Devil's Due





Directed By: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett

Starring: Allison Miller, Zach Gilford, Sam Anderson, and Robert Belushi

"Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come.  Therefore we know that it is the last hour."
1 John 2:18

It's the third weekend of the year, and we've already gotten our second found footage horror movie (the first being Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones).  It's needless to say that I'm getting tired of this niche genre.  Hollywood is determined to drain every penny from it and make moviegoers suffer along the way.  Following up a year in which studios were starting to get creative again with big screen successes like The Purge, The Conjuring, and You're Next, having two supernatural horror mockumentaries to kick off the year certainly leaves a lot to be desired.  In this weekend's Devil's Due, the Antichrist comes with a whimper.

Zach and Samantha McCall (Zach Gilford and Allison Miller) have just gotten married.  On their honeymoon in a foreign country, they stop in a psychic's shop on their final night where Sam gets a reading.  The psychic tells Sam all about her past and how she grew up as an orphan.  The psychic then proceeds to tell Sam that she was born from death and that "they" have been waiting for her.  Soon thereafter, they leave the psychic's shop and catch a cab.  Though they intended to go back to their hotel for a quiet night together, the cab driver talks them into going to a party at some underground nightspot outside the city.  At the party, they get hammered.  Somehow, they're back at their hotel safe and sound the next morning.

After returning from their honeymoon, Zach and Sam soon learn that they're going to become parents.  They’re elated to be starting a family together.  Because Sam was on the pill, Zach just believes that he has particularly strong sperm.  Little do they realize that the last night of their honeymoon changed everything.  When they get hammered at that party, they don't just somehow get back to their hotel safe and sound.  During the night, Sam is taken to a temple by their mysterious cab driver who turns out to be a satanic worshiper.  At this temple, she is impregnated with the seed of the devil.  Now, Samantha is the mother of the Antichrist, and Zach is going to have to deal with one testy woman over the next nine months.

Have past movies taught us nothing?  Don't trust people in foreign countries when it comes to cabs.  Unless your cabbie is taking you from point A to a point B designated by you, just don't go!  It's really that plain and simple.  That being said, what the hell was the writer in Devil's Due thinking?  No person in a foreign country in his or her right mind would ever go to some shady place underground at night at the recommendation of a cab driver they’ve just met.  They’d go onto the next cab and keep it rolling.  There's absolutely no reason to concoct such a bland, senseless premise, and the blame squarely rests on the shoulders of screenwriter Lindsay Devlin.  The film torturously progresses with this same pointlessness for its duration.

The mockumentary style has gotten old as well.  This creative choice by directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett punishes both the audience and Devlin.  As a moviegoer, the camera movement is constant and unsteady throughout Devil's Due.  It really gives viewers a headache.  On the whole, it's visually jarring in a bad way, especially when there's a rather fast-moving scene.  For Devlin, this filmmaking style gives her a headache for a different reason.  She has to make up every excuse in the book for there to be a camera with Zach and Sam throughout the film, and each reason becomes progressively more ridiculous.  Given her already poor screenplay, this means that the found footage style feels entirely forced throughout the film (not that it typically doesn't in any other movie to a lesser extent).

Devil's Due is a horror movie devoid of any actual horror.  It's a sad attempt at milking the found footage cash cow one more time.  If you waste your time on this utterly boring attempt at a scary movie, there's only one solution.  Mystery shots!  Devil's Due gets a wasted rating.