It goes without saying that the unfortunate career trajectory of M. Night Shyamalan has been well documented. The once promising director wowed the movie-going public with his 1999 debut The Sixth Sense and followed it up with the successive hits Unbreakable and Signs before arguably beginning a downward turn with the release of The Village and other consecutive critical failures. In any event, the Philadelphia-born filmmaker has often been considered by many to be more adept in screenwriting than directing.
In an attempt to greenlight more film projects into production, albeit not as directorial efforts, Shyamalan's ‘Night Chronicles’ banner emerged this year with Devil, the first of several up and coming thrillers conceived in a similar vein as those directed by the man himself. Helmed by John Erick Dowdle (The Poughkeepsie Tapes, Quarantine), this minimalist chiller possesses all the elements of a cracking good time but is quickly undermined by an intrusively smug religious point of view that ultimately overshadows its initially intriguing proposition.
A seemingly ordinary work day turns into a nightmare for six strangers who suddenly become trapped inside a high rise elevator. As claustrophobia sets in amongst the group and patience begins to wear thin, a greater truth is eventually revealed that only serves to highlight the hopelessness of the situation: one of those ensnared within the steel cubicle is in fact the Devil him/herself, disguised as a mere metropolitan civilian yet just as dangerous as one could imagine...
When it comes to horror-thrillers, one could argue that there are essentially two stock scenarios utilized by the majority of filmmakers: those that take place in wide, expansive areas across several locations and those contained entirely within one location. From a cinematic point of view, both circumstances have their own unique storytelling advantages and in the case of Devil the inherent claustrophobia instilled by its singular locale provides the film with a terrific platform upon which to build tightly wound suspense and scares within the context of a plausible predicament. Thankfully, this proves to be the case for at least the first half of the film, as one by one the characters slowly begin to eat away at each other's sanity which in turn affects the frequency of each impending death.
However, herein lies the Devil’s hidden moral agenda. Intermittently throughout, Dowdle cuts back and forth between those trapped in the elevator and two security guards in an office watching the mayhem unfold. One of the guards, (Jacob Vargas) a deeply religious Hispanic man, begins to offer his opinion regarding the unexplainable events, attributing it all to the handiwork of Lucifer and the power of pure evil. Moreover, he then goes on to explain that the only way for the authorities investigating the chaos to solve the situation is to employ the grace of God via divine hope and prayer, verified in a scene in which he tosses a piece of toast up in the air and reacts violently when it lands jelly side up (???). Not only is this stereotyping of a certain racial community potentially offensive, the absurdity of its feeble introduction into the story entirely emasculates the films’ carefully mounted tension and mystery, so much so that any potential for thematic interpretation is swiftly done away with and never reinstated thereafter.
Despite the subsequent predictability of the film’s final third as a result of its right-wing Catholic conscience, Devil still retains some interesting visuals, strong sound design and mostly solid performances that help aid in the watchability of its remaining minutes before succumbing to an inevitable conclusion. Whether it was Shyamalan whom envisioned the film instilled with holy values is perhaps irrelevant, as their clumsy inclusion still ends up driving both the direction of the story as well as the existential outlook of not one but every character in the film. I don’t know about you but if I wanted to pay for a church sermon and not a movie I would have tripped on down to my local city street corner instead of spending $7 on this preachy claptrap.
Dir: John Erick Dowdle
Writer: Brian Nelson (screenplay), M. Night Shyamalan (story)
Cast: Chris Messina, Logan Marshall- Green, Jenny O'Hara, Geoffrey Arend
Country: USA
Run Time: 80mins
Rating: M15+
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