Devil's Due (2014)

Sex :
Violence :
Director Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Writers Lindsay Devlin
Starring Allison Miller, Zach Gilford
Genre Found Footage
Tagline Fear is born
Country
Horror Movie Review Devil's Due (2014)

Review

Newlyweds Samantha and Zach McCall head down to the Dominican Republic for their Honeymoon and the couple are soon having a great time as local festivals hot up. The only slightly sour note is a fortune teller Samantha visits who warns her that "they have been waiting", which you got to say is pretty ominous and would have had me heading to the airport before you could shout out "Rosemary's Baby". Anyways Sam and Zach haven't seen a lot of horror flicks so clearly aren't reading the omens. On their last night in the Republic their taxi driver won't take no for an answer and whisks them off to an underground nightclub where they hit the local booze in a big way. Sorry third world Country, taxi drive is insistent they go somewhere out of the way; once again I'd be out of there faster than Paris can knock back a vodka shot! They wake up the next morning with no memory of what went down the previous night or how they got home, on the bright side they are awake early enough to catch their flight back to the States.

Back in the grind they discover Samantha is pregnant, which makes you wonder what was slipped into their drinks down south. The happy couple are soon hunting for baby stuff, preparing a nursery, and getting into the whole middle class suburban thing. Zach begins to notice some shady characters checking out their house, the old falling down Anderson place has been sold to some enigmatic new owners, and Samantha is starting to act weirder than your normal pregnant chick. She's turning violent, is carving symbols in the floorboards at night, and is scarfing down raw meat at the local supermarket even though she's a vegetarian! Just what might have caused this change in her and oh by the way are we sure of the paternity of the baby?

Let's not beat around the bush here, Devil's Due is a found footage movie hence it's fashionable to kick it to death and find barely plausible faults with the movie rather than reviewing on the actual merits of the film. So you don't like found footage, awesome, give the movie a miss and go watch some big budget Boredwood fare instead rather than catching the flick and then spending inordinate amounts of time on the net raving about how bad the movie is and how bad found footage has become. While it has faults, and even the movie's strongest supporters are apt to agree with that, Devil's Due is not as bad as some Critics and Reviewers are making out.

First up we have two likeable leads that you are going to care about, as opposed to the normal run of the mill over indulged Yank teens that get thrown up by horror movies time after time. Allison Miller (Samantha) and Zach Gilford (Zach) give dynamite performance as they nail their roles; both actors made me a believer. Miller has this sweet girl next door thing happening, till she has to get all nasty and mean, then she makes your wicked step mother look like a pre-teen girl guide selling cookies. They still do that? I was grooving to Miller delivering on her role and had my fingers crossed that she might make it through the final credits. Similarly Zach Gilford delivered on his average Joe role, did he ever actual go to work? - throwing on a performance that convinced me his character had no idea what he was dealing with and who was completely out of his depth when it came to the satanic shenanigans he found himself immersed in. Helping out was the obvious screen chemistry between Miller and Gilford, you could believe they were a young married couple just starting out in an obviously wealthy neighbourhood with the expensive house and all.

Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who previously delivered the best segment of the otherwise deplorable V/H/S compilation, open their movie with perhaps the weakest aspect of the whole fandango. The bell has rung on horror playtime and Zach is in custody being interrogated by a couple of Detectives about what went down in the house that dripped demonic placenta. The problems here are at first obvious, Zach would seem to be the only survivor ergo all the tension is wrung out of the movie before we really get underway, and become apparent as events unfold, Zach avidly films every aspect of his family's life, ergo either the Detectives haven't viewed the expected copious amounts of digital imagines yet or said footage has disappeared which begs the question of who exactly took it. The opening gambit of this movie doesn't ring true and had me wondering if the Directors needed to rethink their initial scene. I'm not overly concerned about who made the movie we are about to sit through, the concept of "found footage" has recently moved out of the whole "found" basket and into home-made movie on the big screen, unnecessary nit picking comes to mind.

After the initial foray we get into the movie proper via one of the coolest introductory scenes ever, I'll leave it to the reader to discover that for themselves, but it was unexpected and surprisingly effective. The rest of the first block of the movie disappears into wedding plans, the wedding, and the ill-fated honeymoon to the Dominican Republic. As the second stanza gets underway we are into the good stuff, yes it's a slow build, but there's enough jump scares and a freaky enough atmosphere to make the wait worth it. Think Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones and you'll pretty much have the second block of the movie nailed, yes we're talking seen it before. The final block of the movie moves into possession territory, comparisons to Rosemary's Baby are pretty lazy here, we're still pretty much in Paranormal Activity Country though. Finally we get a bit of nasty, a 360 back to the police interrogation, and the obligatory opening for a sequel if things go well and punters catch up with the flick.

Throughout the movie things are kept pretty much in found footage territory with nothing really taking us out of that style of movie making. Besides hand helds a label camera is used, phone cameras, and various CCTV segments. As stated I don't give a flying frack who was meant to have made the movie, the sub-genre has moved a long way since Blair Witch, but the Directors nailed the one requirement this sort of movie has, the footage has to be to a large degree apparently authentic.

For those after titillation there's very little going down. Sex doesn't happen, even Samantha's impregnation is hinted at rather than explicitly shown, and while there are for sure some supernatural shenanigans there is very little in the way of blood or gore. If after either requirement then get something else from the shelf, Devil's Due is playing it seriously and playing for keeps.

Devil's Due, two thumbs up for the multi pun in the title, turned out to be a surprisingly entertaining movie. Sure there's not a lot new to be had but the Directors and their cast deliver a solid enough movie that kept me entertained throughout. Found footage fans are going to have a ball with this one, if you don't like found footage then why are you still reading the review? Recommended movie to folk who want an adult movie to fill in the time prior to the next Paranormal Activity movie being released.

ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ...

  Well I enjoyed it anyway, unexpect delight in the found footage aisle