Directed by Oliver Park, The Offering is about a family that must deal with a demon that is targeting a pregnant woman.
But mostly the movie is about how a man managed to unleash the demon because he was too afraid to own up to breaking something and then sliding that really important piece of the puzzle, into the drain.
The result? The demon gets to escape, kill the elderly, and then chase the pregnant wife.
THE OFFERING Plot
The movie begins with an older man (Anton Trendafilov) trying desperately to bring his wife back from the dead by performing a ritual that requires him to make sigils on the floor.
The wife does appear briefly, but of course, the ritual goes horribly wrong and the older man is killed.
We then meet “Art” (Nick Blood) and his pregnant wife Claire (Emily Wiseman). They have returned to Art’s family home, which is also a funeral parlor. Art’s father, Saul, welcomes him with open arms. It is implied that the family wasn’t initially happy with Art marrying someone who didn’t belong to their community. His relative, Heimish (Paul Kaye), isn’t too thrilled with Art’s return and gives him a hard time.
To please his father, Art offers to prepare the next body that has arrived for the funeral. The body is revealed to be that of the same old man we saw at the beginning. He used to be a friend of Saul’s.
Art assures his father he will take over the job alone, and Saul and Heimish leave. Art finds an engraved dagger in the chest and an amulet. While the dagger makes it to the sink on time, the amulet is broken when Art drops it.
Saul takes that moment to reenter, and Art stealthily slides the broken pieces into the drain.
Saul inspects the dagger and immediately sends Art away. Something about the engravings has mystified him, and he calls up Chayim ( Daniel Ben Zenou), a scholar who knows about the engravings. He warns Saul that the dagger was used to keep the demon inside a vessel, a body in this case. But since there is no amulet, there is no demon.
Saul is relieved because he doesn’t yet know what his clumsy son has done.
Claire ends up having a nightmare about the old man tearing up her pregnant belly, and the next morning when she gets out of bed, there is blood.
It isn’t long before Art’s true motive behind his visit is revealed by a nosy Heimish. Art, it turns out, wants to use the funeral home as collateral because he is in financial trouble.
This is when everyone gets mad at Art, even Claire, who was unaware that her husband had been laid off.
Art and Saul never get to make amends because the demon comes for the older man.
Following this, the demon begins a cat-and-mouse game with Claire. Why Claire? because the demon in question likes to feed on children, and Claire is pregnant.
THE OFFERING Ending Explained
Art begins to lose his mind, waking up in the middle of the night to scratch out sigils on the floor.
Claire begins to see a little girl, and the still from the poster is enacted on screen.
Heimish continues to give Art a hard time until eventually, he decides to help him after the demon escapes the old man’s body. With Chayim’s help, the three try to perform a ritual that ends with Chayim having his head snapped.
Heimish is the next one to be dragged away, leaving Art all alone to perform the ritual. But the demon is one tricky creature, and it manages to get Art out of the protective circle.
He finds out that Claire has been trapped, and he begins to read prayers. In order to save his wife, he must trap the demon within himself, and he does succeed in doing so until he realizes that he has been stabbed out of the circle.
The demon had tricked him once again.
Claire awakens to find herself under the table. She crawls out, and the house is quiet. She sees Art and rushes to him, wondering if everything she had experienced so far was only a dream.
She stops and finds herself standing inside the sigil. She looks up to find the demon. He pounces on her.
The movie ends.
The Offering then becomes a convoluted story about rituals, children being offered to demons, and sacrifices that need to be made to keep the demon inside a person.
The Offering offers little in terms of scares, and the slow pacing does more damage to an otherwise decent story. The movie is packed with solid performances from the cast, though, which helps make this a worthwhile watch.
You can check out The Offering on Amazon!
Horror Fan.
If I’m not watching horror movies, then I’m writing horror stories.
Check out my blog on all things horror: darkhorrortales.blogspot.com
