There’s something especially cruel about Italian horror in the late ’80s. It was a cinematic graveyard where once-mighty names like Lamberto Bava wandered aimlessly, hoping no one would notice the rigor mortis setting in. Enter The Ogre, a made-for-TV film so bland it makes you nostalgic for Demons 2—a movie that at least had the decency to be stupid andloud. Promoted overseas as Demons III: The Ogre, this one is less a sequel and more like the sad cousin who shows up at the family reunion claiming relation because his uncle once dated your mom’s hairdresser.
The Premise: Goosebumps, But Slower
The setup sounds promising in that generic, VHS-back-cover way: Cheryl, an American horror novelist, takes her family to a villa in Italy, only to discover the house might be haunted by her childhood nightmares of an ogre. This should be fun. Haunted villas, repressed trauma, childhood monsters manifesting in the flesh—it’s like someone put The Shining, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Scooby-Doo into a blender. Unfortunately, the blender wasn’t plugged in.
Instead of horror, we get endless scenes of Cheryl wandering around dusty hallways clutching candles while her husband Tom insists everything is fine. Spoiler: everything is not fine, but also not interesting. The ogre shows up in dream sequences, then in reality, then back in dreams, and by the third cycle you’re praying he just eats everyone and ends the movie.
Cheryl: The Horror Novelist Who’s Never Read a Horror Novel
Jenny of all trades, master of none, Cheryl is supposed to be a successful writer of terrifying tales. Yet she reacts to the supernatural events with all the insight of someone who skimmed a Goosebumps book at a yard sale. She keeps having vivid nightmares about the ogre, but instead of immediately fleeing the villa like a rational human, she doubles down.
“I have to face my fears,” she says. Great. But maybe don’t drag your husband and child into a murder house while you do it, Cheryl. If she wanted inspiration for her next novel, she could’ve just written about the horrors of airline food and saved us all ninety minutes.
Tom: Patron Saint of Skeptical Horror Husbands
If horror movies have taught us anything, it’s that husbands are the absolute worst people to bring to a haunted villa. Tom spends the movie dismissing everything Cheryl says. “It’s just the wind, honey,” he mutters while the walls ooze ectoplasm and demonic laughter echoes through the villa.
Tom’s defining character trait is his ability to be wrong in every situation. If Cheryl told him the sun was rising, he’d demand peer-reviewed evidence. If she said the ogre was in the room, he’d say, “Nonsense, that’s just the neighbor in a Halloween mask,” right before his head gets crushed like a grape.
The Ogre: Diet Shrek
Now, let’s talk about the title character. For a film called The Ogre, you’d expect… oh, I don’t know… a terrifying ogre. Instead, we get a lumpy creature who looks like someone spray-painted a Halloween mask they found at Woolworth’s. He’s supposed to be terrifying, but his big-screen presence is less “soul-devouring nightmare” and more “discount mascot for a medieval-themed pizza parlor.”
The script itself betrays him. As Bava admitted, this was a made-for-TV film, so they couldn’t let the ogre eat kids. That’s right—the one thing that would have made him legitimately horrifying was cut, leaving us with a monster whose scariest power is mildly inconveniencing the family. When your horror villain is less menacing than a malfunctioning Roomba, you’ve failed.
Production Values: Gothic Poverty
The villa setting should’ve been dripping with atmosphere. Instead, it looks like the crew found a slightly run-down Airbnb and filmed without permission. The lighting is dim, not to set the mood but because the budget apparently didn’t cover electricity. The music is generic horror synth, the kind that sounds like someone fell asleep on a Casio keyboard.
There’s no sense of pacing. Whole minutes drag by as Cheryl stares into space, Tom questions her sanity, and Bobby the kid… exists. It’s a film where nothing happens, and then when something finally does happen, you wish nothing had.
Bobby: Child in Peril, Or Just Perilous Child?
The child, Bobby, is the typical horror-movie kid: vaguely unsettling, prone to saying ominous things, and mostly there so the audience can pretend to care about stakes. In reality, he’s just set dressing. At no point did I believe this kid was in danger. Why? Because if the ogre had actually eaten him, the film might’ve gotten interesting, and The Ogre is constitutionally incapable of being interesting.
Pseudo-Sequel Shenanigans
Outside Italy, this film was marketed as Demons III: The Ogre, despite having nothing to do with Demons or its sequel. There are no demons, no movie theater massacres, no television transmissions turning people into monsters. Just one frumpy ogre who looks like he lost his way to the Renaissance Faire. Calling this Demons III is like calling Driving Miss Daisy a sequel to The Fast and the Furious.
It’s the cinematic equivalent of catfishing: you think you’re getting neon-colored gore and outrageous set pieces, but what you actually get is a woman muttering about dreams while a man in prosthetics stumbles around like he’s late for his community theater audition.
The Scares: Or Lack Thereof
So, what’s scary here? The short answer: nothing. The long answer: the only truly terrifying part of this movie is realizing you’ve still got thirty minutes left.
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Jump scares? A cat leaps out once. Of course.
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Atmosphere? Only if you find beige wallpaper terrifying.
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The Ogre’s attacks? They play out with all the urgency of someone slowly losing a game of hide-and-seek.
There’s no gore (thanks, TV restrictions), no tension, and no payoff. If you fall asleep during the movie, congratulations: you’ve essentially recreated Cheryl’s nightmare sequences.
Final Act: Hurry Up and End
Eventually Cheryl “faces her fear” and defeats the ogre. How? Don’t ask. The finale is a blur of shouting, running, and effects that wouldn’t pass muster at a high school haunted house. By the time the credits roll, you’ll wonder why the ogre didn’t just kill the camera crew and save everyone the trouble.
Legacy: Lost in the Shadows
The Ogre has the dubious distinction of being both too boring for gorehounds and too silly for serious horror fans. Even Lamberto Bava has admitted it wasn’t his finest hour, which is saying something from the man who made Graveyard Disturbance.
As for the “Demons III” title, it’s a cruel joke. Demons was wild, trashy fun. The Ogre is watching someone else’s anxiety dream about their overdue manuscript. It’s horror without teeth, without claws, and without a point.
Final Verdict: Ogre-ific Fail
The Ogre is proof that not every childhood nightmare needs to be made into a movie. It takes a halfway decent premise and smothers it under cheap production values, a comatose script, and a monster who couldn’t frighten a toddler at a Chuck E. Cheese.
It’s not scary. It’s not fun. It’s barely even a movie. It’s like staring at a damp sponge for ninety minutes, only the sponge occasionally grunts in bad prosthetics.
