Devil
(M) 80 minutes 3.5/5
To say film director/writer M. Night Shyamalan has had something of a chequered career is an understatement.
Thrust into the cinematic limelight after writing and directing the 1999 blockbuster, The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan then proceeded to sully his good reputation with a series of cinematic efforts ranging from
the merely lukewarm (Signs, The Village), to the downright awful (Lady in the Water and, most notably, this year's abysmal The Last Airbender).
All of which makes Devil, apparently based around a story conceived by Shyamalan, something of a refreshing surprise.
The film centres around a group of strangers who, apparently coincidentally, find themselves trapped in a lift in a high-rise building.
Slowly, strange things begin to happen, and each person starts to die in increasingly grisly fashion.
Without giving the plot away, it's not hard to work out what's causing the deaths, given the film's title.
Where Devil succeeds is in its simplicity.
Unlike most of Shyamalan's work of late, Devil has a relatively basic plot, a small cast of characters, is short in duration and, rather than special effects, relies heavily on pacing, sound and psychological drama.
Rather than taking the easy option and focusing purely on the supernatural presence tormenting the group trapped in the elevator, Devil spends just as much of its short screen time examining the mental breakdown of the trapped five, and their increasingly tenuous relationships with each other.
Of course, it wouldn't be a Shyamalan film without a trademark twist ending and, although the twist this time around is not one of his best, the film up to that point has been satisfying enough that it doesn't really matter.
The only possible problem with Devil is that given the fiendishly clever nature of the plot, the potential was there to do a bit more with the film, but it's a minor quibble at best.
Devil is apparently the first in Shyamalan's The Night Chronicles trilogy - based on this, the series is off to a good start, and may just provide the director with his long-awaited chance at redemption.
