Sept. 27, 2010
DUELING CRITICS: BECK AT THE MOVIES: “Devil”
Disappoints After Promising Premise; It Could Have Been…
By Jeff Beck
Special to Huntingtonnews.net
Richmond, VA (HNN) - It always makes me apprehensive to see a movie that was not screened for critics in advance. It's as if the studio is telling us beforehand that they believe the final product will receive terrible reviews, so with them having such little faith in it, there's usually not much reason for us to have any either. "Devil" looked like it could have been an interesting film, but ironically the lack of faith was justified.
It starts off as a suicide occurs in an office building. Not long after this, five strangers, Ben (Bokeem Woodbine), Tony (Logan Marshall-Green), Sarah (Bojana Novakovic), Vince (Geoffrey Arend), and Jane (Jenny O'Hara), get into an elevator on their way to various appointments in the building, but the elevator gets stuck on the way up. With the help of the security guards, the strangers try to remain calm while the problem is looked into, but the cause of the malfunction remains a mystery. Suddenly, when the lights flicker off, Vince is violently killed, immediately causing the others to suspect a murderer among them.
Detective Bowden (Chris Messina), who was originally called in to investigate the suicide, now has another case on his hands. Tensions continue to mount as the strangers try to figure out who committed the murder. One of the security guards, Ramirez (Jacob Vargas), believes that the devil is among those stranded in the elevator while Bowden tries to find a less-spiritual answer. It's up to the detective and the rescue team to get to the survivors before the murderer finishes what they set out to do.
"Devil" is based on a story written by M. Night Shyamalan, who, as you may have heard, is not exactly at a high point in his career at the moment. It's gotten to the point where people start to boo and laugh when his name comes up on the screen (I actually experienced this in person when a trailer for this film came up at a screening a couple of months ago).
Now some people have been trying to shift the blame for this film from Shyamalan by saying that he only wrote the story, and it’s probably not entirely his fault, but if you've been reading my reviews for a while, you know that I consider the story to be the single most important aspect of most films. It's basically what everything else stems off of including the screenplay and characters. When the story is weak, you're going to have problems very early on.
As I said up front, this could have been an interesting film. It certainly has an interesting premise that sets up an intriguing mystery, but the problems come when the filmmakers just don't know where to take the story. The biggest turn of events that occur throughout the film is another one of the characters in the elevator dying, but with no character development, how is the audience supposed to care?
They try to throw a few facts about the characters out to the audience much later in the film as Bowden tries to figure out the mystery by analyzing their backgrounds, but the most that we get about them is that they are all guilty of one thing or another. I suppose this was meant to deepen the mystery, but it ends up doing nothing as no one is really under suspicion while at the same time, everyone is under suspicion.
This all comes down to a "twist" (if you can even call it that) where coincidence reigns supreme. Think of "Signs," but done in a much less interesting manner. I've gotten used to not setting the bar too high for Shyamalan's endings lately, so it's no surprise that the ending here turns out to be rather bland. The trailers made it seem like it would result in some kind of bizarre confrontation with the devil, but what we end up getting is a pretty straightforward, simplistic, and flat conclusion.
Much of the fault also comes from the screenplay written by Brian Nelson. The characters are never given anything interesting to say or do. You can only make so many jokes about the elevator music before you have to move on to something else, and therein lies the problem. These characters don't have anything to say to each other besides making accusations about who the murderer could be.
This whole film had me thinking about movies featuring memorable elevator scenes (trust me, there was time to think while nothing was happening). You remember the opening scene of "Speed" where several people were trapped on an elevator about to plummet several stories to the ground? There was tension, excitement, and thrills. Everything that "Devil" tried to have, but ended up lacking. 2/4 stars.
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DUELING CRITICS: BECK AT THE MOVIES: “Devil”
Disappoints After Promising Premise; It Could Have Been…
By Jeff Beck
Special to Huntingtonnews.net
Richmond, VA (HNN) - It always makes me apprehensive to see a movie that was not screened for critics in advance. It's as if the studio is telling us beforehand that they believe the final product will receive terrible reviews, so with them having such little faith in it, there's usually not much reason for us to have any either. "Devil" looked like it could have been an interesting film, but ironically the lack of faith was justified.
It starts off as a suicide occurs in an office building. Not long after this, five strangers, Ben (Bokeem Woodbine), Tony (Logan Marshall-Green), Sarah (Bojana Novakovic), Vince (Geoffrey Arend), and Jane (Jenny O'Hara), get into an elevator on their way to various appointments in the building, but the elevator gets stuck on the way up. With the help of the security guards, the strangers try to remain calm while the problem is looked into, but the cause of the malfunction remains a mystery. Suddenly, when the lights flicker off, Vince is violently killed, immediately causing the others to suspect a murderer among them.
Detective Bowden (Chris Messina), who was originally called in to investigate the suicide, now has another case on his hands. Tensions continue to mount as the strangers try to figure out who committed the murder. One of the security guards, Ramirez (Jacob Vargas), believes that the devil is among those stranded in the elevator while Bowden tries to find a less-spiritual answer. It's up to the detective and the rescue team to get to the survivors before the murderer finishes what they set out to do.
"Devil" is based on a story written by M. Night Shyamalan, who, as you may have heard, is not exactly at a high point in his career at the moment. It's gotten to the point where people start to boo and laugh when his name comes up on the screen (I actually experienced this in person when a trailer for this film came up at a screening a couple of months ago).
Now some people have been trying to shift the blame for this film from Shyamalan by saying that he only wrote the story, and it’s probably not entirely his fault, but if you've been reading my reviews for a while, you know that I consider the story to be the single most important aspect of most films. It's basically what everything else stems off of including the screenplay and characters. When the story is weak, you're going to have problems very early on.
As I said up front, this could have been an interesting film. It certainly has an interesting premise that sets up an intriguing mystery, but the problems come when the filmmakers just don't know where to take the story. The biggest turn of events that occur throughout the film is another one of the characters in the elevator dying, but with no character development, how is the audience supposed to care?
They try to throw a few facts about the characters out to the audience much later in the film as Bowden tries to figure out the mystery by analyzing their backgrounds, but the most that we get about them is that they are all guilty of one thing or another. I suppose this was meant to deepen the mystery, but it ends up doing nothing as no one is really under suspicion while at the same time, everyone is under suspicion.
This all comes down to a "twist" (if you can even call it that) where coincidence reigns supreme. Think of "Signs," but done in a much less interesting manner. I've gotten used to not setting the bar too high for Shyamalan's endings lately, so it's no surprise that the ending here turns out to be rather bland. The trailers made it seem like it would result in some kind of bizarre confrontation with the devil, but what we end up getting is a pretty straightforward, simplistic, and flat conclusion.
Much of the fault also comes from the screenplay written by Brian Nelson. The characters are never given anything interesting to say or do. You can only make so many jokes about the elevator music before you have to move on to something else, and therein lies the problem. These characters don't have anything to say to each other besides making accusations about who the murderer could be.
This whole film had me thinking about movies featuring memorable elevator scenes (trust me, there was time to think while nothing was happening). You remember the opening scene of "Speed" where several people were trapped on an elevator about to plummet several stories to the ground? There was tension, excitement, and thrills. Everything that "Devil" tried to have, but ended up lacking. 2/4 stars.
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