I had wanted to see Devil on its open weekend, but my glamorous life of full-time job and helicopter parent kept me from doing so. But better late than never, I guess. The main reason I wanted to tackle this one, even in a mini format, was because I knew it was going to not be seen by a lot of people because of the Shyamalan backlash. So, as a point of information for you: while it was his idea and produced by his company, DEVIL WAS NEITHER WRITTEN NOR DIRECTED BY M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN. See? It’s safe to go see it after all.

What’s it about:

Devil is an ingeniously simple concept: five people get on an elevator, and they get dead in turn until we figure out which one is Satan up on Earth for a lark. And that’s pretty much it. There’s a cop with a tortured past trying to save the day, of course, but mostly it’s just the people in the elevator getting picked off like nits from a gorilla’s ass.

The Good:

The five characters are disparate enough to seem like random chance, but not as Village People-y as the bus occupants in Speed. The Final Destination events that occur to keep the people both incommunicado to the outside world and from being rescued are neatly explained away by Ramirez, a religious security guard in the building, who narrates the film with stories his mom told him as a child regarding how the devil likes to behave. With a fine coating of the supernatural we are free to let everything else go and anticipate who’s gonna die next and who the culprit may be. The casting was also well done in the sense that all the players should be familiar to you from their various smaller movie roles and TV work, but not so familiar that you pin any extra suspicion or sympathy on them.

The Bad:

Well, that sympathy issue is a big sticking point. While Devil’s 80-minute running time keeps proceedings tight and the pace fast, it also keeps us from ever building any intimacy with the characters. So while Devil is a fun movie, it’s never a tense one. It also leaves the opening event as a very loose end, and while the resolution in the elevator is more satisfying than a regular Shyamalan “what a tweest!”, the final scene in the movie is a bit weak and schmaltzy.

End Result:

As I look at what I wrote, I see that the good paragraph is a bit bigger than the bad, so I guess overall I liked the film. I think it is a fun Summer film. It will keep you guessing but won’t tax your brain in the way that a film like Inception would. It’s never tense or scary (unless you’re a tween, I guess, and with its PG-13 rating it will have a fair share of that audience) but it moves fast and never fucks with you as to whether it is supernatural or not, which is a pet peeve of mine. And considering it has made more than its budget in its opening week, you can undoubtedly expect to see the next two films in the proposed trilogy coming atcha pretty soon.

Trivia:

While the fireman named Kurtzy may not have been named for Bob Kurtzman, the former K in KNB Effects and director of such fine films as the first Wishmaster, the lawyer named Kazan and likable security guard named Lustig were surely not coincidences. Also, the annoying salesman in the elevator is Geoffrey Arend, the sonofabitch engaged to Christina Hendricks.