This is a repost of my review appearing on www.traumaticcinematic.com:
By Eduardo Victoria
What immediately struck me about Devil’s Due is how good the film looks. There are shots in this movie that are so cinematic that I thought to myself, “there’s no way an Average Joe with his digital camcorder filmed all of this.” They’re beautifully lit, the camera is tilted slightly, and the rule of thirds is in full effect. On the heels of Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, 20th Century Fox has released a lame copy-cat into theaters.
The film follows Sam (Allison Miller) and Zach McCall (Zach Gilford), a newly-wed couple who go on a bizarre misadventure when on their honeymoon in the Dominican Republic. Thanks to a cab driver who promised them a good time, the pair end up in a strange underground cavern of a nightclub. When the couple return home, Sam finds out she’s pregnant and the happy couple decides to document everything for their child. However, Sam’s behavior begins to grow more and more strange. After studying the footage from past events during Sam’s pregnancy, he discovers that there could be a far more sinister reason behind her behavior.
First and foremost, this film (to me at least) is not a true found footage movie. It violates some rules that have been set up by landmark films in the genre and felt too cinematic, capturing scenes from multiple angles or cameras other than that of our main character. What makes the style work in Cloverfield or the Paranormal Activity series is that we as the viewers are limited by what we can see. This movie uses security camera footage, hidden camera footage (a very lame plot device used by the filmmakers explains this), and even video from characters other than the main protagonists - making for one really confusing final edit of the story.
Speaking of story, the weak elements of the plot sure don’t hold up for very long after the film ends. Every decision the characters make had me asking myself “why would anyone do that?” If you heard a strange noise in your own home and wanted to investigate, wouldn’t you turn the light on first so that you could see if any one was in the room with you? As horror and B-Movie fans, we’re willing to let a little more than usual slide by us in terms of story (i.e. any classic 80’s horror film), but Devil’s Due doesn’t return us the favor by giving us a fun 89 minutes to sit through. Instead, the viewers are treated to a snooze fest with no wake up call.
The biggest crime of all though is the movie’s under-developed characters. Never once did I feel any real sense of danger for any of them because quite frankly, I didn’t care at all about them. If anything, I wanted everyone in the film to be picked off in terribly violent ways because they were annoying. Something the film highlights but never explores is Samantha’s biological family, killed in a car crash while she was still in utero, resulting in her being removed from her mother’s womb via a c-section. What I just told you is all we get. Again, that brought up lots more questions in my mind, why and what they are I won’t reveal because I don’t want to spoil the film for any of you who want to check it out.
For a movie with Devil in the title, there isn’t very much in the way of demonic elements in Devil’s Due. Besides a title card at the opening of the film, we aren’t reminded that the Anti-Christ is involved until pretty deep into the plot. The characters are two dimensional, the story was predictable, and the acting was certainly nothing to write home about. Good cinematography, multiple camera angles, and bizarre editing of various bits of footage make for a poor entry into both the found footage and demonic horror subgenres. The filmmakers tried to make a modern Rosemary’s Baby with overtones of The Omen in the style of Paranormal Activity, but instead delivered a stillborn mess that will be forgotten by this time next week.
