Delivery Gives Birth to Moderately Familiar Terrors
Rachel (Laurel Vail) and Kyle Massy (Danny Barclay) are going to have a baby. They’ve also been tasked by reality show producer Rick Lucido (Rob Cobuzio) to be the stars of his latest endeavor as he’s going to document their nine month journey towards parenthood for broadcast on Cable television. But when things go tragically wrong, Rick feel compelled to use the compiled footage to tell a much different, far more terrifying story.
Delivery: The Beast Within is supposed to be the documentary he compiled from that footage. What it actually is, of course, is another found footage horror effort, and almost exactly like Devil’s Due it is a paranormal thriller revolving around the possession of a pregnant woman’s unborn child by a demonic force. Director and co-writer Brian Netto and fellow screenwriter Adam Schindler have a lot of fun playing both with genre conventions as well as reality television esthetics, the pair delivering more than a few scares and shocks as they journey towards a moderately preordained (and thus not altogether thrilling) conclusion.
The best bit is the opening half hour or so when Netto and Schindler slyly craft something of a faux pilot for Rick’s failed television program. It’s manufactured in the same vein as something that might air on Bravo or E!, the whole thing having that same bouncy, superficial esthetic that walks that weird nebulous line between intoxication and annoyance. At the same time, these scenes of manufactured warmth, caring and love continually hint at something far more mysterious, an aura of menace slowly starting to build throughout that’s eerily captivating.
It’s when Delivery: The Beast Within moves into more conventional territory that it sadly loses a little bit of its charm. Once Rick makes the decision to compile the remaining footage into a conventional documentary everything starts falling into a familiar pattern, the Paranormal Activity aesthetics of all that’s happening not vaguely surprising. There just aren’t many places that are novel or are different for the story itself to go, Rachel and Kyle’s journey not so much terrifying as it is inevitable.
Still, it is a testament Netto and Schindler, as well as to Vail and Barclay, that the movie itself remains as intriguing as it does. Even though I never had a moment where I wasn’t certain where everything was ultimately headed, not for a second did I mind going on the journey to get there, the filmmakers doing just good enough job of keeping me interested that it didn’t bother me surprises weren’t exactly being offered up as a premium.
Delivery: The Beast Within doesn’t belong at the upper end of the found footage spectrum, true, but it’s hardly a waste of time, the terror being birthed not nearly as marginal or as insignificant as it potentially could have been.
Film Rating: 2.5 out of 4
