Mediocre Movie Month 2016: Some Thoughts on "Devil"

And not a single "going down" joke.
What a waste.

Devil (2010)

Directed by John Erick Dowdle
Produced by M. Night Shyamalan, Sam Mercer
Written by Brian Nelson, Story by M. Night Shyamalan

Starring Chris Messina, Logan Marshall-Green, Geoffrey Arend, Bojana Novakovic

Budget: $10M

Is it safe to say you've lost all credibility when your name becomes a punchline? When I saw The Hangover in theaters, this was one of the trailers and the audience laughed when Shyamalan's name came up, despite the fact that he isn't the director.

The film starts with an upside-down flyover of the Philadelphia skyline as a narrator drones on about how the Devil likes to roam the earth looking for sinners. He takes human form, messes with them for a bit to taint their souls, then kills them. It's a pretty inefficient way to harvest souls, but who am I to question how Satan does things?

This time the big D's decided he's going to collect a bunch of awful people in an elevator, then contrive a bunch of ways to kill them. We meet...well, actually, we don't really meet our characters because we don't find out their names until partway through the movie. We're introduced to Detective Bowden (Messina) who's got a tragic past, as he investigates an apparent suicide. Turns out this building contains five sinners who get trapped in an elevator, and things unwind as, one by one, they Agatha Christie themselves to an unsatisfying anti-climax. A salesman, a liar, a mechanic, a security guard, and an old woman get Punked by Satan. There's not so much a twist as a lie, and the movie ends with an attempt to teach the audience a lesson about forgiveness.

Considering Spielberg's upcoming filmography,
this might have been a little prophetic.

Now, this movie was released in 2010, around the time Shyamalan's reputation had bottomed out on the curb of popular opinion. By this point he'd directed 9 films and had securely fastened himself as the Twistmeister of Hollywood, despite the fact that really only The Sixth Sense and The Village ended in actual twists, while Lady in the Water relied on a creator cameo and The Happening was lauded as the comedy smash-hit of 2008. Since Signs his Tomato-Meter has been in a pretty steady decline, and as of the time of this writing, he's still primarily considered a punchline.

Now, Shyamalan technically didn't direct this movie, but his mark is all over. There's a series of long, uninterrupted takes as the five board the elevator, some goofy point-of-view shots from within the actual car, and some admittedly clever use of mirrors in order to include everybody in the scene.

So credit where credit is due, a lot of this criticism can be leveled at Dowdle as well, but I'm going to address this as a Shyamalan movie because, let's face it, his name was plastered all over. Part of the problem is that this movie doesn't have any truly scary moments, it's just startling. Most of the scares comes from the elevator's sudden movement, or flickering lights. Someone should let the crew know that a pitch black screen accompanied by swooshing and meat-striking sounds is not creepy, nor clever.

Still preferable to going home with Justin Long.
Also, spoilers.

There's a cast here, and they do a fine job with what they've been given. Geoffrey Arend (Snozzberries from Super Troopers) puts on a good sleazy salesman before he's killed. Logan-Marshall Green (Not Tom Hardy from Prometheus) is fine as Third-Act Protagonist. Bojana Novavkovic (appearing with Frank Grillo in the upcoming Skyline 2! Awesome! Read my review of Skyline here!) looks sufficiently scared as things go to hell (metaphorically, the movie doesn't go that far).

Anyway, the movie ends up with everybody dying except Not Tom Hardy, the Detective, and Ramirez (Jacob Vargas), and it turns out the old lady was Satan all along! Despite the fact that she died partway through. Got yah!

The Unbreakable
I've said this before, but I don't mind Shyamalan when he's got some checks on him. In this case I think it's a better film than most of his others. There are some moments of actual dread accomplished through subtle direction and minimal effort in trying to fake out your audience. A falling pane of glass is a highlight early on, and throughout we see several deaths which we could conceivably chalk up to misfortune.

What surprised me most is that Shyamalan's input was primarily focused on the story, which is usually the touch of death for his projects. The idea that the Devil's presence makes things go bad and people get hurt is a fun one to play around with. Of course, if it had been delivered with some gravitas, rather than a piece of toast, it would have been all the more effective.

The Last Airbender

I don't care.

This film was released back when Shyamalan's name was (whether rightfully or not) associated with a third-act twist. As such, most people probably went in expecting some twist or another, and for a while I did too. The most obvious one was that the entire existence of the Devil would be chalked up to humanity being the real devil, because that's how hacks do. Instead, it was less a twist and more a lie, because the Old Woman is the second person to die and it turns out she's Satan. We're left with the question of whether Satan's taken her over, whether she was always the Devil, or whether it was poor screenwriting in an attempt to feel clever.

The Hellevator
This movie was supposed to be the first in a loosely connected trilogy called The Night Chronicles which focuses on supernatural encounters within urban environments. It's a fine idea, but after this movie underperformed (somehow), the idea was put on hold. Instead, Shyamalan dialed back a bit and released The Visit which I've heard is fine. His next upcoming film is called Split and is about a serial killer / kidnapper with 24 distinct personalities. It's supposedly a spiritual successor to Unbreakable which means it's going to be really, really bad.

Verdict
There's not enough here for horror fans, and there's most certainly not enough here for fans of Shyamalan's bad work. The religious stuff isn't compelling, the scares are minor, and ultimately it's not worth the 80 minutes it takes for this elevator to hit the floor.