Since the 1700’s in the vast forests of the southern New Jersey pine barrens, locals have reported stories of savage and unsolved murders. They say this is the work of the Devil… The Jersey Devil.

If I wanted this to be a good review, I would leave it at that quote. Rent this movie, press play, wait for that text to appear, and then pause the movie for 90 minutes and just stare at that text. Trust me, you’ll enjoy the next 90 minutes much more if you view the movie this way.

You see, 13th Child is a 90 minute trip to nowhere, a mind numbingly boring movie that will have you checking your vitals at the end just to ensure that you didn’t die from the sheer tedium brought forth in this horrible piece of cinematic drivel.

The Jersey Devil is the product of a young tribesman named Matangwa or something to that effect. Now Matangwa was the 13th child born to this particular tribe and was said to have the mystical powers of shape shifting. Some stuffy puritanical white boy couldn’t hang with this and labeled him evil. Matangwa was summarily hanged, and while still dangling from a tree he supposedly transformed into a hideous and grotesque beast who then took the head of the hangman. So now, there have been numerous cases of brutal and grisly murders over the past 300 or so years.

Next we see Benson (Robert Guillaume, us old folks know what I mean by Benson, and ol’ Bob will be referred to as that for the duration of this review). Anyway Benson is stuck in the loony bin, babbling on about how he’s the only one who knows the real story of the Jersey Devil.

Enter into the picture Kathryn, an anthropologist who’s assigned by the D.A. to find out what the hell is going on with the murders that have been occurring. I really got annoyed by this first section of any major dialog between Kathryn and the District Attorney because for one, the acting was horrible, and second, the dialog was delivered with about 15 dramatic pauses thrown in for affect. Well, it worked; I was affected to the point of screaming at my television to “hurry the fuck up!”

So pretty much, for the rest of the movie, we have anthropologist chick aimlessly investigating the Jersey Devil case with all the gusto of a heavily sedated catatonic. That’s right, I said, and I MEANT “heavily sedated catatonic.” There’s no typo there, I’m choosing my words carefully. And after a dull investigative scene, we cut back to a scene of Benson babbling on in his cell to a voice that plainly belongs to Cliff Robertson (But we're not supposed to know it is, in fact, Cliff Robertson), who’s also babbling, but with the addition of those oh so annoying dramatic pauses. Cut to another anthropologist scene, and well, this formula pretty much sums up the movie to a tee.

This movie was a total abomination, the dialog was horribly delivered and boring, the cinematography was awful, the pacing was awful. The writers took what could have been an interesting movie about a popular demonic legend and turned it into an tree-hugging, animal-rights activist rant that was completely inappropriate to the subject matter. Basically it made the Jersey Devil out to be some monkey-meets-alien-meets-predator with some Lord of Darkness (Legend) horns and a shitload of twigs thrown on it looking thing who’s pissed that Bambi died and the air's dirty. Added to the fact that the monster’s keeper annoyingly refers to him as “Bruno.” Bruno is not the name of a hideous monkey-meets-alien-meets-predator with some Lord of Darkness horns and a shitload of twigs thrown on it looking thing. Bruno is the name of a 375 pound sweaty thug with a hairy back and a forehead like a bulldozer.

If it’s not readily apparent that I disliked this movie, then you’re just the person who’d love to watch it. Go pick it up, grab a sixer and some popcorn, prop your soup-cooler (that's your mouth) open to practice your mouth breathing, drool uncontrollably and enjoy! Oh for added affect you might want to hit yourself over the head repeatedly with a tire iron for the duration of the feature.

1 out of 10 un-original NFlames ratings