Dancing With the Devil, Demi Lovato’s new tell-all documentary, is fresh according to the film critique site Rotten Tomatoes.
Lovato, 28, released the four-part docuseries on YouTube beginning March 23, with parts three and four coming out March 30 and April 2, respectively.
The docuseries delves deep into Lovato’s life in the spotlight and her struggles with drug and alcohol addiction. The Give Your Heart a Break singer and Camp Rock actress has been on a path of honesty lately, revealing more details in her docuseries about her accidental overdose in 2018 and past traumas she suffered.
In a shocking revelation, Lovato said she lost her virginity to rape at age 15 during her early Disney channel days. Last week, she told People magazine that the documentary should shed light on the darkness she has had to overcome and help fans understand why her songs may have seemed despairing and angry.
“Sometimes people hear my music from when I was a teenager and they’re like, ‘Oh, you were so angry.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, and now you guys get to see why I was so angry.'”
Lovato also discusses the night of her overdose in greater detail in her documentary, saying that she was sexually assaulted by her dealer and “left for dead” after taking heroin that she later discovered was laced with fentanyl.
“When they found me, I was naked, blue. I was literally left for dead after he took advantage of me,” Lovato says in Dancing With the Devil. “There was one flash that I had of him on top of me. I saw that flash and I said ‘Yes. It wasn’t until a month after the overdose that I realized, ‘You weren’t in any state of mind to make a consensual decision.'”
She says in the series that she has worked hard to overcome years of anger regarding her rape, especially given that the accused was never made liable for their actions.
“Having put that out in front of the camera and knowing that people have seen that, it’s freeing. It’s empowering. It’s liberating. And it really lets that anger that was inside of me dissolve. I had let go of a lot of the anger beforehand, but this was kind of just the final send-off, like, okay, I can really heal from this now.”
Dancing With the Devil made an impression upon critics and fans alike, boasting not only the 99 percent fresh rating from audiences but also a solid 81 percent rating from movie critics on the Rotten Tomatoes site.