I watched this show in one day, I think it was partly having the the main character from Bones being the mother and playing a very similar character that really excited me about it, plus of course the bits of foreshadowing and hints that are flooded throughout the show into its finale. However as I got to the end I felt incredibly unsatisfied with what I had sat through and felt I had wasted time that could’ve been spent watching something better.

Devil in Ohio follows a girl called Mae who escapes a cult and is greeted at the hospital by a woman called Suzanne who works there. Suzanne has a family of her own, she has three daughters and a husband, and when emergency accommodation cannot be found for Mae she decides to take Mae into her home to look after her.

There’s evil afoot however when Mae is discovered to have a pentagram carved Into her back, which is an absolutely horrifying image to see. Clearly there is something deeper happening with where Mae has come from, but because of religious rites not much can be done about it. The police look into the place that Mae escape from and try to do what they can but unfortunately, and as we see far too often from police officers, nothing comes out of their investigation.

As Mae comes to terms with her new home life she starts causing rifts within the family including stealing the limelight from the daughter that is the same age as her, Jules, as well as creating rifts between Suzanne and her partner Peter. Suzanne seems to be spending more time concentrating on Mae than her own family and things come to a head when Mae is seemingly hypnotised and triggered to go back to the cult to finish the ritual that was started with the pentagram on her back.

I will not give anything more away from the story so you can make up your own mind about whether you want to watch it or not, but I will say that there is a twist ending that didn’t feel very satisfying and shoehorned in to almost create a second season, when really I don’t think one is needed or justified. This brings me back onto the foreshadowing moments we had earlier in the season that came to nothing and if they are saving up those moments for a second season I will find it very frustrating.

Spoilers ahead

There are many flashbacks with Suzanne where she seems to be running from a cult herself. We see her in a white nighty as a child packing her things into a pillowcase and then escaping from a compound. We see her being chased by a police officer and a dog through the woods and in the end she is found when she has climbed up a tree. Now we soon learn that Suzanne did have a turbulent childhood but this was not part of it, and so I do not understand what these flashbacks are trying to tell me. Was Suzanne part of a cult? Was that why she was so connected to Mae? Or was this an oversight by the creators of the show that was just a little detail that they left in?

I found this inclusion really frustrating because if Suzanne had been part of a cult that would’ve been really interesting to see how that would affect her relationship in the show and her involvement with Mae and why she was so invested in this girl. But to have it come to nothing in the end really let me down because that one shred of information that was given to me as an audience member was the one thing that was keeping me going and excited about where it could lead, and it lead nowhere.

Spoilers ended

Overall this show is not one I would recommend. I had a lot of high hopes for it throughout its run up until its ending when things didn’t come together as I expected or hoped. I feel there were loose strands that were never fixed or worked upon and it did feel a bit sloppy, as if they were trying to create a twist when really there wasn’t one there, or they could have had a stronger twist to make me want to continue watching and feel like there was a payoff for all the time I spent slogging through this show.

Give it a go if you think it’s up your street but for me I wouldn’t recommend it and I definitely wouldn’t watch any future seasons that come out of it or rewatch it again. There are many better cult film and TV shows out there I’m sure and unfortunately, while this one had a lot of potential going with it, it really fell short in the end.

What do you think of Devil in Ohio?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding