What's the Legend? The Jersey Devil is probably the weirdest looking creature in folklore, described as a biped with a goat's head, two slender legs and bat-like wings. Located in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, the creature was first seen in the early 19th Century swooping down and causing mayhem with its gangly self. The monster's origin goes that a matriarch by the name of Leeds, thought to be a witch, had 12 children. When she became pregnant with a 13th, she proclaimed it to be the child of the devil. Sure enough, when the li'l tyke was born, it transformed into the menacing creature described above, killed the midwife and flew off wailing into the night. In some stories, 'Mother Leeds' wasn't a witch and instead uttered a curse by accident, and the newly-born Devil killed as much of the Leeds family as it could before flying off. Every now and then it supposedly returns to knock over a shopping cart or bother people trying to get into their cars late at night. What's the Movie? A backwoods-set monster movie would be the obvious choice for that, but Stephen Moyer (True Blood) already attempted starring in a low-budget direct-to-DVD version of that back in 2012. Instead I would go for a modern update, kind of like Rosemary's Baby meets The Fly. A woman has her 13th child (thanks to the assistance of a satanic cult) and as the kid grows older he slowly starts turning into the Jersey Devil, much like the original story of Mama Leeds. Get Zal Batmanglij to direct and you're onto something.
Cinephile since 1993, aged 4, when he saw his very first film in the cinema - Jurassic Park - which is also evidence of damn fine parenting. World champion at Six Degrees of Separation. Lender of DVDs to cheap mates. Connoisseur of Marvel Comics and its Cinematic Universe.
