Devil's Due

Audiences will walk into Devil's Due, hoping to be scared, and will walk out disappointed and angry.  That's almost a guarantee.  The movie is a vast 89 minutes of nothingness with no tension, no scares, and no atmosphere of any kind.  This is the kind of film that sends people out of the theater, murmuring angrily to themselves.  Even the most timid of audience members are likely to be bored.

Devil's Due is a lackluster example of the "found footage horror" genre.  The premise is always the same.  The hero decides to videotape every moment of their life right around the time some creepy, paranormal-related events start going on around them.  This time, our heroes are a young newlywed couple - Zach (Zach Gilford) and Samantha McCall (Allison Miller).  While honeymooning in the Dominican Republic, they make the bad decision to listen to a shady cab driver, who takes them to an even shadier underground bar and dance club.  At one point during the night, the young couple black out.  We then see brief glimpses of what appears to be Samantha taking part in some kind of ancient Satanic ritual.  They wake the next morning in their hotel room, with no memory of the events of the night before.  They fly home, ready to begin their lives together, only to quickly learn that Samantha has mysteriously gotten pregnant at some point during the trip.

As Zach videotapes every moment of the pregnancy for posterity, he begins to notice a change in the behavior of his new wife.  She's aggressive, violent, and has the ability to send people flying through the air as she emits an unearthly roar.  Also, despite being a vegetarian, she develops a taste for red meat.  So strong is her sudden desire for the stuff that, when shopping at a supermarket, she stops in front of a packet of raw meat, tears it open, and starts eating it right there in the aisle.  Oddly enough, despite this moment being captured on the store's security camera, nobody stops her or questions her.  This is actually a continuing problem throughout the film.  Samantha keeps on displaying her newly formed superhuman abilities in public, and nobody seems to care or notice.  Not even when she happens to murder three innocent teenagers who have the bad luck to come across her and, naturally, just happened to be videotaping everything that was happening to them for no apparent reason.

The ad campaign for the film has already given the plot away, so it's not much of a spoiler to say that Samantha is carrying the Antichrist.  There's an evil cult behind the pregnancy plot, who start staking out the young couple's home, and even place hidden cameras throughout the home, so they can watch their every move.  Because of this, we get to see a lot of video footage where nothing literally happens.  Characters fumble through the dark, calling out each other's names, until something usually jumps out in front of them, or there is some kind of loud noise on the soundtrack.  I couldn't help wondering why these people feel the need to videotape themselves walking down dark hallways, and never bothering to turn on a light when they enter a room.  The filmmakers seem to be under the mistaken impression that these moments are thrilling, given how often it happens during the course of the film.

Despite all the ominous signs and demonic rumblings in Devil's Due, nothing actually happens during the course of the film.  And by nothing, I mean nothing scary, original, or exciting.  Even the cheap jolts and jump scares elicited yawns from my audience, instead of nervous laughter or shrieks.  You know, I can understand the appeal of these found footage films for studios.  They cost very little to make, and usually make back their total costs in a single weekend.  All a movie like this needs to succeed is a catchy ad campaign.  And yet, I'm also sensing a kind of burn out on these kind of films, both from audiences, and the studios that make them.  The last couple Paranormal Activity films (the undisputed king of the recent found footage films) have underperformed at the box office.  And if this film is any indication, the studios just aren't putting any effort into them anymore.

It's always depressing to watch a movie that just isn't trying very hard.  It's even more depressing when you realize how little the movie cost to make in the first place, so at least you'd think they would try to stand out a little bit.  Devil's Due doesn't want to stand out.  It just wants to take our money and waste our time.

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