Trailer Review: DEVIL

M. Night Shyamalan is back this time as an executive producer and "idea giver" in the new thriller/horror movie, DEVIL. This is the first installment under Shyamalan's self-titled "The Night Chronicles" series. The movie is directed by The Brothers Dowdle, whose most recent credit is the movie Quarantine. I know my fellow film geeks, as a whole, have a wonderful time comparing Shyamalan to George Lucas, but I really think he's super-ceded with this move. I'm sorry sir, I may be one of the few people who liked Lady in the Water, but I think you should concentrate more time on writing and directing, like you actually care about the people who sit down and pay to see your films. Not go throwing around the word Chronicle, every time you come up with an idea and just so happen to have two more that follow.

Its okay Chronicle, I promise to lead a campaign that will save you from having to be fucked by M. Nights title card on screen.

So the trailer opens up with these really striking images of what looks to be the New York City skyline upside down with taglines going across it. If you read my Catfish review you know how I feel about taglines, so we won't go there. It makes it seem like everything that's happening, the interactions and those who get in the elevator is all by chance. But the trailer still has to remind me that "everything happens for a reason"....

...fucking taglines....

Anyway the elevator stops, people start screaming and then we are given a series of images from the movie of all the crazy scenarios that will occur. This brings me to the second highlight of the trailer which is when all these images are happening the sound is drown out and there is this low monotone sound that screeches through the rest till we are given a jump scare. Now I really believe that if Shyamalan's name wasn't all over this movie, audiences would have less of a grudge against it. Yes, it looks like another hapless horror movie thriller, with an idea, that by the end could have more done with it, but doesn't change the fact that the trailer isn't all that bad looking. Its an interesting idea, simple enough, and put in a location that suits its claustrophobic and terrorizing needs; its just the filmmaker its associated with that gives it its bum rap right from the beginning.

In summation, I'm honestly curious to see how this entire movie plays out. Less for Shyamalan, but more for the writer and directors of this movie. See Mr. "Unbreakable" is only credited with a "story by" credit. For those of you who think that "screenplay by" and "story by" are the same thing...they are not, let me clarify.

Screenplay by means that they actually wrote an entire script out.

Story by means that Shyamalan could have done anything from walk into and office and say; "Yo...5 people...Elevator...feel the tension...mmmhmmm..can you feel it? AND THEN BAM ONE OF THE IS DEVIL. Package it, sell it, knick knack, patty whack, give a dog a bone!" Or he could have wrote an outline with some plots points and another writer flushed the rest of it out.

I think the latter is what happened but its fun to wonder.

I haven't seen Quarantine and even though I've heard bad things about it, doesn't change that the movie's main plug is that a news reporter is trapped inside a building and has to get out before horrible things happen to her. The writer of this movie is Brian Nelson, who wrote the script for 30 Days of Night and Hard Candy. Both films take place in one location, but do a whole hell of a lot to make you feel as uncomfortable as possible and bring as much tension to the idea of being trapped into its small, but simple story ideas. I'm going to try and go into this flick with the thought that Shyamalan did nothing more than give creative control over to other talented writers and filmmakers and let them do what he hasn't been able to since Unbreakable; and that is make an M. Night Shyamalan movie.

As always my final review will be when the credits roll and house like come up.


Dueces!
StuntmanBob