Free time has been a scarce commodity in the life of yours truly lately, but when I actually did have a little bit of it the other night, I did something really stupid. I was thinking of heading out to the theater to see The Witch — which I should have done and still need to do — but instead I stayed home, fired up Netflix, and watched the 2015 modestly-budgeted indie horror The Diabolical. Big mistake.

Oh, sure, I’ve seen worse horror flicks than this — if you can even fairly classify this debut effort from director/co-writer (along with Luke Harvin) Alistair Legrand as a “horror flick” — but seldom do you encounter one trying to punch its way up out of its weight class with so little success. The Diabolical takes a heck of a long time to get going, and once it does, the simple fact…