BOTTOM
LINE:
M.
Night Shyamalan has a penchant for high concept thrillers, of which
this works quite well in many places, but it looks like a made-for-TV
movie, and does not scare as much as it should for a quasi-horror
film.
THE
GOOD: Devil
effectively works as a morality tale couched in the horror/thriller
genre. Doing away with extensive location hopping and focusing instead
exclusively on the main characters, coupled with the fact that most
of the film is set in a claustrophobic elevator, makes this film
interesting in terms of its concept. The story is simple enough:
five strangers get trapped in an elevator, and with horrified police
and security guards looking on through the security camera videos,
each person gets killed one by one. One of the people in the lift
is responsible, or maybe something else is going on. The film works
well when it is operating as a mystery thriller. The backgrounds
of each of the trapped people in the lift reveal a disturbing picture
of criminals and bad people. When the devil is revealed in the climax,
the film kicks in to high gear and becomes quite thrilling, particularly
as its revelation is something of a surprise. As with all of M.
Night Shyamalan’s concepts, they are quite good, and in some
ways, it is good that he handed this off to another director to
see what they could do with it. The film also has a ‘Twilight-Zone’
feel to it. In certain instances, the film is quite effective because
of these factors.
