Had The Demon’s Rook been made in the 1980s or 1990s, it would have been shot on videotape. This is very much kin to the kinds of movies the Polonia brothers or Andreas Schnaas were making back then. All the bona fides are there. It was the passion project of an aspiring filmmaker and an amateur cast and crew. It’s very bloody and gory, yet the effects are inexpensive. And it took a long time to shoot, with this particular flick eating up weekends for two years, if the internet is to be believed.
Released in 2013, the driving force of The Demon’s Rook is filmmaker James Sizemore, who wrote (with Akom Tidwell), produced (with Tim Reis), directed, and starred. Reis contributed further as editor and cinematographer. The Demon’s Rook tells the story of Roscoe (Sizemore), who, when he was a young boy (played by Emmett Eckert), was recruited by a demon, Dimwos (John Chatham), to become an apprentice in demonic magic. The price is high, as Roscoe not only has to abandon his life, but his parents become blood sacrifices, and Roscoe is held prisoner well into his adulthood in a separate dimension.
One day, or night, or whatever it is that exists in another dimension, Roscoe confronts Dimwos about the deaths of his parents, leading to sacred vessels being destroyed, and evil demons released. Roscoe flees back into the real world of rural Georgia, but he did not escape the evil demons. They follow him, and bring total chaos. Zombies rise from the grave. At least one person is transformed into a hungry demonkind. 
Groups of friends turn on each other and rip each other to shreds. A surf rock shindig in a barn becomes bloody mayhem. By his own admission, Roscoe tried to cram in everything he ever wanted to see in a horror movie.
This is a film that thrives on its bloody set pieces. Probably a result of the haphazard filming schedule, much of this flick’s 103-minute running time are these set pieces, featuring characters unrelated to the main plot, or each other. Rather, these scenes serve as pure spectacle, showing what these unleashed demons, and Sizemore and company, were capable of.
It’s all practical effects. Corn syrup, food dye, latex — all the homemade accoutrements of the horror auteur. The body count is large, drawn from friends, family, and whatever other acquaintances Sizemore could cajole. All of it to synth and rock music that fits squarely with the themes. The entire package is a showcase of the value of true independent filmmaking.
With praise like that, this must be a great movie, right? It’s not. It’s good fun, though. Those gory set pieces carry the movie, and that is because the plot is quite thin. Roscoe flees the demons and meets up with his old childhood friend, Eva (James’s real life wife, Ashleigh Jo Sizemore, who also worked on set decoration, painting, effects, wardrobe, and creating the language the demons speak), and they wander around a bit, but don’t have much to do until the final confrontation. Sizemore has said in an interview that he never went to film school or had any sort of training in storytelling, and it shows.
He had a good sense of what he, and his collaborators, were capable of. There weren’t a lot of acting chops to go around, so dialogue is sparse and simple. No scene lasts too long, and the story is thin by design. There is some lore, but it’s more of a glimpse into a wider world of the supernatural than it is something a viewer is burdened with learning. Most importantly, cramming so much action into this movie is what keeps it watchable. One after another, scenes hit viewers. There is never an opportunity to get bored or have our 21st century attention spans strained.
The Demon’s Rook is the kind of movie I love seeing, because it’s a work of art made outside the confines of corporate media. It’s the work of a filmmaker restrained only by resources, and not by the enforced, lowest common denominator mediocrity of the boardroom. Sure, it’s a cheap b-movie. But it’s fun in a way big studios can no longer grasp. The Demon’s Rook is shitty gold, taking over the #40 slot in the Watchability Index from Hercules in New York. Check it out.