Infernal: Where the Devil Wears a Human Face
When Infernal first appeared on screens, it was at first just another descent into darkness. Directed by Bryan Coyne, this 2015 psychological horror-drama was a low-budget film, but marked a disturbing intimacy. It was a film that made one think: the biggest demons one has to deal with, do not crawl out of hell. Sometimes, they’re the people within. The people one loves.
This was the center of the idea around the couple Nathan and Sophia, played by Andy Gates and Heather Adair, and the struggle to save their marriage while dealing with a young daughter who may, or may not, be possessed. ‘Horror’ in their case was not based on jump scares or gore, but rather the recognition of the self in the very thing one fears.
What made Infernal fascinating was not just the story. It was the the way the actors’ personal experiences and struggles became a part of the performance. The film captured the sense that everything was an exorcism of its cast, rather than a just a work of fiction. The tears, desperate prayers, and madness all felt real.
A Family Falling Apart
Tension marks the beginning of the film, as Nathan and Sophia try to rekindle their relationship after living with silent animosity. Nathan and Sophia just moved to a new house with the attempt to rebuild a relationship, after a period of silence and resentment. Meanwhile, their daughter, Imogene, exhibits unsettling behavior, speaking with invisible entities, drawing odd and disturbing shapes, and listening to the void as she stares and goes unresponsive.
Initially, Nathan thinks the problem is Sophia’s irrational fears. Even so, the unnatural phenomena infesting their home cannot be ignored. As the film progresses, the audience is enveloped with a feeling of unease through lingering quietness, drawn out and still shots that create a sense of the presence of something unspeakable, rather than through base jumble scares.
Infernal’s horror is autobiographical in nature. It tells the story of a family unravelling, haunted by the fears that cannot be ignored. It presents a guilt ridden husband, a mother who thinks she is losing her child and a family that is falling apart.
Andy gates has been in indie horror films, yet the role for Nathan was intended for him to push his boundaries.
In interviews, Gates disclosed that he drew Nathan’s character from his own experiences with anxiety and faith. He stated in one podcast, “I grew up Catholic. You’re taught to believe in evil as something external — but when you get older, you realize the battle’s inside you.”
This description is also reflected in his performance. Nathan begins as the rational one, dismissing Sophia’s fears. But as the story progresses, his skepticism crumbles. His descent into panic mirrors the internal collapse Gates experienced during a particularly brutal period of creative burnout in his life. “I’d lost a sense of control,” he admitted. “That helplessness became Nathan.”
Reports indicate that Gates’s preparation involved isolating himself for several days prior to intense scenes and avoiding his co-stars to sustain the character’s alienation. Between takes, he often remained hidden away in dark spots, with his headphones listening to ambient noise of whispering voices. Crew members joked that “Andy wasn’t acting. He was just method acting burnout.”
The end result was a hauntingly grounded performance — a father whose fear isn’t of demons, but of being powerless to protect his family.
Heather Adair: Fear with Fragility
While Gates provided Infernal with emotional realism, Heather Adair provided it with its soul. As Sophia, she takes on the film’s emotional burden. Her performance resembles a cry silent enough to be a whisper — quivering, earnest, and profoundly human.
Before the film Infernal, Adair had lighter roles on television and had little experience in the horror genre. Yet, few people knew that she was in the grieving process and it was a grief that echoed the desperation Adair’s character, Sophia, constantly experienced. “I was still grieving,” she later shared. “I think that’s why Sophia’s panic felt real — I wasn’t pretending.”
For Adair, the preparation for the role was unconventional. Instead of rehearsing in the more common ways, she kept a journal in the character of Sophia. Each night, she wrote entries as if she were documenting Sophia’s descent and it was so profoundly emotionally that she kept it after filming, stating that it served as “a reminder that fear and love often come from the same place.”
One of the film’s most memorable scenes — where Sophia sits in the bathtub and quietly sobs as the lights flicker — was largely Adair’s improvisation. Adair had been instructed to “just feel the walls closing in,” and the emotional intensity of her performance was such that the crew remained silent for a long time after the camera cut.
The Child Who Stole the Film
Even though Gates and Adair’s performances in Infernal were strong, there are many fans that believe the film’s secret weapon was Alyssa Koerner, the young actress that played Imogene. With her chill and wide eyes, she even invoked comparisons to Linda Blair’s possessed child in The Exorcist. However, while Blair was screaming, Koerner was whispering — and it was somehow scarier.
Her performance ignited dozens of fan theories. Was Imogene truly possessed, or was she a reflection of her parents’ emotional rotting? For one, the “demon” was a metaphor for generational trauma — the sins of the parents rooting themselves in the child. However, the most vocal fans of the supernatural theory pointed to the wall carvings and other more subtle religious imagery that filled the background shots.
Remarkably, director Bryan Coyne welcomed such dual readings. “I wanted people to argue after watching it,” he said. “Is she sick? Is she possessed? Or is this what family looks like when it breaks apart?”
Koerner herself didn’t fully know which interpretation was correct — Coyne intentionally kept her blind to quell her natural confusion. On set, she was given contradictory directions: at times, she was told to “act scared” while at other times she was told to “act like you know something no one else does.”
What the viewers did not know is that the shoot itself was plagued with eerie coincidences. During filming, gaps in the flow of electrical equipment consistently interrupted takes, especially in scenes involving the child’s bedroom. The production team half-jokingly dismissed it as “something not wanting those scenes shot.”
Gates and Adair recounted one night of filming when they heard muffled footsteps in an empty corridor. The video of the corridor later revealed faint background audio of rhythmic knocking that no one remembered recording. Rather than delete it, Coyne kept it in, quietly layered under the score. Later, the horror fans noticed it and called it “the sound of the house breathing.”
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