1st watched 1/18/2014 – 4 out of 10(Dir:Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillet): Eerie story about a wife's possession by the Devil to attempt to produce one of his own thru her. The movie is filmed entirely in first person similar to the Blair Witch Project but more like Cloverfield --- but unfortunately the point of view changes which makes it kind of confusing. It starts as a newlywed couple vacation on their honeymoon in the Dominican Republic. Nothing is really revealed abnormal about the couple except that the wife is a foster child with a supposed past hard life. They are having a typical good time, but then decide to take a detour to an underground party after being coaxed by a local taxi driver. After they get a little too toasted we see a brief glimpse of some footage at a strange religious ceremony, but then are taken back to footage of them arriving from their vacation back into their new home. We find out later that ceremony has much to do about what happens next. The wife becomes pregnant despite being on the pill, and immediately starts suspecting that there are problems with the baby. She then starts doing strange things like eating raw meat at a grocery store(despite being a vegetarian), causing preachers to cough up blood, and taking night walks into the wild to kill deer and munch of their innards…so naturally the husband starts questioning something awry is going on….you think?? The movie is scary at times but because it is so predictable you just wait for the eerie things to happen(and they do). There is eventually a story told here that makes some sense as to why things happened but there are a lot of holes to it as well. I will leave out a lot of the specifics just in case you want to watch this movie about an antichrist possession….i'm not sure why I wanted to watch it myself…I think I was just challenging myself…but overall this is just not that great of a movie, and the creepy feeling only lasted for a short while after the movie was over.

'DEVIL'S DUE': Three and a Half Stars (Out of Five)

Another low-budget supernatural horror 'found footage' flick. The story is about a recently wed woman who unexpectedly becomes pregnant, with the Antichrist. It's an homage to the classic Roman Polanski thriller 'ROSEMARY'S BABY' but it's presented in a style that's a lot more similar to the 'PARANORMAL ACTIVITY' franchise. It was written by Lindsay Devlin (who's only other film writing credit is the 2013 documentary 'IN SO MANY WORDS') and directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett are part of a collective filmmakers group called 'Radio Silence'; they previously co-directed, co-wrote and co-starred in a segment of the 2012 'found footage' horror anthology 'V/H/S'. I think the filmmaking duo did an exceptional job on this (their debut feature film) and found it to be much better than a lot of critics (and 'found footage' movie haters) have made it out to be.

The story revolves around a newly wed couple, named Samantha and Zach McCall (played by Allison Miller and Zach Gilford), that go on their honeymoon in the Dominican Republic. After Samantha gets a weird reading from a fortune teller the two are led to a remote bar (outside the city) by a persistent cab driver (Roger Payano). They both get wasted (on shots) and pass out. It then appears that Samantha is taken to a room, beneath the club, where some kind of ritual is performed on her. When they return home they find out she's pregnant, despite the fact that Samantha has always regularly taken her birth control pills. The two decide to keep the child and then things really get strange. It's of course all caught on video and compiled (from many different sources) for the viewer.

The film (like I said) got mostly bad reviews from critics and horror fans (that hate the 'found footage' genre). It did get a few good reviews (though) from some scary movie aficionados (like director Eli Roth and the popular horror website 'Bloody Disgusting'). I enjoyed the movie; I love the horror genre and like 'found footage' flicks, when they're done right. I think this one was done right; it's scary, funny and just a lot of fun to watch. The rookie directors did a great job and the script is smart and clever as well. The two leads were also adequate enough (for a film like this); the lead woman is very beautiful too and the lead guy reminds me a lot of a political radio and internet talk show host (I watch) named David Pakman. It's just an all around good fright flick, especially if you like the genre. Ignore the haters!

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