Besides playing a memorable role as police officer Reese Wilson in the 1998 slasher Urban Legend and its sequel, Loretta Devine hasn’t lent her hand much to the horror genre. Now, Devine gives a truly terrifying performance in Spell as Eloise, a Hoodoo practitioner with nefarious intentions. After acknowledging her excellent work in Urban Legend and now her iconic performance in Spell, it’s obvious that Loretta Devine has what it takes to be a full-blown scream queen.
Devine's fruitful career began with acting on Broadway starting in the late '70s, achieving fame with the classic musical Dreamgirls in 1981. Following her big break, Loretta has gone on to star in beloved TV shows like Grey's Anatomy and Boston Public, even earning herself a Primetime Emmy for the former. Something that isn't expressed enough in the brilliant performer's career, however, is her gift of delivering top-notch horror performances.
Horror is not always an easy genre for actors to get right. Many don't take the roles seriously enough, resulting in uneven performances. Other times, the actor brings too much camp to the table, and the whole scene can end up feeling silly and contrived. Yet, whenever Loretta Devine takes on a horror film, she is always able to find that middle ground between fun and serious and blows it out of the park every time. Her first foray into the genre was with the Scream-inspired slasher, Urban Legend.
In the film, Devine plays campus police officer Reese Adams and ends up being a very unexpected final girl of sorts. Although the heroine of Urban Legend is a red-haired college student named Natalie, a character built on tropes who desperately tries to survive after her friends start to be picked off one by one by a psycho reenacting famous urban legends, Reese is the true hero of the story. While Natalie cowers and wallows in her own guilt from the past, Reese constantly puts herself in harm's way in order to protect the student body from the rising body count.
Released in a time when Black characters were the first ones to die in most horror films, Reese Adams is a very special character. Reese is injured at the end of the first Urban Legend film when she saves Natalie from certain death, but is shown to survive in the second movie. Not only is Devine featured in the sequel, but she is the only cast member from the original film that returns in a major role, and she even survives the sequel as well. Reese was most likely brought back because of how iconic Devine made her. Devine brought fun humor to the role, like when she acts out sequences from an action film she's watching in the first Urban Legend. At the same time, Devine portrays a fierce heroine with such finesse that her performance outshines the entire movie.
Since the Urban Legend sequel, Loretta Devine has not been in another horror film, until now. Spell stars Devine as Ms. Eloise, a sinister Hoodoo priestess who holds a man captive in order to perform a ritual on him. Devine is sublime in the role, always playing it up like her intentions are genuine, but little subtleties in her performance show the audience that Eloise is up to no good. Although Eloise is the villain, we still find ourselves rooting for her in some way because Devine is just that good.
Without a doubt, Devine is the very best thing about Spell and the true reason why anyone should spend time watching it. In her first performance as a villain in a horror film, Devine exceeds all expectations. She's terrifying and mysterious, yet charming and funny. Devine's performance is chock-full of dynamics that only an actress of her caliber could pull off. The fact that Devine has proved herself to be able to convincingly play a heroine and a villain in a horror movie shows that the genre will benefit greatly if Devine is utilized more often within it.