by The World Weary
Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Cast: Zach Gilford, Allison Miller
MPAA Rating: R
Cheating the Devil
This article will feature spoilers for Devil’s Due in a clearly marked paragraph.
Found footage movies are the worst. Not only are they shaky disasters
visually, but the style is inherently counter conducive to good
filmmaking. Yes, it’s easier to get under the audience’s skin and elicit
those cheap scares, but you sacrifice your ability to make something
unique and in the end the audience is never satisfied. Take the film
Cannibal Holocaust for instance. This is a film that spent most of its
running time showing the gory end of several people, and even, some
actually live animals. In all that time, not a second thought was given
to the overarching themes the filmmakers wanted to push to the audience.
You’re just given scene after scene of traumatizing gore. Then at the
very end of the movie, some asshole in a business suit casually says,
“Maybe we’re the monsters,” or some inane, cliched horseshit like that,
as if that one moment suddenly makes the rest of the film into an
intellectual feast. Surprise, it doesn’t (and for those of you who
haven’t seen Cannibal Holocaust, don’t waste your time with that trash).
Film is, primarily, a visual medium. It is the art of telling stories
with rapidly flashing pictures. Using a gimmicky first person view is
not original, or even that intelligent. And when someone resorts to this
kind of half assed technique, we, the moviegoing public, are subjected
to films like Devil’s Due.
