Movie Review – Devil

Based on an original concept from Shyamalan’s sketchbook, Devil‘s surprisingly clever script was written by Brian Nelson, whom we all know from Hard Candy and 30 Days of Night, both great movies. M. Night Shyamalan once boasted himself as “comparable to Hitchcock” and Newsweek dubbed him “the next Spielberg” .. however, there have been hits and misses and now, here comes “Devil”, a film he conceived and co-produced.

PLOT:

Shot in Philadelphia, where five nameless strangers are stranded on an elevator: Logan Marshall-Green as The Mechanic, Jenny O’Hara as The Old Woman, Bojana Novakovic as The Young Woman, Bokeem Woodbine as The Guard, and Geoffrey Arend as The Salesman. So what so creepy about this scenario, you ask? Well, one of them just happens to be , the devil (surprise, surprise).

VERDICT:

This show is something like a claustrophobic supernatural horror. When the lights go out, and on again, someone is dead. There is a creepy “whodunit” aspect to the film that keeps the momentum going right up to the end. All five stereotypes stuck in the lift are kind of annoying and all equally likely to be The Evil One, so the mind games they play are a little bit lame and after a while, they all start shouting and turning on each other.

However, we actually liked this movie and found this thriller a good one because the claustrophobia of an elevator is an effective setting for a creepy tale and the score and the cinematography are effectively scary. The film works at a quick pace and really gets you biting your nails. The best part is you discover secrets about the people in the lift .. the extortionist, the thief, the liar, the thug, the con-artist… ah, but does one of them have a bigger secret.. ? watch and you will find out!