad, It's Good: Some reviewers take this view. They have reason to.
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