The found footage film finds new life in the film Devil’s Due (2014), a thriller from
directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. Zach and Samantha McCall (Zach Gilford and
Allison Miller, respectfully) are on their honeymoon when an unexpected night
out partying leaves them with little memory of how much fun they actually had
in the morning. It’s not long after that
Samantha discovers that she is pregnant but nothing is going as it should. This is a found footage film so it is Zach
who is filming most of what’s going on and it is he who has a curiosity as to
what is happening to his wife when mysterious people start showing up and
following him everywhere he goes.
This is very much a modern day retelling of Rosemary’s Baby as told from the
perspective of the husband who is the paranoid one as his wife slowly succumbs
to the influence of the thing growing inside her. What
the film gets right is the tension that builds between Zach and Samantha as he
realizes that she is slowly slipping away from her. What the film gets wrong is having to rely on
the aesthetics of the found footage style to tell the story and how it
unravels.
With so many found footage films now (still) being made it’s
hard to realize just how many new stories can still be told without seeming to
much like a cliché. This film has its fair
share of predictable reveals as is common for this genre. If anything, this film doesn’t really add
anything new to the found footage genre but only adds to the type of film that
hadn’t already been tackled by this style.
I will say that very few people outside of fans of the found footage
film will be entertained by this film because as is customary with this style
very little really happens until the final third of the film.
No comments:
Post a Comment