Devil

I’ll start by saying I didn’t really like this one until about the last 20 mins. If you’re not familiar with the film, here’s the basic gist. It is based on something called the Devil’s Meeting. It’s when the Devil comes to Earth, disguised as a human, and tortures souls before bringing them to Hell. Apparently, a suicide is what starts this. In the film, five people are stuck in an elevator, and they have to figure out which one is the Devil.

I’ve heard that people were disappointed with the runtime, but that didn’t bother me much. There’s only so much you can do in an elevator. I did have fun trying to figure out who was the devil. Sidenote, I was upset with myself because my initial guess was the right one.

In the film, there’s a really religious security guard, and he’s the one that tells the cop of the Devil’s Meeting and how to save everyone, well, not everyone… the remaining ones. This is a horror movie, after all.

The film ultimately ends up being about forgiveness, and that was a nice theme. I don’t want to give away spoilers, so I won’t say who was the Devil or even describe the characters.

As I said in the beginning, the last 20 mins or so were the most interesting to me. I liked that everyone was suspicious in some way. It must have been when there were only three or two people left that I was really invested. Now that I think about it, I suppose the film could have been longer, as I didn’t care about any of the characters to really care when any of them died. The film starts with the cop and you learn he’s a recovering alcoholic and that his wife and kid died six years ago in a hit-and-run. You don’t know ANYTHING about the characters getting on the elevator, other than what you can see about them (For instance, one guy is in a business suit, one woman looks rich, another is an old lady, another is a security guard.)

Something I didn’t like about the film was anytime the Devil is moving around and killing people, you can’t see ANYTHING. Maybe a flash of light here or there, as the lights in the elevator always go out when the Devil is moving around. It took me out of the film because I know the point is you need to not see who is doing it, but to not see anything but a black screen and then a new dead body wasn’t very intriguing to me.

It also did kinda has a Saw type issue, where the punishment doesn’t seem to fit the crime. So, the Devil is coming to collect these people for their sins… But some of the sins didn’t seem Hell worthy. Like being a thief, or gold digger…

You learn, however, to beat the Devil you must own up to what you’ve done… which is another thing that bothers me because the religious security guard knew what was going on the whole time and could have told them at the beginning to just fess up to the things they’ve done to save them from the devil. In fact, I think that could have added some more conflict because they could still avoid saying their sins, a la Jigsaw.

All in all, it was an ok film.