Devil: Review By Ben Greene

How do you salvage a reputation?

M Night Shyamalan is an experimenter. That's what got our attention in the first place. The 6th Sense and Unbreakable were not conventional films with conventional heroes, and as a result they received great acclaim. Unfortunately his aim isn't unerring, and 'The Happening' was a fascinating but disastrously miscast and tonally uneven mess. Reviews of Lady in the Water were so bad that I didn't even rent it.

I bothered with Devil, despite a lack of current reviews and a lazy 'bandwagon-jumping' slating by 'HollywoodChicago.com', because the concept and trailer made it clear this had serious potential to be something a little special.

You want the good news? It IS a little special. There is no bad news. The main, idea, given away by all the advertising, of having 5 people trapped in a lift, initially unaware that one of them is the Devil, is brilliant.

Clearly the path to redemption is to draft a gripping tale, let a talented writer bring it to life for you (30 Days of Night's Brian Nelson), and hand it to an eager director. John Eric Dowdle's sterling job filming this is overshadowed by the fame of his producer, but it's Dowdle's baby and he rocks it, if you'll pardon the pun.

A better, more tightly wound effort than his 'pretty good' 'Quarantine', he opens with a stomach-tightening inverted view of Philadelphia (presumably meant to hint at the upside down crucifixes used to worship Lucifer), and he holds us there until we zoom in on his target building in a bravura lift-shaft plunge. All of this is set to a nerve-jangling and superb music score by Fernando Velazquez, clearly a name to watch. One hell of an opening later, and it's moments before the film introduces us to its characters, its location, and its hero.

Needing an engine to drive the revelations about the 5 people trapped in the elevator, and an easily sympathetic lead for us to latch onto, Nelson and Dowdle give us Chris Messina's 'damaged-goods' police detective. Recently bereaved, ex-alcoholic, and yet hugely professional and efficient, his performance is great in a role that's mainly about helping us figure out what's going on. Apart from Jacob Vargas, giving a nice performance as the superstitious security guard introducing us to this particular 'devil' legend, the rest of the cast are largely functional, just playing out their roles pretty well to get us to the final twist.

The lift scenes are taut, and the casting and fairly briefly sketched characters help terrifically to give us five very different people who just don't get on, and wouldn't even if they weren't trapped in a lift. The tension between the characters is nicely escalated, and when fear and violence start to creep into the situation as well, their alarm is palpable. Dowdle could have made it more claustrophobic, and he lets the tension slip briefly near the climax, but he recovers it in time to get back on track.

The investigative and horror scenes outside the elevator are also terrifically handled, and really help keep the pedal to the metal.

It's not entirely unpredicatable, but Dowdle knows how to wring jumps from the audience, and he's good at keeping the atmosphere tense and creepy.

For me, there wasn't enough done to convincingly bring Messina's grounded police officer around to the idea of the Devil being present, and it felt a little artificial when he got on board with it.

If you've watched enough films like this, you may also guess which one the Devil is 2 minutes in, and though the film made a great effort to throw the audience, I was a little disappointed to find out I had been right.

However, the climax is frightening, almost living up to the promise of all that's happened before, and the way the ending is handled feels rewarding and satisfying.

After the immaculately wrung tension of the last 80 minutes, I felt like I'd seen an excellent film. Yes there were moments that could've been scarier or more tensely handled, but that's nitpicking.

In it's own right it's a terrific little horror thriller. Surprisingly gore-light, it chooses to scare you with atmosphere and tension instead, and it does a tremendous job at it.

If you intend to ever see this with a friend or an other-half, take them with you first time out, as it's also a film in the mould of 'Shutter Island' and 'Identity'. Otherwise, once you've seen it to the end the first time, it will have blown all it's surprises away on you, and you'll end up sitting through it second time knowing exactly what happens just to show it to someone else.

A terrific little horror thriller with a surprisingly low age rating - it isn't really suitable for anyone under 15.

A cracker of a movie. I enjoyed it immensely.