Devil

I have a tendency to approach films from certain writers/directors from a very biased place. M. Night Shyamalan is one of those writer/directors. I think the man is a bleeding genius. Maybe it comes from the twisted place where my mind exists most of the time, or maybe it's because we have a similar writing style, but when the majority of the population is busy hating what he's putting out, I am seeing aspects of his films as brilliant and amazing.

That out of the way, here is my take on Devil, without giving too much away. I read somewhere (that I can't get back to now) that this is the first of a three film project so I am not putting a lot of stock in anything right now until I can see the whole project in its entirety.

The movie opens with an inverted flight over the city of Philadelphia as we hear the voice of Jacob Vargas as Ramirez, telling us a story his Catholic mother had told him as a child, a story of how the Devil would take human form and punish the damned before taking their souls. According to the story, the Devil would integrate himself into a group of people and systematically kill them (i.e. take their souls). The events would begin with a suicide and end with the Devil killing the last person in the group in front of the person who loves them the most in their life.

We first meet Chris Messina (Vicky Christina Barcelona, Julie & Julia) who plays as Detective Bowden of the Philadelphia Police Department, a recovering alcoholic widower who we later learn lost his family in a hit and run accident five years prior to the events of the story. Bowden has been called to process the suicide foretold by our narrator and figures out that it actually happened several blocks from where the body was found.

As Bowden and his partner are processing the site of the original suicide, our narrator then tells us that innocent bystanders are often claimed as part of the Devil's game and to punctuate this, a shard of glass falls from the window the jumper had destroyed in his fall, nearly landing on Bowden's partner.

In the midst of all of this we meet five more people as they enter an elevator in the same building, unaware of what had just taken place in the floors above. Two of the faces in the elevator are very familiar if you are fans of the TNT network dramas. First we meet a security guard played by Bokeem Woodbine, fresh off his stint as Leon Cooley in the Holly Hunter vehicle, Saving Grace and then later we find Logan Marshall-Green, currently undercover as Dean Bendis in the cast of TNT's Dark Blue. Also in the elevator are Jenny O'Hara (most recently recognized as Nita from TV's Big Love), Drag Me to Hell's Bojana Novakovic and Geoffrey Arend (TV's Trust Me and Body of Proof).

When the express elevator these five people are riding in stops between floors, we finally meet our narrator, Ramirez, a security guard, and his partner, Lustig played by Matt Craven (Public Enemies, Distrubia). As the lights in the elevator car begin to flicker, Ramirez becomes obsessed with an image of the Devil's face in the security footage, bringing his narration into the action of the movie.

As told in Ramirez's fable, the passengers in the elevator car are systematically picked off one by one and we as the audience begin to speculate which passenger is the Devil. Or what if it isn't one of the passengers? What if Bowden's the Devil? Could it be Lustig or Bowden's partner, Markowitz? What about Ramirez himself, his fable just a clever ruse?

I won't tell you who the Devil is but I will say, Shyamalan succeeded in surprising me, once again. While I ran the gamut, suspecting all the major players, including the one who was "just too easy," the true Devil was in fact the one I suspected the least. And to be perfectly honest, I don't know why I dismissed the possibility. I just did. To me, that is a sign of good twist writing.

I don't think I am going to back a trip to the theater for this one, at least not 100%. There were no big action scenes or special effects or a great soundtrack to be diminished by watching it from your own couch. If you find yourself with nothing to do one weekend and want to go to the cinema, Devil isn't going to be a waste of money but you are also not going to miss anything if you wait for it on DVD.