Reviewed by Daniel Rutledge
A lot of people are calling this a M. Night Shyamalan film, following on from his abysmal flops The Happening and The Last Airbender. Thankfully, it’s not really a Shyamalan film. He just produced it, handing directorial duties over to the bloke who made the worthless American remake of [REC].
Devil is about five people trapped in an elevator. One of them is the Devil.
With these filmmakers in charge and that silly synopsis, Devil is not nearly as rubbish as it could be, but it’s still pretty bad.
Two of the people trapped in the elevator are terrible, extremely annoying characters. Thankfully they have the common decency of dying first. Then another one dies, leaving the last two in a face-off type situation which forms the climax of the film.
How the deaths occur in the lift is pretty simple. Satan switches the lights off and then stabs someone with broken glass, hangs them or breaks their neck. The audience sees none of this as it’s all dark, but they are reasonably disturbing sequences.
Tying the whole plot together is a silly monologue courtesy of a Hispanic security guard. His overly earnest voice is used as both voiceover and in dialogue to other characters, basically saying yeah, the Devil is in the elevator, he’s going to kill everyone, but here’s how you may defeat him. Essentially the writers of the film resort to this character to tell the audience what’s going on – a very lazy technique indeed.
There’s a couple of detectives watching the whole thing unfold over security cameras and trying to stop it all, one of whom is dealing with a personal tragedy which turns out, predictably, to be tied to one of the characters in the elevator.
When the Devil finally reveals himself, there are actually a few moments of delicious scariness. They’re over very quickly though, unfortunately.
Overall Devil is a cheesy, poorly scripted thriller. You might expect a tight, claustrophobic tension given the premise, but these filmmakers fail to deliver much atmosphere at all. There are a few cool bits but this is a fairly forgettable two star watch.
Devil
:: Director:
John Erick Dowdle
:: Starring: Chris Messina, Geoffrey Arend, Caroline Dhavernas, Bojana Novakovic, Logan Marshall-Green, Jacob Vargas
:: Running Time: 80 mins
:: Rating: M - Violence & Horror
:: Release Date: December 2, 2010
:: Trailer: Watch here
