Clintborari

I have a lot of mixed emotions with Devil's Due. Honestly, most are negative, for starters I had a deep pang of disappointment the moment I realised it was a found-footage film.

The beginning isn't exactly mesmerising either. But weirdly enough, this is one of the few found-footage movies that actually gets better the more it develops and not worse.

I'm firmly in the 80/20 camp where found footage can be so cheap and lacklustre it puts you off the whole subgenre. Hell House LLC is probably the best found-footage film I've ever seen, followed by REC and The Tunnel. Everything else is a copy and paste nightmare with dizzying, disorienting camerawork.

So the bar is usually low.

But Devil's Due... isn't that bad. It doesn't suffer from flimsy camerawork or the usual bargain-bin cheapness. The real issue is simply that the story is pretty straightforward and uninteresting.

The setup is simple: a couple on their honeymoon in Western Europe gets approached by a taxi driver who offers to take them somewhere "fun" and "unique." And yes, if you have distrust like me then alarm bells start screaming immediately. After a night of heavy drinking, the couple is unknowingly led into a cult ritual, where an incantation is performed to bring the Antichrist into the world.

From here, the film blends Rosemary's Baby with Paranormal Activity, just... a weaker variant of both. You can see the DNA, you can see the intent, but it never quite hits those heights, or even promises to go there.

I'll be honest though, it was far better than most of the found-footage disasters I've sat through. Films like Unfriended, The Houses October Built, and Invoked were brutally poor and a chore to survive until the credits. Compared to those, Devil's Due feels practically polished.

In fact, I'd put this not far off Hellfest in terms of overall entertainment value. And while the found-footage purists might come for me with pitchforks for my personal choices, I genuinely found both films to be among the slightly better entries in the genre.

There's a tinge of suburban realness here, small domestic moments, neighborhood eeriness, even a forest sequence, that makes Devil's Due stand out slightly from the pack. The priest Father Thomas and his knowledge of the ancient sect provided one of the film's few moments of real intrigue.

Overall, I actually applaud the idea and direction. And the ending, while absolutely cliché, at least commits to its own variant on the Antichrist setup, however it's one you know the outcome as soon as you start the movie.

3/10.

The Locksmith is one of those films that sounds far more interesting on paper, and even boasts a stronger cast, than what actually plays out on screen.

An ex-con returning home after ten years in the slammer for a botched robbery should offer plenty of natural intrigue. You want to root for him, you want to see him rekindle lost years with his daughter, and you hope he can repair things with his estranged wife. The ingredients are all there.

But if I had to sum up the entire film in one word, it would be bland. The story never leaves first gear, and the tone stays stuck in a low, steady hum that never builds into anything gripping or remotely surprising.

Ryan Phillippe's performance doesn't help much. Whether it's the flat material he was given or the fact that he's well past his Cruel Intentions era, his portrayal of a man torn between redemption and his past life never feels convincing.

The plot itself is extremely straightforward, no psychological twists, no emotional unknowns, no real sense of danger or complexity. It's just A-to-B storytelling without the shaded edges that make crime thrillers memorable.

Even Kate Bosworth and Ving Rhames, who normally bring a spark even to thin material, don't manage to elevate their roles. There's little emotional weight in their scenes, and nothing about their characters sticks.

To be fair, only a few moments do work. The father-daughter dynamic has genuine warmth, and watching him try to get back on his feet with small locksmith jobs gives the movie a grounding that briefly hints at what it could've been. And yes, the crooked cop subplot is something you'd expect, corruption exists everywhere, but the film never develops it deeply enough to give it bite or real tension.

Those fleeting moments of interest are overshadowed by just how predictable everything becomes. The beats are telegraphed, the emotional arcs are thin, and the resolution feels more convenient than earned.

In the end, The Locksmith is simply forgettable, not because it's terrible, but because it never reaches for anything meaningful. With a limited budget and a relatively new director, you can still make a mark; plenty of indie thrillers do. But this one never pushes the right buttons.

3/10.