DEVIL'S DUE (2014) Review

If there is one truly horrifying thing about DEVIL’S DUE it’s this:  A movie goes through several long, drawn out stages from its embryonic beginnings as words on pages to being screened in roughly 3,000 theaters nationwide before putting down roots in digital platforms with thousands of copies also lining up retail store Blu-ray shelves.  Throughout that time it passes through the hands of several literary agents, producers, financiers, then talent agents, cast and crew…it’s a very long process with many roadblocks and dead ends along the way.  Creative solutions must be utilized to save these films from being unfinished film reels or digital tapes in cans that will never see the light of day and fade into obscurity altogether.  Even the great Orson Welles has a lost film out there. Stanley Kubrick is rumored to have several.  So it’s not only mind-numbing, but downright terrifying that along this chain of events, not a single talented mind or seasoned industry professional ever stood up and said “Wait a minute…this movie is fucking horrible.  Let’s not bother with it.”  Nope.  All of them had a singular vision that this was a story worth telling.  And that is the only scary thing about DEVIL’S DUE.

The story is about a newlywed Caucasian couple, Zach and Samantha, honeymooning in an exotic land with lots of non-Caucasians (the Dominican Republic).  Through a combination of bad luck and poor decision-making they end up in an underground club suggested to them by their taxi driver who seemed really eager to get them there—like really eager.  They wake up in their hotel room the next morning with no memory of how exactly they ended up getting back there.  Almost immediately after returning home to their cozy digs in the US suburbs, Samantha finds out she is pregnant and that’s when things really go downhill.  Not just for Zach and Samantha, but more so, for the real victims here—the viewers.  All Zach and Samantha have to deal with is an unborn demon baby, which is getting off light compared to what people watching this are subjected to.

If there is one positive aspect of this film it’s that Zach Gilford and Allison Miller turn in some decent performances as Zack and Samantha, respectively.  And considering how tremendously weak the written material they had to work with was, that’s really saying something.  People might think it’s easy to pull off performances in a horror movie (They just scream, right?), but remember very few movies are ever shot sequentially.  Thus, performers often have to jump in and out of random scenes from all over the script and do a scene one day from the end of the third act then possibly turn around and shoot the film’s opening scenes hours later.  And, yes, I just realized how sad it is the only positive thing I’m essentially saying is that they showed up to work to do their jobs.  They do about as sufficiently as could realistically be expected for what they were working with.

However, the main problem with this movie is very simply that’s it’s about as bland and uninspired as grocery store sushi.  I’m hard-pressed to think of the last time I saw a horror movie that was this insipid from start-to-finish.  Probably the strongest scene of the movie is when Zach and Samantha attend a first communion and the unborn demon baby tortures the priest from inside the womb.  But that sounds familiar right?  It sounds like something we have seen before in just about any horror movie that ever had a priest in it because, well…let’s face it, priests rarely fare well in horror movies.   

And that’s a recurring theme throughout DEVIL’S DUE.  We feel like we have seen everything it’s doing before.  This is something that just rehashes the shit out of the best elements from superior movies, but it’s still not enough to differentiate it as its own unique piece of horror that brings anything new, memorable or even entertaining to the genre.  Many people gripe that with horror movies if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all and sadly, it’s because of movies like this.  But last summer’s THE CONJURING brought plenty of scares in original ways and this year’s OCULUS brought a storytelling style rarely used in the horror genre with its back-and-forth, time-twisting narrative.  I won’t even bother to address the collective groan-inducing found footage element of DEVIL’S DUE, but even THE SACRAMENT proves that found footage films can still be done supremely well if the story and writing are compelling enough.

DEVIL’S DUE is a lame, forgettable movie that even the most die-hard horror buffs can easily forego and won’t regret missing anything.  If you’re in insatiable need for a fix of demon baby fare, the time would be better spent re-watching ROSEMARY’S BABY, IT’S ALIVE or the most truly horrifying of all, THE BACK-UP PLAN with Jennifer Lopez…

1/5 Basura