Jun 01, 2014
Devil's Due, otherwise known as The Most Realistic Film about Pregnancy Ever. That's the best thing about this movie, that it helped me come up with a very stupid joke. I don't wanna say that this is scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as found footage horror films go, I'm sure there's some really low-budget, cheaply produced crap that's far worse than this. But, as far as "mainstream" found footage films go, this is only a slight step above The Devil Inside. Perhaps that's a bit harsh because, at first, glance this film doesn't seem so bad. There is some stupidity like the antichrist protecting the unborn baby when it sense it's in danger. If that's the case then why not just get rid of the Zach, Sam's husband, and avoid him putting up a resistance to the coming of one of the antichrist's children. Don't let him ever find out about the cult that is facilitating this process. Turns out the antichrist isn't as smart as he has led people to believe. That's the stupidest thing that comes to mind. The problem is that the film is absolutely content in mimicking found footage films that came before it, that were better. The one that comes to mind the most is the most obvious one. That being Paranormal Activity, the first one at least. There's something about how the film is structured and edited that just screams PA. This film, in its climax, is a little more violent and bloody than PA ever will be, but it's clear this film was patterned after that series and its success. I think it's fine if you take inspiration from a very successful series, or even borrow elements from it. How many vampire films did we get right after Twilight came out? It's gonna happen when something is popular, it's inevitable. In the case of Twilight, though, many of the vampire related films that came after it were considerably better. Found footage horror films are far more misses than they are hits, so it's increasingly difficult to find one that is as good, or better, than the first PA film. The problem comes when the PA series itself is as creatively stagnant as it is that you want to see others try something different instead of repeating the same stuff you've seen a thousand times before. And that is the main flaw of this. It's content in repeating what others have done instead of blazing its own path. Or even if you're gonna shamelessly ripoff another series, then at least put a little more effort into your scares, something this film is completely devoid of. There's some jump scares here and there, but that's just laziness to me. Here's the thing that made the first PA so great, they knew how to build tension. I've said this a MILLION times since then, but the more that film went on the more uneasy things got. You were dreading what was going to happen because you knew it was gonna be worse than what you had already seen. That's something SO few horror movies get, that it's revealing another side of Paranormal Activity's intelligence, the first one of course, and not the terrible sequels. This film doesn't get the tension and the suspense right at all. For the most part this really is just a boring movie to watch, there's no suspense. And that is what is needed most in this type of film where you're saving everything for the last 15 minutes. I will say that the climax of the film was decent and suitably bloody, but it doesn't really do much other than remind you of how much better this could've been if more effort was put into it. Perhaps the filmmakers did put in an effort, I don't mean to disregard their work...but it's clear that their best wasn't good enough. And these guys did a pretty good segment in the first VHS. Nothing extraordinary, but enough to make you think they'd do something better than this for their first full-length feature film. Just skip this movie altogether and rent REC. Now that's a fabulous found footage horror film. It doesn't get any better than that.
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