Year of Release: 2010
Director: John Erick Dowdle
Starring: Chris Messina, Logan Marshall-Green, Geoffrey Arend, Jenny O'Hara, Bojana Novakovic, Matt Craven, Bokeem Woodbine, Jacob Vargas, Joshua Peace, Joe Cobden, Zoie Palmer, Vincent Laresca, Rudy Webb
Genre: Horror, Thriller, Mystery
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 4
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Synopsis and Review
Director John Erick Dowdle made a splash with his film "Quarantine", which was a remake of the Spanish film "REC", before tackling this project whose story was authored by M. Night Shyamalan. The narrative follows a series of strangers who find themselves stranded on an elevator. Those five strangers are comprised of a temporary security guard who has a slight case of claustrophobia, a mechanic/former Marine, a mattress salesman, a young woman going through some marital issues, and a slightly older woman whom we don't know much about. The security team of the building lets the individuals know that someone is looking into what is happening and causing the malfunction. One of those security guards thinks the Devil is involved, when he notices a strange disruption on the security monitor. As the lights in the elevator start going off unexpectedly, weird occurrences occur. The young woman, who is named Sarah, suddenly has a bite mark on her back, and the mattress salesman has blood on his hands. Detective Bowden who is on sight as a result of a suicide that just took place, is called to the scene. He's watching through the security parafernalia what's taking place in the elevator, where tensions are rising. When the lights go out again, there's noise heard, and by the time they return, the mattress salesman is dead. The remaining individuals suspect each other, while the religious security guard in vigilance suspects the situation will only get worse. As the detective and his partner go through the sign-in sheet to identify who is inside the elevator, they get a better notion of who those people are, and all of them are more than meets the eye.
"Devil" has a positive thing going for it, which is essentially the claustrophobic setting in which most of the action takes place. This allows for the director to craft a tale of paranoia and fear, that escalates as the killings start occurring. While this premise could have turned out into a taut Hitchcockian thriller or even an Agatha Christie-inspired kind of tale, it does not veer in that direction. It goes slightly in a more Paranormal Activity/The Conjuring direction, without much subtlety to it. For a while the narrative tries to unfold as a procedural type, but once the big reveal occurs, it crumbles most of what the film had set in motion. Most of the problems don't lie solely with the narrative twist, but also with the fact that this film is populated with puppets without a semblance of dimension to them. There's not much of a difference between the barely there characters here and the ones Jack Traven/Keanu Reeves saved in the opening scenes of Jan de Bont's "Speed" (and at least those knew they were superfluous for the narrative being told). This film has an essential problem of not knowing which lane to pick: is it a supernatural thriller, or a thriller focused on a killer who is impossible to identify? This prevents the film or its director from fully embracing the tone or nature of the narrative that is being told. The cast is solid, with high marks going for the underrated Chris Messina, who has good support from Matt Craven, Jacob Vargas, and Logan Marshall-Green. The production team is solid, including the fantastic cinematography from the great Tak Fujimoto, score from Fernando Velazquez, and production design from Martin Whist. It's watchable, but also quickly forgettable.
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