Theatrical Review: Devil's Due (2014)

You know, we really wanted to like Devil's Due. It's got a creepy premise, we've been fans of Zach Gilford since his days on Friday Night Lights, Allison Miller is smoking hot, and we're usually total suckers for a good supernatural Antichrist story.

Unfortunately for us, Devil's Due was not a very good supernatural Antichrist story at all.

Maybe we're just tired of Found Footage movies in general. Maybe we're just too jaded to fully buy into the "it's all real" conceit that goes along with the films that fit under the umbrella of Cinema Verite. Or maybe the fact that this is a Found Footage flick that the filmmakers tried to pass off as not being a Found Footage flick, that put us off so much.

I guess it doesn't really matter, because in the end, Devil's Due is really more like Devil's Don't.

Zach and Samantha are a recently married couple who are on their Honeymoon in the Dominican Republic. After having a foreboding run-in with a local fortune teller, they find themselves lost in a deserted part of the city, where a suspicious cab driver tells them about a "special party" that they just have to attend. Since he seems so legit, Zach and Samantha head to the mysterious party where they are presumably roofied and raped by the locals, which does nothing for the Caribbean tourism industry.

Record everything, but don't bother to watch any of the footage until it's convenient for the plot.

A few weeks after their Honeymoon, the couple discovers that Samantha is pregnant. It's not long before she begins to notice some odd side effects of her pregnancy, such as odd cravings for raw meat, sudden nosebleeds, finding random bruises on her body, and the development of super-human strength and telekinetic powers...  It becomes painfully obvious to both of them that not only did something "happen" to her at that creepy party, but that they chose the wrong destination for their Honeymoon.

They should have let her eat in peace.

The rest of the movie is basically just the story of a woman and her pregnancy, albeit one that involves odd symbols, creepy Peeping Tom's, an OBGYN that knows nothing, and tons of pre-partum obsession. It's all very Rosemary's Baby-like, save for the fact that it's nowhere near as good.

How did Zach not notice this sort of tomfoolery?

We never bothered to write a review for this one when we saw it in Theaters back in January, mainly because we had nothing good to say about it, and we prefer to spend our time talking about movies that don't suck. We also prefer to review movies that are more under-the-radar, as 800,000 other people on the Internet will review flicks like this -that see a wide Theatrical Release- during the week of its release.

With the premiere of NBC's Rosemary's Baby mini-series though, we thought it time to put our thoughts on the Devil's Due out there, both for posterity's sake, and because this movie tries really hard to be a slick new version of Rosemary's Baby, which makes this review seem more timely and purposeful to us.

"Look Rosemary Samantha, it's your baby!"

In short, Devil's Due is a weak, overly-familiar story that uses weak and overly familiar Found Footage gimmicks to poor effect. Worst of all, it's not a very scary Horror movie at all. There's just nothing new or even all that different to see here, and the plot (along with its framing devices) is just sloppy and uninspired.

I know that it's not easy to make a movie these days, and make it feel fresh and original. I also know that most of the people who attempt to do so put in a lot of time and effort on such endeavors, and that it's a hell of an undertaking to make even a truly shitty movie. It really sucks for us when we have to shit all over someones hard work and dreams, but at some point it gets really tough to keep being positive about movies that so blatantly retread such familiar grounds, and do so poorly. 

Bernard?

Directors Radio Silence made a decent enough "film" here, but it just wasn't a very scary or engaging one. They also tried to tell us that this isn't a Found Footage flick, but merely a movie seen through the eye of visual recording devices that happen to be in the characters lives... which really feels like a cheap way of using the Found Footage conceit, while not following the rules that make it effective.

We do have to admit that the scene where Samantha gets all crazy on some strangers in a park was pretty fun, and some of the visuals towards the end were equally so. Aside from those few instances though, Devil's Due was nothing more than a mess of a movie that may have been best served being a short segment in the next installment of the V/H/S series.

*The Devil Baby promotion that the filmmakers did for the film was vastly more entertaining than the actual film itself, and we would have much preferred to watch 90-minutes of this hilarious awesomeness.

Had Devil's Due come out five years ago, it might have been a more effective experience. Maybe. As it stands though, it's nothing more than a rehash of the exact same Found Footage template that filmmakers have been copying since Paranormal Activity hit it big.

If you really want to see this one and haven't done so yet, you might as well just wait to catch it on HBO or something. 

Devil's Due is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD.

D-

Allison Miller is a total QT, and she made this movie a bit more watchable.