Shyamalan's 'Devil' gets worse by the minute

For reasons that must have nothing to do with my stunning lack ofpopularity, I've never experienced a backlash, but it's an oddphenomenon.

As soon as a popular figure gains any measure of success, naysayersline up to bring him back to earth. "The Dark Knight justwasn't very good," someone will say, moments before drowning on theirown drool. I'm sure they believe that — their brains are, after all,the size and solidity of a loogie — but sometimes it feels like somepeople hate just to be hating.

-- Local show times, theaters, trailer.

On the flip side, sometimes they're just right.

Between The SixthSense and Unbreakable, M. Night Shyamalan looked likepermanent box office gold. Each movie he's made since has convertedmore and more of the movie-going public into people who look like angrydicks on the internet. By this point, I almost feel bad for him. Butyou know, if he doesn't like it, maybe he should stop beingresponsible for movies such as Devil.

According to security guard Jacob Vargas' mother, suicides free thedevil into our world to wreak havoc and punish the wicked. After asuicide in a Philadelphia office tower, five strangers end up trappedin an elevator 20 floors up.

Detective Chris Messina investigates the suicide, but is called in bysecurity once one of the passengers is assaulted during a blackout.Soon, the captives start dying — and Messina will have to stop thekillings without being able to get a hand inside.

Devil is the first of the Night Chronicles, a franchise ofmovies to be based around the ideas of that guy we're all dogpilingthese days, Shyamalan. I like this concept; some talents are clearlybetter than the rest of us and should be given more opportunities atthe expense of those unproven losers who'll probably never amount toanything anyway. It's an odd choice, however, to launch the first ofthese franchises around a guy who's always been a better director thana writer.

Instead, he hands the directorial reins over to Quarantine'sJohn Erick Dowdle, who gets to grapple with a film whose entirestructure hinges around the superstitious narration of a peripherallyinvolved rent-a-cop. That's where all the rules and explanations comefrom, delivered, usually, just when things are about to stop makingsense completely.

Now that's lazy writing. That's so lazy that if it were you it wouldbe fired for laziness, which isn't even possible, because you werealready fired for drunkenness. It's just a weak technique — neither thecharacters nor the audience are figuring anything out for themselves,some jerk's just telling everyone what's what.

This is a major explanation for why the five trapped characters canbarely be called "characters." Bokeem Woodbine's work is all right, andGeoffrey Arend registers as some sort of sleazebag — he is, after all,a mattress salesman, and those guys will saw off and sell your leftfoot if you look away too long — but the others do essentially nothing.They don't seriously try to escape, or deduce who's doing the killing,or even to bond. They do some shouting and some sweating, but whatthey seem most interested in is standing.

This is making it sound like I totally hated Devil! Somehow, Ididn't. Chalk that up to Dowdle's workmanlike direction, which masksthese many flaws with a smattering of suspense, a couple of creepyscares and semi-cunning misdirection.

Wait, that's the best praise I've got? All right, now I've talkedmyself into thinking it's pretty crummy after all. I would have swornit was OK when I saw it two days ago. Too bad for Devil I hadto do whatever it is I did yesterday, because this is a movie thatgets worse the more you think about it.

Grade: C-

This story was originally published September 20, 2010 at 3:38 AM with the headline "Shyamalan's 'Devil' gets worse by the minute."