Devil is a Lesson in Humanity: Paybacks Are a Bitch
Devil is no exception to writer M. Night Shyamalan’s use of multi-layered characters and twist endings that involve a moral lesson (The Sixth Sense, The Happening). If you want sheer horror, check out the Saw series. If you want something deeper, go see Devil.
Horror Queen Says: Bloody Thumbs Up!
Written by BHM Editor Horror Queen
September 17, 2010
Release: September 17, 2010 (U.S. Theatrical)
Directed by: John Erick Dowdle
Written by: Brian Nelson (screenplay) and M. Night Shyamalan
Starring:
Chris Messina as: Detective Bowden
Logan Marshall-Green as: Mechanic
Jenny O’Hara as: Old Woman
Bojana Novakovic as: Young Woman
Bokeem Woodbine as: Guard
Geoffrey Arend as: Salesman
The film opens brilliantly with an aerial shot of the Philly skyline, which gradually and eerily turns upside down.
Detective Bowden is a man in recovery from alcoholism which he resorted to after the loss of his wife and son the year before, at the hands of a hit and run drunk driver. Already battling his own demons, on this particular day Bowen has to respond to a suicide jump and what may turn out to be even worse…the Devil himself.
Bad luck at the high rise office building that day when after the death jump from one of the upper floors, five people then become trapped in an elevator - each a colorful character with their own skeletons in the closet, and one with an apparent thirst for blood.
As with many thrillers, there’s definitely a need to suspend belief in this film if you’re going to enjoy it. For example, forget that in a building of 5,000 people no one happened to see a man fall 30 plus stories to the ground. And even more amazing, after this happens and once the building staff fails to rescue the people in the elevator, they don’t bother to call 911 for what seems like an eternity. But perhaps funniest of all is when the fire department finally does get there, they decide to take a few hours and drill the perfect square hole through a 2-ft concrete wall, rather than take a 2-minute climb into the elevator shaft to rescue the victims. The victims by the way are now turning up dead, one by one, every time the lights go off and on.
Which one of the five strangers in the elevator is the killer? The pushy mattress salesman? The temp security guard with a violent past? The elderly compulsive thief? The war veteran mechanic? The greedy heiress? As you may have guessed by the title of the film, things are not that simple.
And sure enough, as one of the security guards, Ramirez, is watching what’s going on in the elevator from a camera in the control room, he notices something ‘inhuman’ and pretty darn disturbing on the screen. When Ramirez tries to explain his notions about the Devil to the other guard and Detective Bowden, he’s brushed off. That is, until they have to listen.
What’s great about Devil is 1.its character development (there actually is some), and 2.its take on humanity in general – the good versus the evil in all of us. As with many of Shyamalans’s films he manages to scare the bejesus out of us, and incorporate larger message – that everyone in that building ‘made the choices that brought them here’; in other words, paybacks are a bitch. On a positive note, though, Ramirez recalls his grandmother’s encouraging words, ‘if the Devil is real, God must also be real.’
Horror Queen Says: Bloody Thumbs Up!
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