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13th Child: Legend of the Jersey Devil (2003)
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Movie Review by The Gravedigger
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07.30.03
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This is one weird movie. It starts off with two guys in the woods, one gets decapitated and the other runs away. Cut to twenty years later, where the survivor (Robert Guillaume of BENSON) is now in a mental institution. He sees a television program about 'the Jersey Devil' and it gets him going about it. In the meantime, there are these killings and disappearances happening in the Pine Barrens, where the Jersey Devil is supposed to live. A skeptical government official is sent to investigate-and with the help of a local Forest Ranger (Chris Atkins a loooonnnggg way away from THE BLUE LAGOON) and a NYC cop find what's left of an escaped serial killer who may have been responsible for the recent deaths. Just his ravaged torso remains. There's also a crazy, creepy old man (Cliff Robertson) she's introduced to, who makes no beans about hating people. In fact, he admits that he spends him time studying animals like spiders and reptiles. He tells her the legend of the Jersey Devil, how two hundred years before a local indian put a curse on the area and its populace. He shapeshifts into a creature that's an amalgamation of animals and kills. There's also side stories about an old man hunting deer who is killed and two thirty-year old looking teenagers who are trying to have sex in an abandoned trailer.The only thing that bugged me about the movie are the tarantulas crawling around. There are no tarantulas native to the Jersey Pine Barrens! It was kind of like seeing the armadillos running around in the old Universal FRANKENSTEIN movies. Wrong animal in the wrong place. All of this doesn't quite gel together, yet because of this the movie is somewhat unsettling and you have absolutely no idea what is going to happen next and that works in favor of the movie.
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Rating: 8.2 out of 10.0 - 15 votes cast total
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