Produced by: M. Night Shyamalan, John Eric Dowdle, Drew Dowdle, Sam Mercer.
Written by: M. Night Shyamalan (story), Brian Nelson (screenplay).
Starring: Chris Messina, Bojana Novakovic, Bokeem Woodbine, Logan Marshall-Green, Jenny O’Hara and Geoffrey Arend.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures.
Running Time: 80 Minutes.
Budget: $10 Million.
Gross Revenue: $57, 417, 973.
M. Night Shyamalan is getting crucified by pretty much everyone these days. The press don’t like him and the public certainly don’t either (as evidenced by a viral video in which an audience of movie-goers audibly boo when his name appears on the trailer for Devil.) I personally have a love/hate relationship with the guy. I think he is really good at creating suspense. He does this by using classic techniques to create a slow boil in a scene, which is a stark contrast to the ‘seat-jump’ tactics of other horror movies. At the same time, I have little patience for the religious messages he conveys in some of his movies. You know what I’m talking about: The whole ‘destiny’ bit in ‘Signs’, where an ex-priest played by Mel Gibson eventually learns that his dead wife’s last words were actually instructions on what to do when the aliens come. All that fairy tale horse-shit does my head in. Some critics have argued that this film wasn’t directed by him and so he can’t be blamed for its shittiness. Slow down. The last time I checked it was Shyamalan that came up with the story. And the story, my friends, is precisely where ‘Devil’ clunks along worse than your grandfather’s second-hand panel van.
Normally, I would use this opportunity to segueway into a nice little summary of the movie’s plot, but I really can’t be bothered. Recounting plot is a tedious exercise, even for good movies. Tedium quickly descends into ‘dull-cloud-of-rage-in-my-nicotine-deprived-mind’ when I have to recount the plot of something as fucking awful as Devil. If it’s a plot summary that you’re after, just look it up on Wikipedia. Too lazy for that? Hey, I hear you buddy. Just click here.
Now when I set out to writing a review for this movie, I thought about what it is I could possibly say that might be in the least bit meaningful. Sure it’s fun to tear a movie to pieces, but reviewers have already done that. In reviewing Devil, I wanted to try and convince you, dear reader, that the movie is actually detrimental to the evolution of human society.
Just typing that made me think "Wow, that’s a pretty big accusation, do you care to back that up?" If this were some kind of trial environment, and I had to convince a jury that Devil is detrimental to human society, I would point to the overall implications that the film has regarding how one can achieve redemption for past wrong-doings. You see, the devil is in the elevator with a bunch of people who are all hiding terrible secrets, and he has come to collect their souls. There are five people in the elevator, one of them is the devil in disguise and the others are all regular people (this is sounding an awful lot like a fucking plot summary.) The devil systematically kills each person when the lights flicker out, and this ultimately leads to a situation where all the characters become suspicious of one another. There are lots of “You did it!”/“No, you did it!” thrown around. Meanwhile there is a cop outside tying to break in to stop all the bloodshed; a cop who is still in mourning over the loss of his wife and child to a hit-and-run.
Anyway, the anonymous devil kills everyone in the elevator until there are only two people left standing. By the logic of the movie, the audience is led to believe that one of these two is in-fact the devil. But this isn’t a regular movie, oh no; it’s a Shyamalan movie, which by its very nature demands a shocking twist. The twist in this case? The devil faked his/her own death to avoid suspicion. The devil then reveals his/her true identity, as one of the people that died earlier in the film.
It is at this point that the surviving male character (can’t think of his name, let’s call him Roger...) offers himself to the devil and says that he would rather die than let the devil take the soul of the only surviving woman. Roger appears to have developed the characteristic of empathy in this little exercise-- now if only the writer could do the same and quit writing movies with religious undertones. Upon Roger’s declaration of self-sacrifice, the devil says something along the lines of "Damn you Roger, I really wanted your soul!" and then disappears back to hell.
The male character at this point confesses to the manslaughter of the cop’s wife and child in a drunk hit-and-run accident that occurred before the movie (Ooh, coincidence? Surely not!) Roger is led out of the elevator and the cop offers to take him into the station. During the ride into the station, the cop tells Roger that he forgives him. The movie fades to black, and all the Christians in the audience feel warm inside about the sermon they’ve just heard, where ‘forgiveness’ is the over-arching theme.
Let’s get a few things straight: The way that Roger achieves redemption in this film is by confessing to his drunk hit-and-run and then submitting himself to the American legal system for an apt punishment. This is what the movie believes is the appropriate punishment for poor Roger. Now, as anyone who has picked up a newspaper (that isn’t The Daily Telegraph) knows; the legal system in liberal democratic western countries is completely unfair in its distribution of justice.
Let’s suppose for a second that Roger has a lot of money saved away in a bank account and hires a brilliant lawyer who argues that he was operating a vehicle with diminished responsibility due to the level of alcohol in his blood. Shit, you could probably argue that he’s also suffering from some degree of post traumatic stress disorder-- he was in Afghanistan after all. Roger gets a slap on the wrist and is forced to spend some time in a rehabilitation clinic. On the other hand, Roger could have been dirt poor and received a court appointed lawyer, who is so backed up with cases of people from low socio-economic backgrounds that he can’t think straight, and Roger ends up serving a minimum of ten years in a pound-me-in-the-arse prison.
This is my main problem with the flick. They could have made an interesting movie about forgiveness with the same story elements minus all the Satan bullshit. Let’s say that the movie is about an alcoholic cop who has lost his wife and child to a hit-and-run. The cop subsequently befriends Roger, the guy that did it; only the cop doesn’t know it yet. For the first half of the movie you could focus on the relationship between these two men, make it so they genuinely get along with each other. They both struggle with their alcoholism, but learn to depend on one another to get through it. Then, at the half way point of the movie, Roger tells the cop about his crime, and the cop, putting it all together, realises that Roger is the guy that killed his family. The second half of the film could be about the virtue of forgiveness, with the cop overcoming all his anger and remaining friends with Roger despite the impact that he has had on his life. If you really wanted to, you could still even keep the Christian undertone, though surely such a thing is no longer necessary in an era that has seen the complete mapping of the human genome.
Devil maintains the status-quo of a society that is biased in favour of those that have lots of money. Suggesting that Roger can only achieve redemption by subjectifying himself to a hypocritical justice system is either idiotic, or a sophisticated method of propaganda created by a wealthy writer/director in an informal conspiracy to maintain the status-quo, I’m too lazy to work out which, and I don’t really care. All I do know is that Devil sucks just as much arse as your boss probably did to get into a position of middle-management with a multi-national corporation.
Half a star:
No comments:
Post a Comment