I know that attaching the name M. Night Shyamalan these days makes something laughable, but I don’t completely agree with that. I haven’t seen The Sixth Sense in a while, but it scared the shit out of me the first time I saw it, and was pretty creepy for a few subsequent years. Unbreakable is a superhero movie that’s grounded a little bit more in reality than a Marvel or DC adaptation, and is pretty entertaining. Signs? Still pretty creepy, and scares the living shit out of Rampaige every single time. The Village was slightly different, and I remember reading interviews with Shyamalan where he was trying to tell people it wasn’t a horror movie, but rather a love story with supernatural elements. The marketing didn’t see it that way by promoting it as a horror movie which confused and disappointed everyone. Lady in the Water was another one that was marketed incorrectly, and add to that the fact that it wasn’t very good, well, you get the point. The Happening had some more entertaining violence than his other films, but yes, ultimately, it sucked. I didn’t see The Last Airbender but I think we have all heard enough about it to form an opinion. So out of seven films, probably four and a half of them are quite entertaining. When I saw the trailer for Devil and his name popped up, everyone started laughing. Well, lucky for them, they were right about this one, because it was kind of shitty.

Watch out! Any one of these people could be….THE DEVIL!

Some guy jumps out of a window and dies, and that coincides with a voiceover telling us an old story about the Devil coming to Earth to torment the living, so it’s pretty obvious that this movie will follow that story. A bunch of strangers enter an elevator and that elevator gets stuck. It starts with a typical scene of trapped people getting paranoid of who touched who and who is to blame and why is everyone acting all weird. When the lights go out and someone gets blamed for physically assaulting another person, shit gets real. However, next time the lights go out, the accused is found brutally murdered. This continues to happen every time the lights go out until they are down to one person. Security is watching this the whole time, trying to find help, but they can’t get to the elevator. Once there’s one person left, a previously killed old lady comes back to life and admits to being the Devil and that she was in charge of everything? Uhhh okay? Then we find out that one of the guys trying to help has a dead wife and kid who were involved in a hit and run years prior, and guess what, the only guy still alive is the one who did it. There’s your twist. Then I guess the guy admits to it which means the Devil can’t kill him or something? Then the movie’s over.

You know who hates cell phones? That’s right! THE DEVIL!

Whatever. The second you introduce the Devil, FUCKING SATAN, as a real character, why should you care about any of it? You know they won’t defeat him. And it’s not like the Devil being there is a surprise, BECAUSE THE FUCKING MOVIE IS CALLED DEVIL. OF COURSE THE DEVIL IS GOING TO BE IN THE ELEVATOR. OF COURSE IT’S THE OLD LADY THAT NO ONE WOULD SUSPECT. Not the most suspenseful movie, but the small twists made it a little more entertaining. Might have been more successful as a straight to video movie, because I definitely got more of the Cube vibe from it, rather than a typical M. Night Shyamalan film. He didn’t really redeem himself with this one, but he also didn’t make me think any less of him, but this is supposedly just the first in a series of three. I look forward to a movie about people stuck on a tall ladder, and then finishing it off with food that’s stuck on a dumbwaiter.

Wolfman Moon Scale