Oh M. Night Shyamalan you are a treat. Whether you are at your best or your worst you are always entertaining on some sort of level, and this 'Devil' (2010). This film is not actually directed by M. Night, but he is one of the writers on the film and his fingerprints are all over it. The film follows a group of people trapped in an elevator. While in there, weird things start happening and the people start to be killed off one by one. Paranoia and suspicion take hold of the group with them all pointing fingers at one another while the building and security attempt to calm them down and get them out. At the same time the police are attempting to work out which of the group is murdering the rest, but is there a more sinister, paranormal force at work?
So I already mentioned that this film is not directed by M. Night Shyamalan, it is directed by John Erick Dowdle and he does a fine job. It is nothing spectacular but it solid, with decent shot composition and editing with classic conventions of horror direction, which is unsurprising as this is the area that Dowdle has made his name. Unfortunately this does mean that the film uses a lot of horror cliches that make it a rather bland addition to the genre. The horror of the film mostly comes from unsuccessful attempts at jump scares and it just does nothing for me. It isn't helped by a very shoddy script. I do want to talk about the script more later, but I do have to note that it is bad. Some of the lines of dialogue are truly terrible and they decide to have a voice-over keep popping up throughout the film that is just shit. Having the voiceover at the beginning of the film is fine, it sets up some of the themes and the story and doesn't intrude much on the film as a whole. But it pops up again on more than one occasion to add absolutely nothing to what's happening and take you right out of any emersion you may have had. The acting in the film is a pretty mixed bag but is mostly pretty poor. Two of the weaker performances come from Bokeem Woodbine as the trapped guard and Bojana Novakovic as the trapped young woman. Both just seem off with a lot of their line deliveries and reactions. The best performance in the film comes from Logan Marshall-Green who I feel does a very good job as the trapped mechanic, especially when it gets to the point where he is almost mad with paranoia. He is working against a shoddy script but does a good job.
So this film is not good, not even close. If you go on the films IMDB page it is described as a horror, mystery, thriller. None of these fit this film. I mean in genre terms they do, but there is no horror, no thrills and especially no mystery. Oh, it tries, it really tries, but it fails horrendously. The film attempts to make it a mystery, asking the audience to act as detectives and try and guess which of these people are the killers. But guess what, YOU HAVE ALREADY SHOWN US IT IS THE FUCKING DEVIL. I'm not kidding, the film makes it extremely explicit that the devil is behind what is going on, but then continues to try and make it a mystery as to who is the killer. Its quite hilarious, but the hilarity does not stop there. There is a character in this film who believes it is the devil from the beginning and brings this possibility to the film, and do you want to know how he attempts to prove this to the rest of the characters? He picks up a piece of toast, throws it in the air, and sees if it lands jam side down. The logic behind this? Everything goes wrong when the devil is around. I kid you not this is one of the funniest things I have ever seen in any film and the fact that they take it so seriously makes it jut that more hilarious. The film's climax is equally as funny with the devil being revealed to be one of the people in the elevator. This is meant to be a profound moment of horror but it is so over the top and ridiculous that it just becomes funny once again. The more I think about it this film should just market itself as a comedy.
'Devil' is not a good film. The direction and technical side of the film are fine even if it does just dissolve into crappy genre cliches. The acting is mostly shoddy with one or two decent performances, but the actors were definitely not helped by a horrific script and one of the funniest narratives I have ever seen in a horror film. But I will say something for this film. Despite it being crap, the hilarity of how crap it is meant that I was never bored. I was always entertained, even if the reason I was entertained wasn't for the reasons the filmmakers had planned. If you fancy a crap horror film (which I often find myself doing) then this one is a pretty good one for your needs, otherwise, I would advise you to avoid it.