Devil

Whorticulture.com movie review of Devil

Devil

Back in July, the New York Daily news said of Devil:

“…its release comes at a pivotal point in Shyamalan's career. His infamous plot twists have become increasingly criticized as convoluted, and his works as a whole have met significant resistance from critics and audiences over the past few years.”

I’d like to congratulate M. Night Shyamalan this time, because the “twist” (if you can even call it that) is far from convoluted. In fact, this time it’s about as obvious and contrived as you can get!

So the basic plot of Devil is this: 3 men and 2 women are trapped in an elevator as two security guards watch via security camera. The elevator inhabitants fall, one by one, each victim to moderately gruesome murders. One of the security guards, Ramirez (played by Jacob Vargas) – your typical Latino Catholic – serves as narrator while telling the audience a story his mother told him as a child. The story goes something like “The devil walks among us, taking human form. It starts with a suicide, and that opens the door for the devil, and it ends with someone watching the person they love the most die.” It’s really quite obtrusive, and serves to tell the audience what’s going to happen 5 minutes before it actually happens, thus ruining the whole element of surprise.

The audience wonders about the killer’s identity throughout, until the “shocking” climax when you find out who it is and blah, blah, blah.

Let me tell you. I had to have a little talk with myself in the very beginning as the opening credits were rolling. I knew this movie was going to be bad. At that point everything was upside down (literally) and I was getting very annoyed. It was all so film school. “You want to make your audience uneasy right away? Film everything upside down!” It was cheap, and it felt cheap. But I managed to quiet my inner voice and keep an open mind.

That all changed when Vince (played by Geoffrey Arend – best known for his role in Super Troopers, let’s be frank) said to another character “why don’t you suck a butt?” At that point I knew that nothing was sacred, and this movie was willing to sacrifice anything – even dialogue – to keep its rating. And horror movies too concerned with keeping a low rating are NEVER good. I, quite audibly, said “really!?” which made the people next to me laugh, and this was the highlight of the film.

There was so much wrong with this movie. The storyline was painfully obvious; to its credit I will say I did not know who the Devil would be until it happened. It was incredibly self indulgent. In fact, I felt like I was 20 miles deep in M. Night. Shyamalan’s ass. It took itself so seriously it became unintentionally funny. None of the performances were great. Most of them were put on way too thick. The scares were cheap – mostly loud booms after moments of silence. The death scenes were merely decent. Most of them were only shots of the corpses after a moment or two of darkness on screen. There was a lot of irrelevant and unnecessary information passed around. The film was under 90 minutes and had a startling lack of character development, so it definitely could have gone farther and it probably would have helped the film immensely. You couldn’t care about any of the characters, even when they tried to make you.

I give it a 3 out of 10. The few redeeming qualities just weren’t enough to save it from the ridiculous and obvious JUNK that it was.

Now for the spoilers. I told everyone I would spoil this movie only if it sucked. If you don’t want this movie spoiled for you, please stop reading NOW.

*******

Okay, I’m going to be quick. The devil was the old woman. She was the only one who died with no physical injury, and OF COURSE it would be the old woman. She’s the one you’d least suspect because she is, in fact, an old woman.

In the beginning you’re inundated with the partial backstory of this police officer – his wife and son were killed by a drunk driver and now he is a drunk himself…or used to be, as he’s been sober for a little while now. His sponsor in the beginning tells him he has to find forgiveness or he’ll go back to drinking. Wow, way to give it away in the first 5 minutes. There’s a lot of other bullshit involved, like an odd little flirtation between him and a forensics officer, which goes nowhere. Anyway, you find out that one of the guys in the elevator is the same drunk driver who killed his family! Shock and awe! Everyone in the elevator is a sinner in some way, but it’s all pretty petty stuff.

And so, the old lady devil kills everyone except him, then arises from the dead and has the most pathetically obvious conversation with him, and he decides to come clean. This makes the devil not want him anymore, and she actually says “Damn, I really wanted you” or something to that effect. Not kidding. And then she disappears. Literally. She's just gone. Maybe I like to think of the devil as a little more of a bad ass than that, but that was just sad. Then the cop tells him “That was my wife and son you killed, but I forgive you” and the movie is over. It stinks of the movie Signs in so many ways.

The whole thing is so goddamn preachy. I don’t think I’ve ever rolled my eyes so hard in my life. I saw this movie for free and I still feel like M. Night owes me something. If he could just stop making movies, that would be a great start.