Devil
2010 Directed by John Erick Dowdle
Synopsis
Bad Things Happen For A Reason
A group of people trapped in a elevator realize that the devil is among them.
Cast
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Listening to 'The Girl From Ipanema' while stuck in an elevator is far scarier than being stuck in an elevator with these morons, Mr. Beelzebub included.
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Take the single location confined space theme of 'Phone Booth', move it into a lift, pop a devil in, hide its identity, add four suspicious Cluedo characters, get the writer of 'Hard Candy' to do his best with an M. Night Shyamalan story, let heavyweight cinematographer Tak Fujimoto shoot the shit out of a skyscraper, feed the orchestra steroids and laxatives, edit it down to a snappy 80mins...and you've got yourself a fun little popcorny horror.
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Besides the fact you can see the twist coming from about a mile away, and the fact that the characters are all equally annoying, and the fact that the dialogue was pretty naff, I kind of did enjoy bits of this film.
I'd heard a lot beforehand about how awful it was. I disagree. It isn't awful, it's just not good. The idea and concept behind the story is quite neat. Even if you don't like the characters (I didn't) you can still appreciate that they got the general mix right. There was enough back story to each to make you care just enough about what order you'd like to see them die in, and you knew the policeman wasn't…
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Some of us have taken to laughing at poor M. Night Shyamalan, mostly because no one likes a cocky jerk who loves to position himself as the greatest storyteller on the planet (even going so far as to cast himself as such in a particularly misguided movie), but it has to be said, even when the tales he tells are nowhere near as clever as he thinks they are, his attention to pace and composition — not to mention his use of silence — make his films worth catching. Devil shows this disparity between bone-headedness and base-line competence brilliantly.
Conceived as the first Night Chronicle, Devil sees one of M. Night’s sub-Twilight-Zone scribblings fleshed out to almost feature length, taking…
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Shyamalan should have been a one-hit wonder, instead he became a long winded joke with a shit punch-line. Having lost credibility as a director Devil was supposed to be his reinvention as a screenwriter and producer. Unfortunately the film is still pretty lame. Like most of his other films the whole setup drives towards a twist ending. Who is the devil in the elevator? By the end of the film I really didn't care. There's also some hackneyed morality tosh about forgiveness thrown in. Like Shyamalan's career, this elevator is going down fast hiyooo
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This is a classic. It introduces us to a whole new genre which I would like to call Claustrophobic Horror.
Filled with lots of thrilling moments, it also has the most humane twist at the end. The thing which I liked more than the thrill is the inclusion of the question about the existence of God.
This could be my second most favourite MNS movie after sixth sense.
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It was OKAY, saw it at home just cause. M. Night was just the producer so his twisty hands weren't on this too bad. I like the part where SATAN.
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A modern day telling of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None", with half the wit, half the suspense and twice the boredom.
There's absolutely nothing here for me to sink my teeth into, and there's very little cleverness in terms of the script having you guess who the Devil is.
I was incredibly disappointed, because normally I'm a sucker for tight, claustrophobic, psychological thrillers like this. However, there were no scares and nothing to keep me entertained.
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Como dijo FG, parece un capítulo extendido de Twilight Zone. No estuvo mal, pero sí fue muy poco creíble la narración y comportamiento de "Ramírez", jeje.
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I'm not going to go so far as to say that the premise of this movie was a good idea. But I will certainly say that parts of this movie were well-conceived.
I'll be specific: I really enjoyed the detective/police work portions of the story. It was absolutely watchable - compulsively watchable, even. There's just something so compelling about those first moments in a mystery or drama where the investigators first show up at an unusual scene and start to piece things together. You'll find me glued to the screen every time.
The rest wasn't very good. The characters were a terribly, terribly predictable mix. Why do so many fucking horror movies have these same fucking characters in them? I'm sick of it! HORROR WRITERS: HOW ABOUT YOU SHOW ME SOME GODDAMN CREATIVITY WITH YOUR GODDAMN CHARACTERS BEFORE I WASTE A SECOND MORE OF MY TIME ON YOUR SHIT!!!!!!!!!
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Take the single location confined space theme of 'Phone Booth', move it into a lift, pop a devil in, hide its identity, add four suspicious Cluedo characters, get the writer of 'Hard Candy' to do his best with an M. Night Shyamalan story, let heavyweight cinematographer Tak Fujimoto shoot the shit out of a skyscraper, feed the orchestra steroids and laxatives, edit it down to a snappy 80mins...and you've got yourself a fun little popcorny horror.
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Una película muy extraña, 5 personas quedan atrapadas en un ascensor pero algo extraño pasa, el ascensor no quiere funcionar de ninguna manera y algo sobrenatural sucede, uno de ellos no es en realidad lo que les dice a las demás personas.
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Egy podcastet hallgattam ma, ahol szóba került eme filmecske. M. Night Shyamalan ötlete alapján készült, annó azt hiszem a plakát miatt néztem meg. Mivel ugye a csávó nem nagyon tudott újat mutatni a Hatodik érzék és a Sebezhetetlen után, így félve fogtam bele, de már a főcím megvett. Másodszorra is.
A sztoriról elég a következőket tudni: Egy átlagos nap pár átlagos ember beszáll egy liftbe. Ami elakad. A felmentő sereg sehol. És valami kurvára nem stimmel.
Jó, hendikeppes a film, imádom a liftes horrorokat. Mind a kettőt. Vagy van más a Liften és a Gyilkos felvonón kívül? (note: újranézni mindkettőtt, asap.) De ennek ellenére se értem, hogy miért húzták le ennyire sokan ezt a filmet, hiszen messze kiemelkedett a sok akkori (és mai) fos közül: feszes, izgalmas és durva. Mi kell még? A színészek is rendben vannak, még a Tom Hardy hasonmás is.
Tegyél vele egy próbát, nem bánod meg.
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For some reason I always found movies that featured the devil interacting with humans interesting. This movie seems to blend that concept with that of Cube. The Shyamjammerlammy Twist at the end is present and easily predictable before the movie is halfway over, as are certain other twists. It's not that bad though. I sat through it easily enough, the actors do well in portraying fear and paranoia and there are enough things happening. For some reason the most engaging character to follow was the cop on the outside trying to rescue these people trapped by Satan, but although the movie had that I wish it had more interaction, dialogue, and reasoning between the characters in the elevator. I also…
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Devil is of note simply because M. Night Shyamalan wrote the story for the film, and it's probably the best thing he's done in years. That's not to say the film's very good, as it isn't, but it's not terrible either. I was a huge Shyamalan fan/defender through The Village; I thought (and still think) that film and Signs are terrific and often completely misunderstood (but that's for another time). I still, for some reason, haven't watched Lady in the Water, but The Happening was a total abomination that quickly halted me defending the man in any form (there's also a complete refusal on my part in watching The Last Airbender). Devil is certainly a step in the right direction, but I think he could really resurrect his career by doing less writing and more directing. Wow, this review has nothing to do with the actual movie. Eh, whatever.