Editorials
Karl Urban Channeled His Inner Constantine in ‘The Irrefutable Truth About Demons’ [You Aughta Know]
Hello, true believers, and welcome to You Aughta Know, a column dedicated to the decade that is now two full decades behind us. That’s right, it’s time to take a look back at one of the most overlooked decades of horror. Follow along as I do my best to chronologically explore the horror titles that made up the 2000s.
It was the first week of May in the year 2000. Santana had a number one hit but it wasn’t even “Smooth”; anyone remember “Maria, Maria?” Me neither. Coolboards 2001 and Driver 2 were both successful sequels on the Playstation One and Center Stage hit the big screen to influence a generation of adolescents forever. And somewhere, down in New Zealand, an almost never talked about Karl Urban feature debuted.
I’m here to tell you about The Irrefutable Truth About Demons.
Now as time went by, it would come to be known as the abbreviated The Truth About Demons. Directed and written by Glenn Standring, the movie has been lost to the annals of time. Standring would go on to create The Dead Lands, both movie and television series, before writing 6 Days, and Karl Urban would go on to have a successful career with roles in huge tentpole franchises such as Star Trek and the Marvel Universe.
In the film, anthropology director Harry Ballard, played by Urban, moonlights as debunker, taking after Houdini and going around busting religious cults and sects as frauds. With the suicide of his brother Richard weighing on him, Harry is sent a strange and malicious tape from a High Priest in The Blade Lodge, a Satanic cult his brother had been a part of. He ends up getting drawn into their plans to summon a great demonic power, and alongside a mysterious woman named Benny, looks to bring down the cult and get revenge for Richard.
Here’s the thing: The Truth About Demons is so incredibly *millennium*. It fits in snugly in the same space with films such as Blade; full of chokers, dusters, overtly gothic environments, questionable CGI and lots of leather. Because of its lower budget and non-Hollywood origins, production values line up more with primetime supernatural shows of the era, such as Charmed and Angel. It’s almost impossible to not draw comparisons to Constantine, with Urban’s ruggedly handsome and charming occult detective also drawing parallels to CW hit Supernatural.
But before you get too excited, it’s not as good as any of those. Okay, it’s at least as good as an episode of Charmed. That doesn’t mean it isn’t enjoyable, though. Some smart writing and fun performances make The Truth About Demons surprisingly watchable. It’s a fun flashback into the era; every subordinate in the cult looks primed and ready to be dancing to Nine Inch Nails in an old goth club, and so many rooms are candle lit with writing on the walls you can’t help but smile.
Jonathon Hendry stars as High Priest Le Valliant and chews scenery like a goat. It’s delightful. Katie Wolfe, who would go on to have a successful and prolific film career behind the camera, does her best Helena Bonham Carter as Bennie. She shows up as Harry’s potentially unstable partner in crime, leading him deeper and deeper into the cult because of her ex-member status. Urban is the leading man for a reason, and he carries the movie on his charm.
It’s not going to blow your mind but if you’re fiending for a movie that transports you right back to the early 2000s, The Truth About Demons is a fun and welcome addition to the roster.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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