“From M. Night Shyamalan” no longer portends positive results, and true to form, his producer’s credit on Devil accurately reflects the generally cruddy nature of this B-movie, in which five people get trapped in a high-rise elevator – and one of them turns out to be Satan! John Erick Dowdle’s film has a compact set-up and claustrophobic central locale but virtually nothing else, as its spooky story begins ominously with upside-down panoramas of downtown Philadelphia, and then proceeds to drain any suspense or terror via crummy plotting and mediocre performances. Though attempting to be a Ten Little Indians-style whodunit, there’s no reasonable way to figure out which of the stranded strangers is Beelzebub, thereby negating mystery. Moreover, a framing story involving an investigating cop (Chris Messina) who’s still struggling to cope with the hit-and-run murder of his wife and son five years earlier – a tragedy that, unsurprisingly, is related to the ongoing proceedings – pitifully strives to imbue the action with some quasi-religious undercurrents about faith and forgiveness. Nonsensical to the point that every element doesn’t hold up to the least bit of scrutiny, Devil is so feeble that it barely even tries to exploit racial-cultural stereotypes, save for the Hispanic security guard (Jacob Vargas) who’s conveniently familiar with Satan’s fondness for playing these ludicrous punish-the-wicked (and, more mystifying still, bless-the-repentant) games.
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