In Hollywood-speak, you can describe “The Devil Inside” as “The Omen” meets “Paranormal Activity.”

This supernatural horror film chronicles Isabella (Fernanda Andrade), a woman filming a documentary about exorcisms – her way of coming to terms with her mother who twenty years earlier committed a triple murder while possessed.

Filming in Rome Isabella meets a couple of priests (Simon Quarterman and Evan Helmuth) who debate whether people are actually possessed by a demon or simply have a mental condition. Well, given the title of this movie, you know the answer to that one.

The priests take Isabella to witness an exorcism being performed on a woman named Rosalita (Bonnie Morgan). As you might expect Rosalita attacks the crew, spouts obscenities, talks in different languages ... and calls Isabella by name (although they’d never met).

So off our intrepid filmmaker goes to confront her mother who’s locked away in an asylum. Sure enough, her murderous mom speaks in foreign tongues too. And shows knowledge that Isabella once terminated a pregnancy, telling her that killing a child is against God’s will.

After that, Isabella and her priest friends are subjected to dangerous paranormal activity. Demonic stuff.

Like “Paranormal Activity,” “Cloverfield,” and – yes – “The Blair Witch Project,” this film is of the so-called “found footage” genre, that shopworn conceit that it really happened and this movie has been cobbled together from the actual documentary leftovers.

Critics hated it. “The Devil Inside” was rated a dismal 7% on Rotten Tomatoes. And it received a scarlet “F” from CinemaScore’s respondents.

Yet word-of-mouth brought in the audiences. “The Devil Inside” won last weekend’s box office with a whopping $34.5 million in ticket sales, pushing aside Tom Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.” In fact, it scored the third-biggest January opening in movie history.

Go figure.

So despite my reservations I felt compelled to give you this review. You might say the Devil made me do it.

My top 10 Gary Oldman antihero films

British actor Gary Oldman is often praised for his ability to show rage, but he’s now being praised for showing cool restraint in the espionage thriller “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.”

In a career filled with villainous roles, Oldman finally got a chance to play a good guy (Lt. Gordon, the one un-corruptible cop in Gotham City) in Christopher Nolan’s redo of the “Batman” franchise. And in the “Harry Potter” series he was a wizard on the side of those who oppose Lord Voldemort.

But which films offer Oldman’s best over-the-top bad-guy performances?

Here are my picks:

10. “Romeo Is Bleeding” (1993) – As Jack Grimaldi, a crooked cop assigned to guard a Russian assassin (Lena Olin). As Jack describes himself, he’s “an unlucky guy ... a ghost, haunting his own grave.”

9. “Sid and Nancy” (1986) – As Sid Vicious, the punk rocker, he’s not so much a villain as an example of wayward youth. But heroin-crazed Sid did kill his girlfriend Nancy (Cloe Webb).

8. “The Contender” (2000) – As Shelly Runyon, a conservative senator trying to scuttle the nomination of a woman for vice president (Joan Allen) through character assassination.

7. “State of Grace” (1990) – As Jackie Flannery, a hotheaded thug who works for his mobster brother (Ed Harris). Little does this killer know that his old friend (Sean Penn) is an undercover cop.

6. “JFK” (1991) – As Lee Harvey Oswald, the man accused of killing a president. The look-alike actor gives us a humanistic Oswald who is troubled and full of contradictions.

5. “Dracula” (1992) – As the titular vampire himself, he renounces God following the death of his wife. When Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) shows up with a picture of Mina (Wynona Ryder), Dracula is sure his wife has returned from the fate he avoids.

4. “The Fifth Element” (1997) – As Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg, a greedy shaved-head futuristic businessman who’s in league with the Forces of Evil. Fate of the Universe be damned, his single-minded goal is to track down an intergalactic cabbie and a mysterious humanoid (Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovitch).

3. “True Romance” (1993) – As Drexl Spivey, an ethnically confused pimp who confronts a young couple (Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette) to reclaim his cocaine.

2. “Air Force One” (1997) – As Ivan Korshunov, the Russian terrorist who hijacks the president’s plane only to tangle with the two-fisted Commander in Chief (Harrison Ford).

1. “Leon: The Professional” (1994) – As Stansfield, a coked-up bad cop who runs afoul of a professional killer (Jean Reno) and a precocious 12-year-old girl (Natalie Portman).

Oldman’s malevolent warden in “Murder in the First” and post-apocalyptic mayor in “The Book of Eli” came close to making the list.

Although Oldman gave impassioned performances as Ludwig von Beethoven in “Immortal Beloved” and British playwright Joe Orton in “Prick Up Your Ears,” I left them off because these weren’t out-and-out villains.

For those of you who loved the old crazy-as-a-rabid-dog Gary Oldman, which movies would you add to this antihero list?

Shirrel Rhoades if the film critic for Cooke Communications. He can be reached at srhoades@aol.com.