If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if Bubble Boy, The Exorcist, and a mid-budget Netflix original got stitched together in a dim hallway and told to behave, congratulations: you’ve already mentally seen Eli. Watching the film is just the confirmation that yes, that is exactly as chaotic as it sounds — and no, it does not get better once the devil shows up.
On paper, Eli has a lot going for it: creepy old house, mysterious medical treatments, Sadie Sink glaring like a ginger omen, religious horror, and a kid in a hazmat suit. In practice, it’s 90 minutes of “ooh, interesting” followed by 15 minutes of “oh… oh no.”
The Setup: Sad Little Bubble Boy
Eli Miller (Charlie Shotwell) is a kid with one of those vague movie diseases that basically amount to “he’s allergic to existing.” The outside world gives him violent reactions, so he lives in a plastic bubble and full-body suit like a discount space explorer. His parents, Rose (Kelly Reilly) and Paul (Max Martini), bring him to a secluded, high-tech “clean house” run by Dr. Isabella Horn (Lili Taylor), who is either a brilliant immunologist or the world’s most ominous Airbnb host.
The facility is a bizarre mash-up of sterile medical lab and haunted house. Imagine if someone tried to build a hospital inside a Catholic guilt museum and forgot to evict the ghosts. Naturally, only in horror movies does no one see this as a red flag.
Eli is understandably thrilled to finally take off his suit and touch things without dying, which makes it extra rude when the house immediately starts throwing ghosts at him like it’s on a schedule.
The Middle: Ghosts, Gaslighting, and “LIE”
Once the treatments start, they’re about as fun as you’d expect experimental basement medicine to be. Eli is strapped down, injected, and made to scream for extended periods — so at least the hospital is honest about that part.
Meanwhile, he starts seeing ghost kids and creepy messages scratched into surfaces: LIE. On walls, in mirrors, everywhere. For a solid chunk of the movie, this is pretty effective. We’ve got a lonely, terrified kid, parents who may or may not be in on something, a doctor with the warmth of a wet crucifix, and a house that can’t decide if it’s a clinic or a demon hostel.
Then comes Haley (Sadie Sink), a feral redheaded chaos gremlin who appears outside the fence, refuses to follow rules, and talks to Eli like she’s part pen pal, part cult recruiter. She’s the only one who actually believes him about the ghosts, which is already suspicious, because in horror films the person who believes you is almost never good news.
Eli starts snooping (as you do when you’re the protagonist and everyone says “it’s fine” in a tone that means “you’re absolutely going to die”). He figures out that “LIE” is actually 317 upside down, which is both clever and deeply stupid — like an escape-room password invented by someone who really loves calculator words.
He unlocks Dr. Horn’s office, finds records of previous child “patients” who all apparently died by treatment three, and reasonably concludes that he is not in a hospital but in a very poorly themed child cemetery. He attempts to warn his parents. His dad sedates him. Because parenting is about boundaries.
The Big Reveal: Plot Twist or Genre Car Crash?
Up to this point, Eli is a decent little supernatural mystery. Creepy house, religious imagery, maybe some unethical experimentation — you could go a lot of great directions with that. Unfortunately, the movie decides to go in all the directions at once.
Locked in a secret chapel-like chamber full of religious symbols (never a good sign when your “clinic” has a secret chapel), Eli has what looks like a massive allergic reaction… and then suddenly doesn’t. Surprise! He never had a disease.
And then the movie really leans on the gas.
Turns out there’s no autoimmune disorder. No miracle treatment. No ghost-induced immunology breakthrough. Instead we get:
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Eli isn’t sick; he’s the son of Satan.
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The “treatments” are really unsuccessful exorcism attempts.
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The previous child patients are failed devil-spawn, now corpses cosplaying as church decor.
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His mom didn’t just want a baby, she literally prayed to Satan because God wasn’t picking up.
This is less a twist and more a genre switch flipped without warning. We go from “haunted medical thriller” to “baby antichrist with Carrie powers goes feral” in about four minutes.
Eli then proceeds to unleash his newly awakened hellspawn abilities:
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He stops the ceremonial dagger mid-stab like Demon Neo.
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Forces Dr. Horn to stab herself (first and last successful procedure in that clinic).
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Levitate the nun-like assistants, flips them upside down into inverted crosses, and sets them on fire like he’s auditioning for Hellraiser: Junior Edition.
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Telekinetically crushes Dad’s face like a stress ball that asked the wrong question.
If this is supposed to be horrifying, it mostly plays like a demonic X-Men reboot Netflix is too embarrassed to admit greenlit.
Mom, Satan, and Other Poor Life Choices
Once the fire and face-crushing is done, Mom finally admits the truth:
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She made a pact with Satan because she couldn’t get pregnant.
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Eli is special. And by special, we mean the kind of special that gets you locked in a consecrated panic room.
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She knew the “clinic” was more Vatican fan-fiction than science, but brought him anyway.
At this point, Rose is less a tragic mother and more the HR department of Bad Decisions Inc. She cries, apologizes, and then just sort of… goes with it. Eli, covered in blood and fresh from a double homicide, walks out of the burning building like a tiny goth Messiah, and Mom just gets in the car with him because… well, what’s she going to do, ground him?
Oh Look, Satan’s Carpool Lane
Outside, Haley reappears and casually reveals she’s also one of Satan’s kids. She compliments Eli on being stronger than their other half-siblings, which is a charming bit of sibling rivalry considering most of them are now artfully arranged corpses in a holy basement.
She offers to take him to meet their father, which is the demon equivalent of “hey, want to meet my dad, he’s in a band.” Mom gets to be chauffeur in the world’s most cursed family road trip. The credits roll as they drive away from the flaming ruins of the plot’s original premise.
Performances: Good Actors, Bad Contract Choices
To be fair, the actors are trying. Charlie Shotwell does well as Eli, shifting between vulnerable and terrifying. Sadie Sink, with limited material, still manages to radiate ominous energy and the kind of smirk that says “I know where the bodies are buried, because I put them there.”
Lili Taylor deserves hazard pay for delivering lines about pseudo-medical demonic procedures with a straight face. Kelly Reilly does her best with “emotionally compromised Satan mom.” Max Martini plays “emotionally absent horror dad” as if he’s been training for years.
The problem isn’t the performances. It’s that they’re trapped inside a script that barrels through three different movies in one runtime, leaving logic behind like one of the dead assistants.
Final Diagnosis: Needs Less Twist, More Spine
Eli starts as a promising, atmospheric horror film with a clever setup: a sick child in an isolated clinic that might be haunted, or worse — fraudulent. That’s enough for an entire movie right there. But instead of deepening that mystery, the film slams on the supernatural accelerator and fishtails into full-blown devil spawn carnage with all the subtlety of a possessed bulldozer.
By the time we learn he’s Satan’s kid, the “haunted science” angle has been torched, the ghosts are basically footnotes, and the moral is… what, exactly? Don’t trust doctors? Don’t pray to Satan for fertility solutions? Don’t run a pediatric exorcism clinic out of a decrepit mansion?
In the end, Eli isn’t scary so much as it is confused — a movie that lies to you in big bold letters, then proudly announces that the lie was the point. It’s less a cohesive horror story and more a demonic plot twist wandering around in a hospital gown, hoping no one asks to see the chart.
Rating: 2 upside-down burning nuns out of 5.
Ambitious, occasionally effective, but ultimately possessed by its own worst impulses.
