There are a lot of things that newly wedded couples can fear
but suddenly becoming pregnant is somewhere at the top of the list. This is part of the premise for the film
Devil’s Due (2014), a film that is a modern day retelling of the classic Ira
Levin story Rosemary’s Baby by way of a found footage film.
Zach and Samantha McCall (Zach Gilford and Allison Miller,
respectfully) have just gotten married.
Everything is perfect on their honeymoon except that at a party they
drink a little too much and things get out of hand. When they return home they discover that they
are pregnant despite taking all precautions against it. At first the idea of Samantha being pregnant
is a godsend until, Zach discovers that she is acting strange and he starts to
see strange men in the shadows watching over them. As the day of birth looms ever so closer,
Samantha believes that something “else” is going inside her and that the men in
shadows want her baby for their own reasons.
With Satanic cults, demonic babies, and men in shadows there
is a lot of ground that this treads that has been seen a hundred times before in
other films. The idea of doing this
story as a found footage film is a novel one except that it wears its welcome
off really fast. What starts off as a
genuine story tactic for the first third of the film (depicting the marriage
and honeymoon) comes off as forced for much of the rest of the film and takes
you out of the story.
Unfortunately, this is a problem with most found footage
films (and films that copy the style) in which the overall story just doesn’t
require the style for the duration of the film.
There’s an interesting idea to be had in this modern day version of
Rosemary’s Baby but this was probably not the best way to go about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment