Devil

2010 Night chronicle

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Right after a man jumps to his death from a window far above the van he lands on, a black guy, a white guy, an old woman, a younger woman, and a mattress salesman enter an elevator in building 333. The elevator malfunctions, apparently because it's possessed by the devil. Devil! A detective and the audience try to figure out what the hell is going on.

As soon as the words "The Night Chronicles" popped onto the screen, I had mixed feelings of glee and disappointment. On the one hand, this wasn't an actual M. Night Shyamalanadingdong movie, so it was unlikely that the level of comedy would meet my expectations after watching his brilliant comedy The Happening. On the other hand, M. Night now apparently thinks he's become the next Alfred Hitchcock and there's going to be a whole bunch of this crap, and some of it's going to be really bad. Devil isn't a complete disaster. In fact, the premise is sort of cool, and in the hands of a better writer, one without so many A's in his last name maybe, this might have ended up fairly good. As the film begins, you get these upside-down aerial shots of a city, and I was thinking, "Oh, my God. Shyamalan couldn't even find a director who knows how to properly hold a camera!" Once the detective comes along to solve the mystery of the falling man, things get ridiculous. And that's at the beginnning of the movie, so I guess things get ridiculous fairly quickly. The detective has trouble finding the broken window because of a moving truck or something, and it made me wonder if he was the right man for this or any job. It's just like when you hear the characters in this (especially the mattress salesman) interact with each other? It made me wonder if the writer, the director, and the actors and actresses were the right men and women for the jobs. I really wondered if anybody involved in the production of Devil has ever heard actual human interaction before. My favorite bit of dialogue is the bit about toast falling "jelly-side down" or whatever. Seriously, who wrote this garbage? So is Devil watching despite its many sins? Overall, no. It's too gimmicky and too silly to really enjoy. Or maybe I'm completely wrong and it's the gimmicks and the silliness that make it enjoyable. Who knows? All I do know is that I'll never look at devil-possessed elevators the same way again. In fact, next time I'm in an elevator with other people, I'm just going to go ahead and kill everybody just to be on the safe side. It might just save my life, and I'll have M. Night Shyamalan to thank for that.