If ‘Devil’s Due’ isn’t
the worst film I see this year, I quit. I’m sorry…well no, actually I’m not.
There is no excuse in the American film industry to be so unashamedly lazy. It’s
just plain poor. Utter tripe from beginning to end, with nothing, literally
nothing to redeem it.
The ‘film’ (calling it that without quotation marks feels
like a sin) follows a newly-wed couple filming their ‘life histories’ on
handheld camera, but something odd happens on the honeymoon and before long, strange
occurrences begin to happen around them. Why do they not remember the last
night of the holiday? Who lives in the abandoned house across the road?
But more importantly, where are the loos? Because the
constant shaky cam meant that at about half an hour in my head was spinning and
I genuinely thought I was going to be sick. I had to leave a screening
(something I rarely do, even for normal loo breaks) for five minutes, lean over
the sink splashing cold water on my face and have a drink to help settle my stomach.
Upon returning to the screen feeling a little better (but ready to bolt for the
door if things got worse), the gentleman next to me said ‘Don’t worry, you
haven’t missed anything at all’. I’ve never seen a man speak so much truth in
all my years.
Now, for the film itself, as this is supposed to be a
review, not a rant (unlike Mark Kermode, I’ve never been very good at blending
both of these things seamlessly). The camerawork is all over the place, and
anyone using cameras other than the couple never explain why they’re filming.
The characters are the generic American friendly family who never do wrong and
all care for each other in an unbelievably dull way, which means absolutely no
investment whatsoever. The plot is all over the place, points of view and story
threads are switched at a moment’s notice with no explanation, such as one
particular sequence that follows a random group of teenagers and attempts to
connect them to the story in a terribly forced manner.
Now for the ‘horror’ (for quotation mark reasoning, see
above) elements, which are supposedly the attraction for audiences seeing this
film: problem 1: they aren’t scary. They take the now standard ‘Paranormal Activity’ route of quiet…quiet…quiet…BANG!...rinse
and repeat. Problem 2: we’ve seen all of these things before and done much
better (if you’ve seen any instalments of the ‘Paranormal’ franchise, or any horror movie pertaining to demons
and devil children, there’s nothing new for you here). Problem 3: and this is
the big one for me, especially with a lot of recent horror films…most of the
scares are just laughable, creating audience reactions from a tut to a full on
belly laugh, because every demon possession apparently gives those possessed
the power of The Force from ‘Star Wars’. Bodies
are flung this way and that, they get up again, and then they’re thrown across
rooms and into the sky, etcetera etcetera.
To finish, I’ll say this. I’m sorry, ‘Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones’, at least you tried…at least
you tried to scare me; at least the
characters were annoying enough that I wanted
them to die. Here, I just don’t care. The scares are so lazy and repetitious,
the characters are so bland and the camera-work is beyond awful in a way that I
thought wasn’t actually allowed in a properly-funded studio movie anymore. This
is not a film, this is an endurance test. Please leave it well alone and let it
die.
1 Star
1 Star
