Review of DEVIL

Doesn’t quite ‘elevate’ Shyamalan’s reputation

Devil
Dir– John Erick Dowdle
Cast– Chris Messina, Logan Marshall-Green, Bojana Novakovic, Geoffrey Arend, Bokeem Woodbine, Jenny O’Hara and Jacob Vargas
Rating– ** ½

For a nifty little taut thriller featuring relative unknowns, the biggest name attached to Devil unfortunately becomes its undoing. ‘From the mind of M. Night Shyamalan’ is how the marketing team behind this John Dowdle directed film chose to sell it to audiences worldwide. As a result, the audience always keeps second-guessing the proceedings in this film; being fully aware that a Shyamalan script will have his trademark twist and therefore wanting to outsmart him. This is sad, because left to itself… Devil, despite its failings, is premised on a familiar yet fairly engaging setup.

Doffing a hat to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, the story (M. Night Shyamalan) involves a group of people stuck together in a location that they can’t get out of, and where mysteriously one-by-one each one of them begins to die. James Mangold’s Identity adapted this Christie template superbly by setting it up in a desolate motel, where the payoff was a psychological one. Shyamalan retains the thriller aspect and opts for a supernatural payoff, but ups the ante by choosing an elevator as his preferred site… adding an extra element of claustrophobia to the proceedings.

On a regular Philadelphia day that begins with a man jumping to his death from the 35^th storey of a commercial building, Detective Bowden (Chris Messina) finds himself investigating a group of five people stuck in one of the elevators in the same building. The five strangers are, as we learn through the course of the narrative, a gold-digging trophy wife (Bojana Novakovic), a security guard on the first day of his job (Bokeem Woodbine), an elderly woman (Jenny O’Hara), a mattress salesman (Geoffrey Arend) and a former US Marine (Logan Marshall-Green). The religiously inclined surveillance guard Ramirez (Jacob Vargas) who watches them from the CCTV believes that there is a supernatural entity along with the strangers in the lift as well. And soon enough, strange things begin to happen that incite violence among the five.

The tension and suspicion increases manifold as one of them progressively turns up dead when the lights in the elevator flicker and go off. Watching the screen go black and just hear screams and noises is a novel way to create horror, letting the audience go with their imagination to conjure up the images of what must’ve transpired. But Dowdle uses it one too many times, till the motif loses its sting. Also, what hurts the film badly is its puzzling aversion to any level of gore. While one doesn’t want the Hostel brand of gore… a few bloodcurdling moments would’ve done the film a world of good. Besides, with absolutely zero star wattage, there isn’t a singular character that you latch on to or root for.

It is eventually Shyamalan collaborator Tak Fujimoto who lends this film the much needed suspense and high production value. Fujimoto’s camera captures dark elevator shafts and gloomy Philadelphia skies that all but announce the Satan’s arrival. If only Shyamalan hadn’t chosen to announce his as well!

– Abhishek Bandekar
05/11/10