Devil

What: Devil
Where: Nuneaton Odeon
Who: Me, Becky , Wayne and Lisa
When: Tuesday September 29th 2010 at 7pm

A staggering 58 days since my previous cinema trip saw me and the big man take our respective women-folk to see Devil the first of the Night chronicles a series of films thought up by M Night Shyamalan which are designed to show the supernatural in a modern day environment. Now I learnt my lesson about Shyamalans work a long long time ago. That lesson is avoid them at all costs however the premise behind this stuck in a lift with the devil thriller intrigued me and as he hadn’t written or directed it I thought I would probably be safe.

WRONG.

Whilst this film is nowhere near as bad as previous shyamalan stinkers the village, lady in the water and the happening it still has his stink all over it and even ends with the customary unnecessary twist.

However Devil is in its essence a decent film. The idea behind the story is very good if a little bit cliché. 5 people are struck in a lift one of them turns out to be the devil but which one is it? My main issue with this film is much like the nightmare on Elm street remake earlier this year it is just not scary enough. If they had pushed it back to an 18 and made a proper thriller it could have been very good, however as they went for a 15 rating the horror and the gore is all implied and it just doesn’t work. It should have felt very tense and very claustrophobic, the opening scene that plays under the credits is a mind-fuck, it is a simple way to show that something is not right with the world. It does mess with your head a bit and that is a promising start but those themes don’t continue throughout the film and it suffers for that.

Nobody should go into a horror film and look for a good solid acting performance because you will 99% of the time come out disappointed and Devil is no different. Nobody is particularly bad but then nobody is stand out good either. This is however a cast of virtual unknowns and give them there due they are not as distractingly bad as I’ve seen numerous times before in previous horror/thriller films.

In conclusion I don’t hate this film as much as I hate M Night Shyalaman who epitomises all that is wrong with the American film industry at the minute. His films are consistently poor and he makes no effort to change his style or even defend them he is a money hungry film maker who makes paint by numbers thriller films with a stupid unnecessary twist at the end. His last film “the last Airbender” flopped in a big way and that is hopefully a sign that the cinema going public are not prepared to accept his shoddiness any more. In summary Devil was a film with great potential but it just doesn’t quite live up too it.

6/10