13th Child



AKA: The 13th Child: The Legend of the Jersey Devil

A series of mysteriously grisly deaths have been happening in and around the Pine Barrens area of New Jersey lately, enough so that they’ve caught the attention of the local District Attorney. Determined to find the cause of the needless slaughter, the DA sends a specialized ADA to the area to investigate the crimes. ADA Kathryn just thinks it’s an animal, or some psycho on the loose. But the DA has a sneaking suspicion that the infamous Jersey Devil may be at the bottom of this newest bloody crime spree.



Um…. Okay…. So…. Wow…. this one was almost painful to sit through. I thought last week’s Troma cryptid movie was going to hurt me the most this month. But that weird and fun little film was basically Oscar worthy compared to whatever this is…

13th Child is an American mystery horror film from 2002, and is supposedly inspired by the 1976 book, The Jersey Devil by James F. McCloy and Ray Miller Jr.. Now, full disclosure: I have not read that book. But from what I have read about it, it’s not a story so much as it is a folklore study surrounding the history of the Jersey Devil, comprising various origin stories, historical sightings, and speculations about what the Jersey Devil really is. That kind of thing. So it’s a history book, not a narrative. Which means the story seen in this movie was all made up by the film’s writers. Though I use the word “story” very loosely, because the plot of this film is almost nonexistent. Hell, even the creature’s origin story is completely made up for the film. So I don’t know exactly how much the McCloy and Miller book truly “inspired” the writers, other than maybe encouraging them to ignore most of what they read.


Pfft…writers? I don’t need to listen to no stinking writers!

For those who don’t know, the basic gist behind the story of the Jersey Devil is that it was supposedly the 13th child of a woman known as Mrs. Leeds. Now there are variations to the story here, either that Leeds was a witch and her child was the spawn of the devil, or it was just born horribly deformed. But either way, upon its birth the deformed child (goat head, hooves, bat wings) escaped, took flight and took shelter in the Pine Barrens where it’s been terrorizing people for years.

Now, the only part of that origin story the movie gets right, is that the Devil is someone’s 13th child (hence the title). Everything else, they made up. So here the creature is the 13th child of someone in a local Native American tribe, and he (or the tribe, I forget) have annoyed some old British Red Coats. So the British Captain decides to make an example out of him and has the dude hanged. But the hanging doesn’t go so well, because this guy is a reported shapeshifter. So he “dies”, but immediately comes back as the monster and kills the Captain by lopping off his head, and the creature’s basically been prowling the area ever since. So not only does the movie completely ignore its title character’s origin story, but it likely also pissed off a lot of cryptid fans in the process. So we’re not off to a good start.


And it’s not even part of the story! You get it as a weird television recreation!

But of course the bad doesn’t just end there. If it did it would just be a major annoyance, not necessarily a deal-breaker. But no, it gets much worse. The movie looks and feels like a very drab made-for-tv movie from the 80s crossed with various documentary footage. And not even nice documentary footage either. Just the occasional boring shot of the woods. And the framing often feels “off” even at the best of times. So visually speaking, the movie is solidly mundane. Except for maybe the very last scene where the monster materializes and rises up out of the ground from a puddle of blood. That was kinda cool. Other than that though? Yawn.


Here, I just saved some of you a lot of time.

Then there’s the acting… Oh, dear, the acting… Believe it or not, the film actually has some notable names to its credit, including Christopher Atkin (Blue Lagoon), the lovely Lesley-Anne Down, and Academy Award winner Cliff Robertson (who also has a writing credit on the film.) So one might think the acting couldn’t be too bad, but one might also think that it wouldn’t be hard to get the creature’s origin story right either, and we know how that went. Atkin’s is about as un-charismatic as one could get (he should have stayed on the Lagoon). Down is…Well, actually she’s not too bad. But she’s only in one scene, so you don’t get to see her much. Though I did laugh a bit while listening to her, because though she’s trying really, really hard to hide her British accent, it kept slipping through a bit on every 5th word or so. But she was trying (bless her little heart.) Roberson, meanwhile, is the one standout. Probably because he was the only one who seemed to be having fun with the role.



Unfortunately though, none of these guys are the main character. That happens to be the ADA played by Michelle Maryk and, I’m sorry to say, she was about as boring and wooden as one of the trees out in the Pine Barrens. She’s uninteresting, un-charismatic, and often looks like she doesn’t even want to be there. Plus, her character keeps contaminating evidence and then quite literally steals stuff from one guy’s home and then tries to use that as evidence against him (that’ll get thrown out of court quick), so her character isn’t even good at her damn job. And naturally we have to spend most of our time with that incompetent, corrupt dullard, and that’s… Just not very fun.


My sentiments EXACTLY.

And the monster? Oh, the poor monster. They didn’t even get that right…. Well, they got maybe 60% of it right… maybe. It is tall, and it has bat wings, and hooves and horns, so that tracks. But it’s also supposed to be skinny, with short arms and the head or a goat (or horse). Instead the thing looks like it’s jacked on steroids and has been pumping iron all its life. And the head? I’m not sure what that head is supposed to be, but it sure as hell don’t look like no goat or horse to me. It looks more like a xenomorph had a baby with a brick, with its boxy-ass head and squishy eyes. And it’s not even a good looking monster, either. Kinda looks like a bad Halloween costume, to be honest. I mean, it’s okay, but… eh. So even the highlight of the film doesn’t turn out to be much of a highlight.



Truly though, the movie’s biggest flaw is that the plot is just…horribly put together. If you were sitting right next to me and we had watched it together, and then you’d turned to me and asked what the hell the plot was, I would not have blamed you one lick for being confused. Not only is there not enough plot here to justify the 99 minute runtime, but it also likes to jump around on the timeline all willy-nilly, which doesn’t do itself any favors. This probably would have been okay as an hour-long TV special. But no, they wanted to make a “MOVIE”. So they filled it with long, drawn out dialogue sequences, or random, needless scenes, like the redneck couple who don’t have enough money for a hotel, so they decide to get their jollies off in an abandoned trailer out in the middle of the woods. Cause I don’t know about you, but I know I get turned on by mold, and dirt, and bugs, and the possibility of getting those things in holes and crevices where they should not be. And yes, I know they just threw that scene in there to hit their nudity quota. But I wish if people were going to do that then they’d at least TRY to make it sexy. Or maybe just thrown a blanket in the back of the truck bed. At least that would have been a smidgen more sanitary.


Time for some (not so) hot hick lovin’!

You know, I thought the poor Wendigo suffered from a lack of decent films, but after seeing 13th Child my sympathies now align firmly with the Jersey Devil. Cause boy…is this movie rough. I’m not even all that familiar with the history of the Jersey Devil, but even I think it deserved better than whatever this is. As did the people of New Jersey. Because though the film went direct-to-video, according to at least a handful of online statements I’ve read, it did also receive at least a brief theatrical release in the local New Jersey area. My sincerest condolences to anyone who was looking forward to and spent money to see this. I hope you got a refund. Because I’m sure you went into that theater expecting something scary, and instead you ended up with this, the antithesis of scary. The most frightening thing I saw in this movie was right at the end, when the title flashed on the screen again, and it added “Volume 1” to the end of it, suggesting that they intended to subject you to more of this painful nonsense. But thankfully the film didn’t do well enough to justify any sequel, so we were all spared that horror. And you should all spare yourself from a similar fate and skip this movie. I haven’t yet seen them myself, but I’m sure there are better Jersey Devil movies out there… There has to be.

13th Child is available on a variety of streaming services.

13th Child is also available on DVD.

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