ORIGINALLY POSTED ON STRAIGHT.COM, JAN. 17, 2004
For horror fans, 2014 kicked off with Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, which proved that Hollywood was still keen to flog the found-footage format to make a buck. The second fright flick out of Tinseltown this year, Devil’s Due, is another supernatural entry that’s even heavier on Blair Witch-style hand-held camera action.
Too bad, because movies about innocent women being impregnated by satanic forces and giving birth to antichrists are frightening enough without all that jittery shit to stress you out.
Besides, even non-demonic pregnancy can be scary as hell for first-time parents.
In Devil’s Due, that would be Samantha and Zach McCall (Allison Miller and Zach Gilford), who discover after returning from a honeymoon in the Dominican Republic that–despite Sam’s use of the pill–they’re going to have a baby. They experience all the typical anxious moments of pregnancy–like those brought on by sudden, sharp abdominal pain and that oversized needle for taking amniotic fluid–before things get weird and Sam starts gobbling raw hamburger at the supermarket.
Numerous other riffs on Roman Polanski’s pioneering devil-spawn opus, Rosemary’s Baby, are rolled out along the way, including the mysterious replacement of the couple’s cheerful obstetrician by a humourless type better suited to the delivery of evil.
Because Zach is intent on documenting almost everything about the newlyweds’ life for their kid’s future viewing, the videotaping is even more unrelenting than normal in these type of movies.
But after concerned satanists install surveillance cameras throughout the McCall house and Zach starts using a hands-free “adventure cam” pinned to his chest, at least you aren’t tempted to holler: “Oh for Christ’s sake, just stop filming and run ya stupid twit!”