DEVIL

One morning like any other, in an office building like any other, five individuals completely strangers to each other accidentally get stuck inside a company elevator. While waiting for someone to arrive and free them, strange things suddenly start happening until the lives of the five are put at risk, who mysteriously start dying one after the other. It seems that someone among them is not telling the truth about their identity. Has the Devil perhaps had a hand in this? It seems so. It is a bit disappointing to give this work a failing grade without any reservations because, if everything had been handled in a more "serious" and courageous manner, something really remarkable could have come out of it, an unusual horror film capable of addressing the demonic theme by resorting to unusual contexts and capable of avoiding well-known narrative schemes made almost "obligatory" by a certain cinema from across the pond. The plot starts with an opening as simple and elementary as it is effective: three men and two women, all very different but all so similar, find themselves trapped in a very narrow space that offers no way out; but the worst part is that they are not alone, there is something metaphysical among them that seeks to eliminate them one after the other. The material to work with was excellent, it just needed to take a (big) risk on the development of the subject and work by subtracting elements rather than adding them. A beautiful minimalist horror could have come out, strongly unsettling and capable of surprising the viewer by betting on the factor of claustrophobia, a method as simple as it is effective for generating the right state of anxiety in the mind of the audience watching. Just recently, Rodrigo Cortés tried to do something of this type with the surprising "Buried," setting the entire story exclusively inside a box where the ninety minutes of the film equaled the ninety minutes of air that the protagonist had to live. A film capable of taking the viewer straight to the stomach and keeping them glued to the screen for the entire time, without even allowing them a yawn despite the limited action; a work, that of Cortés, that knew how to well exploit its cards (playing very well on the claustrophobic factor) and that did not fear risking in crafting a film certainly not for the masses. "Devil," unfortunately, did not have the same courage as Cortés's film and it is precisely here that the biggest flaw of the film is found. John Erick Dowdle (already the maker of the useless "Quarantine," the American remake of "Rec") directs a faded film that fails to develop even one of all those potentialities that were contained in the meager initial plot. But one gets the feeling that this lack is not due to a lack of competence on the part of the author, but rather is entirely wanted by the production in order to generate a film capable of traveling on the "safe" and pleasing the masses, every type of mouth. Hence, the film takes on very choral tones and the action expands considerably, not limiting itself (as it should have, in the opinion of the writer) within the four walls of the elevator. We are not led to focus solely on the five unfortunate victims and their anxieties, but we are forced to follow the story of the tormented police officer who acts outside the building and guides the rescue action and the bored and boring guards of the skyscraper who keep an eye on the "accident victims" from their surveillance monitors. Claustrophobia, therefore, literally goes to get blessed and this strongly affects the entire horror component because at no moment is it possible to breathe that air of danger that the characters of the film breathe and that the viewer who ventures into the viewing should also breathe. Another component necessary for the success of the film and which instead is totally mismanaged is the lack of "paranoia" and that state of confusion that should have led all five strangers to suspect each other in a context where everyone is suspicious. Unfortunately, this is also missing and at no moment are you led to suspect one now, another now. But all these, in the end, are faults to be blamed predominantly on the script which proves to be lacking in almost all respects: from the management of the characters to the final twists of the narration. The characters represent yet another sore point, lacking in personality and a real reason to be remembered. The question is therefore one: if you don't remember what they look like, how can you get passionate about their stories? But if some characters (those locked in the elevator) travel in total anonymity, others manage to fall into the joke stereotype. It is the case of the policeman marked by the usual trauma due to the classic accident in which he lost his entire family (by the way it is all the fault of a "suspect" street pirate) and of the Mexican guard in charge of surveillance who seems to be the only one to know something about the devil (is it possible that every time spirits and demons are involved in a film it must always be the Hispanic character who knows everything?). Even the dialogues often turn out to be excessively improbable and absurd, to the point that they often sink even into the involuntary ridiculous. But with the flaws we certainly do not finish here. Do we want to talk about the expedient adopted to make each character exit the scene and which seems to want to mimic an old and classic Hollywood mystery (turn off the light, scream, the light comes back on and the dead body appears)? Or about the useless, as incorrect, misdirections that the script offers so that the viewer does not arrive before time at the final solution? No, it's better not, I prefer to cast a compassionate veil. Let's spend two words, however, for the unimaginable ending and the banal message that the film wants to convey. As the minutes advance and the end credits approach, things start to become extremely forced, the coincidences increase a bit too much in number and the credibility of the facts is increasingly put to a hard test, until reaching the saccharine final moral more suited to a catechism class than to a horror film. The thing that saddens the most is not to notice how so many appetizing potentialities have been brutally thrown to the wind in favor of the "commercial candy at all costs," but to notice that in the realization of the film is also involved M. Night Shyamalan in the role of subject creator and producer. "Devil" is born as the first episode of a possible new horror trilogy. Let's hope for better in the next two chapters.