Devil

deeply crazy with wow

Great acting, funny, thrilling, edge of your seat fun. I am not a fan of M. Night Shylaman, but I have to admit I really enjoyed this movie. I went in with very low expectations being that as I said I'm not a fan and really, how much action can you put in an elevator? I'm happy to say that I was pleasantly surprised. The movie had me hooked from the very beginning. The cinematography was amazing. The swooping shots of the city, the creepy elevator shaft, all set the mood for shivers as it reminded me of my fear of extreme heights and confined spaces. As the story progressed and you learned more about the characters I found myself completely engaged and sitting at the edge of my seat wondering what was going to happen next. ZombieSteak.com - Discover a new world of horror films, designed just for you.

I have to say. I wasn't blown away by this movie like I was the first time I watched 6th sense but I would watch this again. To me that's far more important. I think this is actually M Night's best writing to date. If it just wasn't for some obviously bad acting...by a certain female character this movie would be great, by the way she is a great actor she makes up for her bad performances later on in the movie. A movie that I could watch a couple more times is worth buying you see...this really is like an Alfred Hitchcock film, not like an old M. Night film. I think these two should work together more often! Keep it up! It will take time to regain the old title set by M.

I knew this was going to be bad but I went anyway. The dialogue is awful and at times laughable. The characters are bland and I didn't really care about any of them. The writers need to go back to go back to writing school or read Robert McKee's "Story" and get a better sense on how to make better characters. I know in horror movies characters are the least of the writer's worries but come on! M. Night Shyamalan should have done a rewrite before he handed this in to be made into a script.The movie at times is clichéd(i.e. guy who knows whats going on but everyone thinks he's crazy). I won't ruin anything but its pretty frigging obvious who the devil is which is another cliché I wont say because it would ruin the movie. But the biggest problem I had with this was that it wasn't even scary. I'm a big fan of the horror movies that make you jump, but in this you can see the next jump scene coming from miles away and it's also obvious when the next person is going to die. The lights go out followed by about 20 seconds of a completely black screen, then the lights come back on and a character is dead. Now this movie isn't all bad. I liked the idea and overall moral of the movie. And Geoffrey Arend brings some comic relief to the movie but he is the only decent actor in this movie. The others are bad. If you really want to see this movie, wait a few months till it comes out on Netflix or something like that. Don't pay money to see this!!

I was looking forward to this one, the trailers seemed to promise some tight thrills and scares. Honestly, as is the case with many films now, the trailer was better than the overall film. The story is ridiculously simple. People trapped in an elevator may or may not be terrorized by Lucifer. I suppose it would help if the concept of the Devil was somehow relevant to you personally, but I've never been able to buy it as a legitimate horror vehicle. As is the case many times with God, why Satan would take the time from what I can only assume is a very busy schedule to play out a scenario that the movie presents left me with more questions than I would like to have trying to be entertained. Many of the "set-ups" which come via narration are new to me: Suicides bring him out of hiding, he likes to have an audience, and surprise of surprises, he doesn't like to make deals. Huh. The production is fine, the acting was fine, it was the story itself that I found lacking. What could have been a good half hour on television is stretched to feature length. We know very little about anyone, so caring about anyone is difficult. Characters behave strangely from the very beginning. Even when we find out a tiny bit of information about a character it only serves to justify the story, not build a character. Overall, typical Shyamalan. Take a simple concept and stretch it, and stretch it and....

Produced by M. Night Shyamalan, Devil is an intense supernatural thriller. The story follows five strangers who get stuck in an elevator and begin to turn on each other after one of them is attacked and killed during a power outage, meanwhile some unknown force seemingly prevents rescue from the outside. The script is especially well-written, and really brings dramatic tension to the situation. The storytelling too is quite engrossing; drawing the audience into the mystery of who the characters are and what is happening. A riveting and well-crafted film, Devil does an extraordinary job at exploring the themes of paranoia and fear.

There's an old saying in show business: Bad press is as good as good press. Seems to me many people went to see this film to find out if it was as "bad" as this M. Night Schmegegy (or whatever) guy's other films. I knew not of this individual until I saw this film, so I came in dead cold. No pun intended :) Nice work indeed. Tense and action-packed, it delivers on a lot of levels. Much light has been made of the security guard's ramblings but its part of the suspension of disbelief and provides a loose narration. Well put together and cohesive, and an 80 minute film to boot. This forces the story along no matter what, and that's what you want in a film, to keep the viewer engaged at all times. Tough to achieve but done wonderfully. Camera work is subtle, yet more aggressive where its needed, no shaky-cams or dizzying hallways, but nice perspectives of the elevator, needed to divert the mind from the cubical enclosure for 15 seconds. Nice chills when the elevator lights go out, NOT overdone at all. An underrated film, with underrated performances by all. Carefully constructed and a welcome addition to the genre. Highly recommended.

Recently, I finished watching Devil. I say 'finished', because at one point I literally had to stop watching. It got to be just too dumb and awful for me to take at the late hour I had been watching it. By the end, I honestly felt as if the filmmakers had been laughing at me behind me back the whole time. The basic 'plot' (what there is of it) revolves around a small assortment of people who become trapped in an elevator. After security guards and the police become involved, we learn that The Devil is actually amongst them in the elevator. And that's pretty much it. To be fair, this isn't such a bad concept - even with little actual plot, this could have been an entertaining story with the use of implied plot occurrences and extensive character development. But Devil offers neither of these. Nothing is shown to ever actually happen in Devil, nor is anything really implied. The cause of this is the quickly-tiresome methodology of turning off the lights in the elevator and supplying the pitch darkness with barely audible shuffling. And when the lights come on, we see that either someone is dead, or they're not. If that sounds lazy, it's because it is. This sort of thing happens constantly throughout the movie, removing all sense of tension from it and making it an expected thing (the exact wrong thing to do in a suspense film), and after the third time, it just becomes tedious. Aside from that, the plot never really goes anywhere, or has any sense of succession. People die, the cops are trying to get it but can't, people die, and on and on and on. And even with those flaws, the movie could still have been salvaged a bit if the character development had just been well done. But again, Devil fails horribly through laziness. Throughout the movie, we learn snippets about the characters through throwaway dialogue between policemen, concerning crimes they've committed. None of this is very memorable, however, as these pieces of character information seem to become irrelevant. We spend so little time with the police, who figure these facts out and then seem to promptly forget they matter, and most of the time with the elevator folk, who don't know these facts about each other and just act against each other out of fear and spite as they die off one by one. The movie doesn't care why these people are bad (aside from the final person), and doesn't give us any reason to. Other aspects of the film fail as well. All of the acting feels like performances out of a student film. There's no musical score to speak of, and when you do hear any music, it's usually very monotonic or exploitative. The cinematography of the film is often uninspired and repetitive, and it lacks any sort of visual flair whatsoever. And then there's the ending. This is perhaps the point of the movie that causes the worst taste in my mouth. Some may remember that the story was written by M. Night Shyamalan, famous for his 'surprise-ending' movies, such as The Sixth Sense, Signs, The Village, and The Happening. As such, one would expect Devil to have a twist ending. But no. Oh, no, my friends. Devil, in point of fact, has about six ending 'twists' from what I can judge. I won't spoil them for you, but suffice to say that each 'twist' becomes more senseless and silly than the previous one. Overall, Devil is a poorly, poorly made movie. It's boring, it's dumb (Jelly toast landing jellied side down is used to establish that The Devil is in the elevator. Seriously.), and it's far too long for its lack of substance. If The Devil ever comes for me, I hope to God he picks a way of doing it that won't put me to sleep.

Maybe 7 out of 10 is generous but I mark it highly perhaps because I had such low expectations which were thankfully unnecessary. This film's credits open with the title The Night Chronicles 1 which suggests to me his fan-boy homage to Spielberg has stretched to emulating the guru's Amazing Stories phase. This film does feel rather like one of those episodes rather than a full-blown movie: no stars, little location etc. However, as a story, it's rather good (suspension of disbelief taken for granted). And, it's rather well handled directorially. For instance, the upside-down sklyline speaks volumes without costing any extra. The film is ultimately a whodunnit. Maybe I'm stupid but come betting slip time, I didn't get it. If you do, you may hate it. I didn't so I don't. Besides, I haven't seen this Christian propaganda in a while & it made me kinda nostalgic for those Omen days.

After several weaker movies, Shyamalan begin to work on a new trilogy about the presence of supernatural evil in big cities. He concentrated on the script and preferred to let other people direct the movie and so you might expect that this first part of Shyamalan's renaissance must be a well elaborated and twisted masterpiece. Well, this is absolutely not the case, there are no major twists or surprises in the story. But that doesn't mean that this movie is without the glimpse of a doubt a very well done psycho thriller. Let me mention the negative points first. The movie isn't really long. There are only two minor twists and the first one is not that much surprising while the second one is an interesting turning point of the story but also a little bit predictable towards the end of the movie. The story is not really innovating and this time, Shyamalan really delivers what he announces in the previews. Because of the short running time, not every character is extremely well developed and profound. The critical and philosophic influence that many movies of Shyamalan had is not very present in this movie. But there are more positive points about this movie. There is a high tension present throughout the whole length of the movie and this is what makes the watching experience breathless and intense, you don't see time pass at all. The movie spares out the unnecessary and goes straight in your face which isn't that usual for Shyamalan's earlier works. That is something new, fresh and innovative coming from him and a little positive surprise for many but maybe also a little deception for some of his more purist fans. The interactions between the characters in the elevator are intense and very interesting. Every character has a very unique and special behaviour and something interesting to hide even if the characters could have been more developed if the movie had maybe twenty minutes more running time. The actions in the movie become more and more intense towards the finish and end up in a well done finale that leaves you with no open questions. All in all, this is surely not the best of Shyamalan's movies but way better than the last stuff he has done before this movie. It is not a very surprising and philosophical movie, but rather a short and intense psycho thriller. It is a very good movie but far away from being the best movie of the year. It is worth watching it at the cinema or at home, but i wouldn't recommend buying this movie at the full price without having seen it before.