The start of the movie uses ‘Blair Witch’ type of video camera footage, we hear screams and see a man running through the dark woods with a flashlight. He’s screaming someone’s name then leans against a small tree to rest, finding blood on his hands. He runs toward the screams then shines his light on something up the tree, then runs off. The scene shifts to a fictitious mental hospital in New Jersey where the tv is showing an Inside Edition type of show that is featuring an episode on the Jersey Devil. One of the patients, Riley, (played by Robert Guillaume) is muttering about how ‘they don’t know what they’re talking about’ and other ramblings that everyone ignores.

We then see a long shot of the State House in Trenton, New Jersey (my hometown) and we meet the Attorney General (played by Lesley Anne Down). She greets an investigator, Kathryn (played by Michelle Maryk in Scully type fashion) and sends her to the Pine Barrens to investigate the grisly deaths of an escaped convict and his girlfriend. She mentions the Jersey Devil to the skepticism of the investigator; then tells her the story of how 20 years earlier, her policeman father disappeared in the Pine Barrens, looking for the Jersey Devil, and they never found his body. The investigator goes off and meets up with two Park Rangers (Christopher Atkins & Gano Grills). There seems to be a history between Kathryn and Christopher but it’s not explained.

They go to the Shrouds house-the Shrouds have owned this land for generations-but no one answers. They look around then the guys leave but Kathryn decides to look around a bit more. When she’s about to leave, she notices the note she left on the door is gone so like any horror movie actress, she goes into the house! She finds tanks of snakes and spiders and Cliff Robertson!

He plays Woody Shrouds, a sort of rich nutty scientist who speaks of man as a sickness and animals as the unfortunate victims of their greed. He tells her of the Jersey Devil being a Lenai Lenape Indian, who was the 13th child of the tribe’s shaman. Seems that the British took him as a POW and tortured him before lynching him, where he shape-shifted into an animal and killed the British colonel that tortured him most.(This was a new one to me, I’d never heard that slant to the story. But this is a movie and not a documentary.)

He invites Kathryn to spend the night because the Pine Barrens are hard to navigate in the night. She accepts and pokes around the house after Shrouds goes to bed, finding a large black talon that matches one they found near the mutilated body of the convict. She walks around outside too (was this woman just begging to get slaughtered?) and sees a man leave a dead deer hanging up at the side of the house. The next morning all that’s left of the hanging deer is his foot. The park rangers pick her up and they go to a nearby coroner’s office to show him the body and the talons. They test the talon and it comes back part goat, bat, and human. The black ranger decides to go back to the house since they found the talons there (cue ominous music…) The coroner also connects the talons to the wounds on the torso (did I mention it was just part of a torso?) They run back to the Shrouds house and look for the other ranger and finally stumble across his headless corpse.

They hear noises downstairs in the barn cellar then go down where we finally see the Jersey Devil, who looks like a cross between Pumpkinhead and the Alien creature. He kills the other park ranger and chases the investigator around the property. She does the typical victim thing here, running up stairs instead of out the door and towards the car! She gets cornered in the attic where she meets up with Shrouds again who orders the monster to kill her, only to get shot by Riley. The devil goes to attack Riley but he’s wearing some kind of Native American charm, so he takes Shrouds’ body and they disappear into the Pine Barrens. Kathryn & Riley leave and she puts Riley in this mental ward place to protect him but he’s been drugged and his charm gets taken away so he’s left to the mercy of the Jersey Devil.

I had sort of high hopes for this movie and while it had its moments, it wasn’t particularly scary or good. One of the maddening things was the frequent time jumps-it starts 20 years ago then goes to present day then goes back 3 days, then 2 days then 1 then back to present day. When I write it, it seems simple but the frequent jumps were a bit confusing. The dialogue was sort of cliched, particularly with Shrouds and his diatribes against Man, nothing you haven’t heard before. I found the exchanges between Kathryn and Mitch, the black ranger, rather amusing but since I was the only one in the theater laughing, I’ll say that was just me, I guess.

Kathryn did come off very Scully-like but by the time she faced the Jersey Devil, she turned into the typical female horror victim, grabbing onto the other park ranger and crying. But I guess I’m being too harsh, after all, I’d probably turn into a quivering girl faced with something like that too. My biggest disappointment though, was the re- writing of the Jersey Devil history. But like I said earlier, it was just a horror movie, not a documentary. Thumbs in the middle from me, check it out when it hits Blockbuster.

Hopefully, this film might send newcomers to look for the actual story of the Jersey Devil, one of the better sites is http://www.diskworks.com/myth.html from which site this is this taken:

The Jersey Devil, the supposed mythical creature of the New Jersey Pinelands, has haunted New Jersey and the surrounding areas for the past 260 years. This entity has been seen by over 2,000 witnesses over this period. It has terrorized towns and caused factories and schools to close down, yet many people believe that the Jersey Devil is a legend, a mythical beast, that originated from the folklore of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Others disagree with this point of view. The following text will show there is evidence to support the existence of an animal or supernatural being known as the Jersey Devil. The evidence consists of the stories of the Jersey Devil's origin, the sightings of it, and finally, the theories on it.

There are many different versions of the birth of the Jersey Devil. One of the most popular legends says a Mrs. Shrouds of Leeds Point, NJ made a wish that if she ever had another child, she wanted it to be a devil. Her next child was born misshapen and deformed. She sheltered it in the house, so the curious couldn't see him. On stormy night, the child flapped it's arms, which turned into wings, and escaped out the chimney and was never seen by the family again. A Mrs Bowen of Leeds point said, "The Jersey Devil was born in the Shrouds house at Leeds Point." Another story that also placed the birth at Leeds Point said that a young girl fell in love with a British soldier during the Revolutionary War. The people of Leeds Point cursed her. When she gave birth, she had a devil. Some people believe the birth of the devil was punishment for the mistreatment of a minister by the Leeds folk.

Another story placed the birth in Estelville, NJ. Mrs. Leeds, of Estelville, finding out she was pregnant with her 13th child, shouted, "I hope it's a devil". She got her wish. The child wad born with horns, a tail, wings, and a horse-like head. The creature revisited Mrs. Leeds everyday. She stood at her door and told it to leave. After awhile, the creature got the hint and never returned.

Burlington, NJ, also claims to be the birthplace of the Jersey Devil. In 1735, Mother Leeds was in labor on a stormy night. Gathered around her were her friends. Mother Leeds was supposedly a witch and the child's father was the devil himself. The child was born normal, but then changed form. It changed from a normal baby to a creature with hooves, a horses head, bat wings and a forked tail. It beat everyone present and flew up the chimney. It circled the villages and headed toward the pines. In 1740 a clergy exercised the devil for 100 years and it wasn't seen again until 1890.