Devil, touted in promotional materials as coming “from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan”, devolves into such cornball silliness during its last act that it cannot be easily recommended. Until then, however, it’s a surprisingly effective little B-movie thriller that plays out as an extended Twilight Zone episode, keeping the audience guessing at every turn even if we have little vested interest in the ultimate denouement.
It’s Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None – the stereotypical Old Dark House story where the lights go out, somebody gets killed, and the survivors try to figure out who among them is the killer – set on an elevator.
Yes, an elevator, which can be pretty terrifying (see: Dick Maas’ The Lift and its infamous decapitation scene) but may not be the best setting for a murder mystery, given the total confinement and proximity of the characters to each other; I mean, shouldn’t somebody notice something?
Following some pretty nifty upside-down aerial footage, a narrator tells us the story of the Devil’s Meeting: that the devil has come to Earth (or, downtown Philadelphia), taken human form, and will test evildoers by tormenting them.
That’s a convenient excuse for all the supernatural stuff in the film – the lights going out at just the right time, the cluelessness of the characters in the elevator, the ineffectiveness of all attempts to get them out – but a poor explanation (a cheat, some might say) for an Agatha Christie mystery.
Thankfully, the supernatural angle isn’t overtly defined for much of the film; I dearly wanted the narration to prove metaphorical, and the first hour of the film didn’t let me down.
That’s despite a Greek chorus in a security guard character, Ramirez (Jacob Vargas), who instantly recognizes that the devil is afoot and warns his supervisor Lustig (Matt Craven) and Bowden (Chris Messina), the detective on the case, that death is imminent. To prove his point, he tosses a piece of toast in the air; when it lands jelly-side down, he knows that Satan must be responsible.
It’s laughable stuff, but works in the context of the film (or at least, my interpretation of it) as we side with the level-headed Bowden and brush off Ramirez as unstable. Now, if the film were to explicitly confirm Ramirez’s ramblings as fact, well, that would be truly laughable.
Inside the elevator are a mysterious mechanic (Logan Marshall-Green), an old woman (Jenny O’Hara), a young businesswoman (Bojana Novakovic), a temp security guard (Bokeem Woodbine) and a brash salesman (Geoffrey Arend).
But we seem to spend most of the film outside the elevator, and each of these characters is sketched as thinly as possible; we don’t care who lives or who dies, though we do want to find out what, exactly, is going on. A reasonable explanation would have generated a lot of enthusiasm for the film.
Shyamalan has always been a gifted director whose weaknesses as a writer have become more pronounced with each passing film; here, he gets story credit while handing off the directorial reins, which is precisely the opposite of how it should be.
Still, director John Erick Dowdle (Quarantine) handles the film admirably; there’s an almost complete lack of atmosphere (which may be appropriate given the setting) but the film moves along at a fast enough pace to distract from all the contrivances and is short enough (approx. 75 minutes minus credits) to avoid overstaying its welcome.
In an age where all the $100 million blockbusters seem like big-budget B-movies, it’s refreshing to see an actual low-budget B-movie that takes an intriguing concept and runs with it. By the end of Devil you may realize you’ve been watching a bad movie, but it’s an undeniably entertaining one.
For a more satisfying rumination on the same subject, see Vincenzo Natali’s short film Elevated.
