Devil...

I saw Devil on its opening weekend but it is so uninspiring I wasn't sure I was going to review it.

But I decided to do so, just so you guys don't think I like everything I see.

This review will be short, because I prefer to write with a film fresh in my mind, but the idea of shortness fits in nicely with not only Devil's running time but the amount of thought that was put into it.


Here we go. Devilishly boring. A devil of a waste of time. But better the devil you know then the one you don't right? So, don't bother with this movie.

It's cheap, thoughtless blather. Like the filmmakers took the concept that M. Night Shymalan thought of, this one person in a an elevator not being who they appear to be, and then came up with the easiest, most mundane way of getting from start to finish.

The pacing in this movie is awful. We never stay with the people trapped in the elevator for long before cutting away to something else. There are no scares and there is no gore, it really is just cookie cutter bland filmmaking.

I feel bad saying this too, because director John Erick Dowdle helmed Quarantine, one of my all time favourite horror movies. As evidenced by that film, Dowdle knows how to have fun behind the camera. None of that is apparent in Devil. Everything significant that happens in the elevator happens in complete darkness, as the lights somehow go out anytime the devil wants them too. 

Granted, that's necessary not to reveal who the devil is, but it is also largely ineffective. There is no good use of sound effects, of screams or anything like that. Instead there is just gaspy dead air.

The plot and acting are also sub par. The eventual revelation about which of the characters is the devil cheapens events that transpired earlier in the film. Then things come together super nicely in a neat little package at the end. Simple. Unmoving. Not well thought out.

I wish the filmmakers had realized that the fact they needed a somewhat omniscient narrator to set up the story points to the low quality of their writing and script. 

The actors aren't helped by decent material and their performances range from cheesy to flat. I never cared about any of them and kind of wished the elevator would just drop and kill them all while somehow also knocking down the whole building.

 I give this film 0.5/5 boring, dried up stuck thumbs because it really is uninspired, lazy filmmaking.

Not worth seeing.

XOXO

D-Bag