Review of Devil (2010) by Tristan W — 18 Jul 2017

A semi-promising concept that could make for a tense confined thriller is instead wasted on an entirely unexciting horror flick with hackneyed themes and stilted execution. It's easy to pin the blame on M.

Night Shyamalan, who takes producer and screen story amidst his directorial slump, but it's much more fair to point fingers at actual screenwriter Brian Nelson and director John Erick Dowdle. Stretching the material as thin as it can and still barely able to make it to an 80 minute runtime, Devil is a completely soulless affair, cramming the elevator setting with five completely bland, and often downright unlikeable characters whom you share no positive emotion with as they're picked off one by one.

Dowdle is less interested in building character and more so in rushing them all into the confined setting and showcasing lots of death sequences that pack no punch whatsoever. The few times he does attempt to give any depth to these characters or the story as a whole, it comes off as ham-fisted instead of emotionally powerful; as no stranger to emotional subtext to his fantastical stories, perhaps this is Shyamalan's doing, but no matter who's to blame, it never works.

The film rarely works overall: some interesting camerawork and music aside, it's a dull and uninspired waste of an intriguing idea.