M. Night Shyamalan, the India-born, America-raised writer, producer, and director who made it big in Hollywood with his film The Sixth Sense, returns with his latest movie, Devil, for which he penned the original story. Directed by John Erik Dowdle (Quarantine), Devil is a horror/mystery centred on a group of strangers who find themselves stuck in an elevator with a devil among them.
Devil Benefits From Lesser Known Cast Members
A salesman (Geoffrey Arend), a young woman (Bojana Novakovic), an old woman (Jenny O’Hara), a security guard (Bokeem Woodbine), and an ex-soldier mechanic (Logan Marshall-Green) all enter an elevator in a Philadelphia highrise and unknowingly enter their worst nightmares. Without warning, the elevator comes to a halt approximately twenty floors above ground, leaving the strangers stranded in mid-air. It isn’t long before tensions rise, the lights start to flicker, and things start to go horribly wrong.
One of the strongest elements of Devil is that its cast isn’t full of movie stars. This way, the audience doesn’t connect the faces in the film to other box-office hits, but instead the situation comes to seem more realistic. These people could be anyone – they could have been in the elevator next to you yesterday at work. The fact that they come across as regular Joes and Janes makes the audience question human nature when injuries are sustained and suspicions rise, rather than instantly knowing they are watching their favourite celebrities in a scary movie.
M. Night Shyamalan’s Devil has an Intriguing, but Flawed Story
The premise of Devil provides immediate intrigue – strangers trapped in an elevator, wounds delivered every time the lights go out. The tension of the story is inherent, especially with the added layer of the entire incident being watched on a CCTV camera by two helpless security guards and a detective (Chris Messina). But ultimately, Dowdle and screenwriter Brian Nelson do not take enough advantage of the potential for extreme suspense. Things happen too quickly, facts are revealed too soon, and even though it is a very difficult process to break into the elevator, it happens too easily.
Overall, Devil would have been significantly more effective had it not been about devils at all. There’s a bit of good and evil in everyone, without the supernatural, and this film could have been even scarier without including otherworldly beings in its storyline. It’s a case of the truth being stranger than fiction – when Devil could have been exploring what happens when real people are pushed to their emotional, physical, and psychological limits, it settles for an easy, cheesy, and unsatisfying horror-movie explanation.
Andrea Beca - Andrea has a BA (distinction) in English and Creative Writing from the University of Alberta, and an MLitt (distinction) in Dramaturgy and ...
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