''Devil's Due'' is a 2014 American

psychological Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between t ...

supernatural horror film Supernatural horror film is a film genre that combines aspects of horror film and supernatural film. Supernatural occurrences in such films often include ghosts and demons, and many supernatural horror films have elements of religion. Common them ...

directed by

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin Matt Bettinelli-Olpin (born February 19, 1978) is an American director, writer, actor, and musician. He is a founding member of the punk band Link 80 and co-creator of the filmmaking collectives Chad, Matt & Rob and Radio Silence. He is best know ...

and

Tyler Gillett Tyler Gillett is an American film director, cinematographer, writer, and producer. A co-creator of the filmmaking collective Radio Silence, Gillett co-directed, with Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, the horror films '' Devil's Due'' (2014), '' Ready or No ...

, and written by Lindsay Devlin. The film stars

Allison Miller Allison Miller is an American actress. She is best known for playing Michelle Benjamin on the NBC series '' Kings'', Skye Tate on the Fox series '' Terra Nova'', and Carrie on the NBC series ''Go On''. She starred as Laura Larson on the Syfy tel ...

Zach Gilford Zachary Michael Gilford (born January 14, 1982) is an American actor, known for his role as Matt Saracen on the NBC sports drama series '' Friday Night Lights''. In 2021, he starred in the Netflix horror limited series ''Midnight Mass''. In 2022, ...

, and

Sam Anderson Sam Anderson (born April 2, 1947) is an American actor. He is best known for his character roles such as Sam Gorpley on '' Perfect Strangers'', Holland Manners on ''Angel'', dentist Bernard Nadler on ''Lost'' and in film, as the principal in ''F ...

. The film was released on January 17, 2014.

Plot

A young couple, Zach and Samantha McCall, are about to get married when Zach decides he wants to document their life together since Sam was raised in foster homes and doesn't know much about her history or roots. After their wedding, they go to the

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic ( ; es, República Dominicana, ) is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares wit ...

for their honeymoon. During Carnival, the couple meet a fortune teller (DeMaris Gordon), who declares Sam was "born from death" and repeats to Sam that "they have been waiting" for her. Creeped out, the couple quickly leave. On their way out, a strange man watches them. They get lost on the way home and a cab driver (Roger Payano) offers to take them to a local club. There are numerous strange symbols marking the area on their way there. At the club, the same man from the fortune teller's watches them and speaks with the cab driver. Unaware they are being trapped, the couple is drugged and taken to an underground chamber beneath the nightclub where a ritual is performed and an unseen force fills the room. The next morning, Zach and Sam wake in their hotel with no memory of the previous night. A couple of weeks after the honeymoon, Sam discovers she is pregnant despite claiming to have taken birth control pills "religiously" ever since the wedding. Though shocked, Zach and Samantha are overjoyed and tell their family and friends the news. The couple later attend their first ultrasound scan where the doctor says that the baby looks healthy and Sam is due by the end of March. At that moment, the ultrasound screen goes static but recovers after a moment. Throughout the course of her pregnancy, Sam begins to experience nosebleeds, stomach bruising, cravings for raw meat (despite being a vegetarian), superhuman strength, telekinetic abilities and unexplained feelings of rage whenever she or the baby appear to be threatened. Also, Zach and Sam keep seeing odd-looking people watching them from afar. Sam becomes convinced something is seriously wrong with the baby and that they are being watched. After a second visit to the doctor, a new doctor (Robert Aberdeen) appears and performs an amnio after Sam appears nauseous. He has no answer as to the whereabouts of their original doctor and the couple is suspicious. Before the couple return home, masked men set up hidden cameras inside their home to monitor her progress and make sure she does not hurt the baby. When Sam is eight months pregnant, the couple attend a

holy communion The Eucharist (; from Greek , , ), also known as Holy Communion and the Lord's Supper, is a Christian rite that is considered a sacrament in most churches, and as an ordinance in others. According to the New Testament, the rite was instituted ...

at their church. Their usually friendly niece (

Madison Wolfe Madison Wolfe (born October 16, 2002) is an American actress. She made her film debut in the adventure drama '' On the Road'' (2012) and her television debut in the HBO series '' True Detective'' (2014). She starred in the horror film ''The Con ...

) is oddly scared of Sam now, and the priest (

) who officiated Zach and Sam's wedding looks at Sam during the service and violently coughs up blood. Later at home, when Zach is reviewing the communion footage he filmed, he sees the mysterious cab driver from their honeymoon sitting in a pew. He visits the priest in the hospital, who explains the symbol is related to summoning the

Antichrist In Christian eschatology, the Antichrist refers to people prophesied by the Bible to oppose Jesus Christ and substitute themselves in Christ's place before the Second Coming. The term Antichrist (including one plural form) 1 John ; . 2 John . ...

. He warns Zach that the symbol is the gateway for the Antichrist, and that the followers of the cult will dress the house in ash to prepare for the arrival. After he finds ash all over his house (and the cops will not do anything), Zach chases the people watching their house and finds out where they are living. He asks his sister Suzie to stay with Sam while he breaks into the supposedly abandoned house at the end of his street where the cult is staying, and there he finds the

CCTV Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly t ...

footage of his house and the missing ultrasound. He is almost caught by the cult when he goes to leave. Performing the ritual with the other cult members is the McCall's mysterious second doctor, as well as the man who has been watching their house and the cult leader (who they initially saw at the fortune teller's place and later at the club). Zach barely manages to escape. Meanwhile, Suzie goes to check Sam, only to find that she is drawing the cult symbol before being attacked by an unseen force. Upon returning home, Zach finds the house surrounded by the masked men who have been watching them all along. Inside, he finds Suzie dead and hears Sam scream as the house is being destroyed by some unseen force. He finds Sam in the baby's nursery standing in a trance-like state with a knife to her stomach (the knife was a mysterious gift at her baby shower). She is standing atop the cult symbol that she has carved into the floor. Zach screams for her to stop, but she presses the knife to her stomach anyway and there is a violent blast of light. When Zach recovers, he finds Sam lying in her own blood with her stomach cut. Sam cries and wonders if the baby is all right before dying in his arms. Zach breaks down in grief before the cab driver and the second doctor arrive. Zach begs the intruders to leave them alone, but the doctor takes the baby regardless. The baby glows a deep red as he takes it from Sam's body. The cult takes his camera and tapes, removing all evidence. Zach is arrested and interrogated by the police about the death of his wife and sister, and disappearance of his child, crimes for which he looks guilty. Before the credits, the screen shows another young couple, on their honeymoon in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, where the same cab driver offers them a lift, hinting that the events are about to repeat all over again.

Cast

as Samantha McCall *

as Zach McCall *

as Father Thomas *

as Brittany *

Aimee Carrero Aimee Carrero (born July 15, 1988) is a Dominican-American actress. She is known for voicing Princess Elena on Disney Channel's ''Elena of Avalor'' and She-Ra, Adora/She-Ra in the Netflix series ''She-Ra and the Princesses of Power''. Her live ac ...

as Emily *

Vanessa Ray Vanessa Ray Liptak (born June 24, 1981) is an American actress. She is known for her role on ''Pretty Little Liars'' as Charlotte Drake; and also for her roles as Jenny on the legal drama series '' Suits'', Teri Ciccone on the soap opera ''As t ...

as Suzie *

Michael Papajohn Michael Papajohn (born November 7, 1964) is an American character actor, stuntman and former college baseball player for the LSU Tigers baseball team. He played Dennis Carradine in Sam Raimi's ''Spider-Man'' trilogy. Early life Papajohn was b ...

as Police Officer *

Griff Furst Griff Furst is an American actor and film director. Furst has appeared in over a hundred television and film productions. He has produced such films as ''You Might Be The Killer'', ''Welcome to Sudden Death'', and ''Tales From the Hood''. He d ...

as Keith *

Robert Belushi Robert James Belushi (born October 23, 1980) is an American actor. In films, he is best known for his work on ''Sorority Row'', ''One Small Hitch'', and ''Valentine's Day''. On television, he is best known as Allen ("The Buddy") on the third s ...

as Mason * Donna Duplantier as Dr. Ludka

Production

On December 18, 2012,

Fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...

announced that

and

would be directing ''Devil's Due'', based upon a script written by Lindsay Devlin. Fox had approached the two directors (who are part of the filmmaking collective

Radio Silence In telecommunications, radio silence or Emissions Control (EMCON) is a status in which all fixed or mobile radio stations in an area are asked to stop transmitting for safety or security reasons. The term "radio station" may include anything cap ...

) based upon their short ''10/31/98'' in the 2012 horror anthology ''

V/H/S ''V/H/S'' is a 2012 American found footage horror anthology film and the first installment in the ''V/H/S'' franchise created by Brad Miska and Bloody Disgusting and produced by Miska and Roxanne Benjamin. It features a series of found foota ...

.'' Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett had been approached by several other companies for "haunted house projects" but chose to work on ''Devil's Due'' over the other projects because they felt that the script was a character based "creepy mood piece" that focused on the deteriorating relationship between its two main characters. In an interview, the directors said they "focused on Zach & Samantha's love story from day one and the horror of watching the person you love degenerate, and being left helpless beyond continuing to love them unconditionally." The script had been pitched to them as "a found-footage take on '' Rosemary's Baby''," but the directors wanted to find ways to make their movie different from the 1968 film that they both praise and consider a personal favorite. This included instilling "a fun energy throughout" and "a sense of humor into the script." Along with Allison Miller,

was announced to be in the film, which was shot during April 2013 in the

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...

and

. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett chose to shoot the film primarily with a Sony PMW-EX3, which they chose so that the film's actors could carry it throughout the film. The Canon 5D, Canon Vixia HF G10 and an iPhone 5 were also used in the production.

Promotion

Fox released its first trailer for the film on October 16, 2013, and a second trailer on December 5, 2013. Whereas the initial marketing campaign focused the intimate thriller aspects of the McCalls’ love story, later marketing concentrated specifically on the larger horror facets of the film. On January 14, prior to the release of the film, Fox promoted the movie by releasing a video of footage of an

animatronic Animatronics refers to mechatronic puppets. They are a modern variant of the automaton and are often used for the portrayal of characters in films and in theme park attractions. It is a multidisciplinary field integrating puppetry, anatomy a ...

baby carriage and demon baby scaring passers-by in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. The video went viral shortly thereafter and has had over 20 million views as of January 17, 2014. A collector's edition of the Blu-Ray with cover art by Orlando Arocena was released in 2017 alongside 19 MGM & Fox horror films such as ''

Carrie Carrie may refer to: People * Carrie (name), a female given name and occasionally a surname Places in the United States * Carrie, Kentucky, an unincorporated community * Carrie, Virginia, an unincorporated community * Carrie Glacier, Olympic Nati ...

'', '' Joy Ride'' and ''

Black Swan The black swan (''Cygnus atratus'') is a large waterbird, a species of swan which breeds mainly in the southeast and southwest regions of Australia. Within Australia, the black swan is nomadic, with erratic migration patterns dependent upon c ...

''.

Reception

Critical reception of ''Devil's Due'' was negative. On

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

the film holds a rating of 18% based on 56 reviews, with an average rating of 4/10. The film's consensus reads: "Derivative and mostly uninspired, ''Devil's Due'' adds little to either the found-footage or horror genres that it's content to mimic." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, the film has a score of 34 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Much of the film's criticism centered upon the film's similarity to other films such as ''Rosemary's Baby'' and ''

Paranormal Activity Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. Nota ...

'', an element that ''

Fearnet Fearnet was an American digital cable television network, website and video on demand service owned by Comcast. The network specialized in horror entertainment programming through a mix of acquired and original series, and feature films. Backgr ...

'' reviewer Scott Weinberg remarked was likely more due to decisions by the film's production company than anything else. Weinberg called the movie "a darkly passionate homage to '' Rosemary's Baby'', the similarities are both intentional and affectionate," and ''

Bloody Disgusting Bloody Disgusting is an American multi-media company, which began as a horror genre-focused news site/website specializing in information services that covered various horror medias, including: film, television, video games, comics, and music. ...

'' gave the film a favorable review, praising the acting of its lead characters, the sense of humor and drawing positive comparisons to the directors' earlier work on ''V/H/S''. However, since initial release the film has found a cult following and director

Eli Roth Eli Raphael Roth (born April 18, 1972) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor. As a director and producer, he is most closely associated with the horror genre, having directed the films '' Cabin Fever'' (2003) and ''Hoste ...

has been vocal in his support of the film and in a series of posts on his official

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

account, wrote "Don't pre-judge ''Devil's Due'' because '' Rosemary's Baby'' is a 'holy grail' movie. It's so smart, creative, inventive, and fun. Very very scary. The guys at

killed it. ''Devil's Due'' is a legit scary, smart, horror film. So many awesome scenes. I loved it."

Use of found footage

Common criticism aimed is at the film's use of the found footage technique and asks the question "who assembled this footage?". However, according to the film's directors this was a deliberate choice, "Audiences are way too smart to have the "this is real" found footage wool pulled over their eyes anymore," and much like ''

Chronicle A chronicle ( la, chronica, from Greek ''chroniká'', from , ''chrónos'' – "time") is a historical account of events arranged in chronological order, as in a timeline. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and lo ...

'', "''Devil's Due'' doesn't pretend to be footage that anyone has found or compiled, it's simply a story told through cameras that exists in that world. In that sense, it's a bit of an experiment that we were able to have fun with and as the character's lives spiral out of control, we're able to mirror that journey visually by shifting to different POVs. The movie begins very bright, very intimate and full of movement, but as the watchers close in our couple we shifted to a lot more of the static cameras that exist in the world, like the security cameras, with much wider frames. We hoped to use that distance and coldness to mirror the despair and hopelessness that was tearing the couple apart." The film intentionally breaks many found footage conventions throughout, including the deliberate absence of a framing device (such as "these tapes were found by the police"), the use of an animated opening quote, a recognizable cast, a non-chronological narrative structure and a music cue becoming the end-credits song.

Soundtrack

The film contains

diagetic Diegesis (; from the Greek from , "to narrate") is a style of fiction storytelling that presents an interior view of a world in which: # Details about the world itself and the experiences of its characters are revealed explicitly through narr ...

music from

Elvis Presley Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one ...

The Gaslight Anthem The Gaslight Anthem is an American rock band from New Brunswick, New Jersey, formed in 2006. The band consists of Brian Fallon (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Alex Rosamilia (lead guitar, backing vocals), Alex Levine (bass guitar, backing vocals), ...

Alkaline Trio Alkaline Trio is an American punk rock band from Chicago, Illinois. Since 2001, the band has consisted of Matt Skiba (vocals, guitar), Dan Andriano (vocals, bass) and Derek Grant (drums, vocals). Founded in late 1996 by Skiba, bassist Rob Do ...

Brenton Wood Alfred Jesse Smith (born July 26, 1941), better known as Brenton Wood, is an American singer and songwriter known for his two 1967 hit song, hit single (music), singles, "The Oogum Boogum Song" (peaking at No. 34 on the US ''Billboard (magazin ...

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

General Public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...