Devil (2010)

5 strangers are trapped in an elevator and the Devil is mysteriously amongst them. As emergency workers work frantically to free them, secrets are revealed and the passengers realize their only hope for survival is to confront their darkest sins in front of the others.

Devil (also known as The Night Chronicles: Devil) is a 2010 American supernatural horror film directed by John Erick Dowdle (The Poughkeepsie Tapes, Quarantine) and written by Brian Nelson based on a story by M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable).

The basic premise revolves around 5 strangers who happen to get stuck together in an elevator which has stopped working. There’s the smarmy wise-ass salesman Vince (Geoffrey Arend), claustrophobic and slightly hot-tempered security guard Ben (Bokeem Woodbine), Jane, an elderly lady (Jenny O’Hara), mechanic Tony (Logan Marshall-Green) and a young woman named Sarah (Bojana Novakovic). They are being watched on the security camera by Detective Bowden (Chris Messina) and two security guards, one of which knows a lot about the forces at work here and narrates over the action at times.

Despite being set in an elevator for the majority of the story, we do get scenes outside of this location so it never feels too repetitive. Throughout the film we slowly get clues and identities about the 5 strangers, and the police work from the outside to try and put the pieces together as people start to die one by one. It is rated as a PG-13 so there isn’t a great deal of blood and violence, as the deaths occur during power blackouts. The order of the deaths made for a refreshing change as it was tricky to guess who was next. Trying to work out who the killer was proved impossible for me as we were fed information throughout the movie so my guess kept changing depending on the clues. As the ending is revealed I thought it was nicely tied up and definitely surprising, maybe not on a par with Shyamalan’s previous history with surprise endings but since he only came up with the idea for the film the writer Brian Nelson did a solid job with the loose ends.

Acting wise it was pretty strong all round, each person played their character well and credit to the smarmy salesman Vince (Geoffrey Arend) as I would have wanted to kill him if I was stuck in an elevator with his character. He played the annoying role perfectly! The film looked great, very crisply shot and we were treated to a few locations rather than just being stuck in the elevator. The opening credits looked superb, really liked them, a nice twist on something so simple.

At a brief 80 minutes long the film never lets up and there are no drawn out scenes which means Devil never gets dull. The way it all links together from the detective arriving on the scene to the final reveal is very good. The only real negatives come from the short runtime as it would have been nice to see a bit more of a back story to some of the characters. Perhaps even getting to see more of the kills but I guess they wanted to appeal to a younger audience in an attempt to make more money so went with a more family friendly rating. The end does make you leave your beliefs at the door; any film involving The Devil/God/Religious beliefs can polarize views and when we see who the actual Devil is then it does raise a few questions, and whilst some are answered I wanted to know more. Maybe we will get a sequel which will further explore the origins of the way the film makers interpreted their version of Satan himself but for now it’s left to us to kind of fill in the blanks.

This was the first part in ‘The Night Chronicles’ trilogy, which involves the supernatural within modern urban society. I very much look forward to the remaining films and if they are at least on a par with Devil then I’ll be very happy to check them out.

Posted by Tysoncarter182 on June 28, 2012

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