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Is it worth $10? Yes
When stuck together for too long, people inevitably get on each other’s nerves. Whether it’s a “Living Dead,” “Saw,” or “Cube” film, it’s a pretty sure bet that 90% of the dialogue will be characters telling each other to “Shut up,” “Calm down” or various other forms of those expressions.
“Devil” is no exception. It traps five characters with disparate personalities in an elevator. As soon as they’re stuck, the bickering begins. The difference between this and the other examples above is that in “Devil” it never really stops. In the other films, the characters learn to put aside their differences and work together to survive. In “Devil,” the suspicion that one of them is a murderer keeps them from trusting each other and getting that far.
This would be annoying if it was just one scene after another of characters going at each other. The good news is that the film is structured in such a way that as characters get picked off alliances shift, and it’s interesting to watch the way attitudes adjust. After all, when everyone’s prime suspect winds up dead, clearly indicating that he isn’t the killer, who else could it be?
The unraveling of this mystery is at the core of “Devil,” and it’s done with genuine suspense and intrigue. Helping us along the way is Philadelphia Police Detective Bowden (Chris Messina). His process is to find out as much as he can about the people on the elevator. Once he gets an idea of their backgrounds, it can point him in the right direction, or so he thinks. He starts with about as much information as the audience. Names and histories are not revealed until late in the story. The people in the elevator are simply known as: Guard (Bokeem Woodbine), Salesman (Geoffrey Arend), Old Woman (Jenny O’Hara), Young Woman (Bojana Novakovic), and Mechanic (Logan Marshall-Green).
Also in the mix is a security guard named Ramirez (Jacob Vargas). He and another guard named Lustig (Matt Craven) monitor the action in the elevator through a security camera. Ramirez also serves as the narrator. He has a voiceover during the credits that sets the stage for the story. As the film progresses, he offers explanations for what is happening—crazy as they may sound to Lustig and Bowden—and makes a final statement in the end. This type of audience hand-holding could come across as annoying or condescending if done improperly, and there were times when it came to the edge of tolerable, but in all it helped the story more than it hurt.
The only issue with the story is a plot hole at the end involving a magically appearing walkie-talkie. Perhaps that was the contribution of M. Night Shyamalan, who is credited with the story and is a producer. It’s possible that screenwriter Brian Nelson and director John Erick Dowdle knew they had something good but had to let that one thing through in order to wrap up the story.
Given Shyamalan’s track record as of late, his association with this film might do more harm than good. If that is the case, hopefully this film will find an audience on home video. That’s a shame though, because for the most part “Devil” works really well, and is worth the experience of sitting in a dark theater and being viewed on a big screen.
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kooka28
said:
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... Thought hopnestly that is was going to be crap, but was enetertained and like the moral of the story. The ending reminded me of a modern day biblical story.  |
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