30 nights of paranormal activity with the devil inside the girl with the dragon tattoo - 2013
By The Bottom Reel Editorial Team ·
30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2013)
Overview
30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a 2013 American direct-to-video parody comedy written and directed by Craig Moss. As the name suggests, it’s a deliberately convoluted title mashing up Paranormal Activity, The Devil Inside, 30 Days of Night, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – plus references to The Artist, Twilight, Hunger Games, Adele, and Storage Wars.
Plot
After a stint in a psychiatric hospital, Dana Galen Kathryn Fiore returns with husband Aaron Flip Schultz to the house where her father Herb French Stewart murdered the entire cast of The Artist during his exorcism. The house is now home to an evil spirit, a horny vampire-hunting Abraham Lincoln Ben Morrison, and their teenage daughter Liz Olivia Alexander, who’s infatuated with Lincoln.
The film strings together spoofs of found-footage horror, possession films, and pop culture. Dana deals with ghostly hauntings, a manny named Felipe Arturo Del Puerto, and various non-sequiturs while the family films themselves. The “plot” is mostly a delivery system for references: a Dragon Tattoo parody, Adele and Storage Wars sketches, and sight gags like Lincoln emancipating Liz.
Cast & Crew
Dana Galen – Kathryn Fiore
Aaron Galen – Flip Schultz
Liz Galen – Olivia Alexander
Herb – French Stewart
Felipe the Manny – Arturo Del Puerto
Sluggy Kornnutz – Danny Woodburn
Abraham Lincoln – Ben Morrison
Director/Writer – Craig Moss
Producers – Jim Busfield, Ben Feingold, Ash R. Shah
Cinematographer – Rudy Harbon
Music – Todd Haberman
Social Impact & Reception
The film had virtually no cultural footprint beyond being a punchline for how far the early-2010s “Friedberg/Seltzer” parody trend fell.
Critics: Universally panned. Rotten Tomatoes shows a 0% Tomatometer from 3 reviews. Critics called it “dumb, dumb, dumb. And, not funny” and “the only possible beneficial use I can see for Moss' film would be to replace water-boarding as the main method of war-time hostage torture”. Exclaim! gave it 2/10: “Somewhere buried underneath all of the terrible references and non-sequiturs are maybe one or two chuckles that weren't elicited without a fair amount of shame and guilt”.
The Rotten Tomatoes Critics Consensus: “When it comes to the subculture of soccer thugs, Green Street Hooligans lacks sufficient insight…” is for a different film. For 30 Nights, RT’s consensus isn’t posted due to lack of reviews, but featured critics are all negative.
Audience: Also brutal. IMDb: 2.4/10 and 2.6/10 listed in different sources. Google Users: 26% liked it. Audience reviews call it “perhaps one of the worst films I have ever seen” and “too dumb to be anything close to funny”. A few found it “so dumb it was hilarious”.
Critical summary: Critics and viewers cited “lack of originality, poor humor, and overall low production quality”. It’s “widely considered a pointless and unfunny parody” and “a tiresome and poorly executed attempt at horror-comedy”.
Budget vs. Box Office
Production Budget: $3,000,000
Theatrical Release: None. It went straight to video/streaming Jan 15, 2013 via 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
Box Office Gross: $0 – no theatrical revenue reported. The Numbers and Box Office Mojo list “Revenue –” and “Domestic –, International –, Worldwide –”.
Revenue Model: DVD/Blu-ray and VOD. List price was $11.99 on Blu-ray. No profit figures are public, but with no theatrical run and universally bad reviews, it likely did not recoup its budget.
Ratings
IMDb: 2.4/10 to 2.6/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 0% Tomatometer from 3 critics; no Popcornmeter shown but audience reviews average 0.5–1 stars
Metacritic: No Metascore due to insufficient reviews
Google Users: 26% liked this film
Rating: R for Sexual Content Throughout, Nudity, Language, Strong Crude & Sexual Content. Runtime: 80 minutes.
Legacy
The film is now mainly referenced as an example of “worst parody movies” and the death rattle of the Scary Movie clone era. Its title became more famous than the content – an intentional joke about Hollywood’s 2010s trend of mashing franchises together. Unlike Scary Movie or Airplane!, it “does not aim to contribute anything to the discourse of the genres it parodies; rather, it offers a goofy, mindless escape”.
If you’re studying bad movies, tax write-offs, or how not to do parody, it’s a case study.