while the selachian serial killer is known locally as ‘el demonio negro’, oil is the other black demon here, dredging up humanity’s insatiably self-destructive corruptibility

| Jul 6, 2023

Like Grunberg’s earlier work, The Black Demon might be called a B-movie, whatever that ancient term has come to mean. Or you might say that it was made by someone who remembers what genre movies in general were traditionally meant to look like.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 14, 2023

The Black Demon effectively sticks to [its] well-greased formula.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 13, 2023

Sometimes after a grueling day at work where everyone’s demanding a pound of flesh from you, you need a killer shark movie to properly unwind. This is not that movie.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Apr 27, 2023

The Black Demon only loosely explores its cryptid and instead uses it as a tool to spin a cautionary tale of manmade ecological disaster. But it never builds upon its shallow ideas, resulting in a messy effort sunk by its lackluster human focus.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Apr 26, 2023