movie review! This never happens
Sep. 20th, 2010 06:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impyYesterday morning Ari called and asked if I wanted to see Devil. It was 5am and I couldn't remember a damn thing about the movie, so I told her I'd love to but I'm broke. It's okay, she says. I'll pay.
The last movie I saw in the theatre was How to Train Your Dragon, so I agreed. We went. And for the most part we didn't snark aloud except when absolutely necessary.
If you're like me and couldn't remember, Devil is the one about the people trapped on the elevator. Basically, you're supposed to spend the entire movie trying to figure out which person is actually the Devil.
Since M. Night Shyamalan had a hand in this, you're also going to spend the movie trying to figure out the twist. Let me save you the trouble. The twist is that any movie that involves a scene wherein your lead character (or one of them, as the case may be) is told they need to forgive the coward who caused the tragically dead nature of the wife and kid, even if the coward is still Unknown... You know they're going to run into the person who killed them. You do know that, right? Because if you didn't, um... I think we need to have a talk.
So there's the twist. The cop whose family died in a hit and run is going to run into the person responsible for their deaths.
Moving along. I forgot the first rule of movies like this. If you can identify someone in the cast, even if you don't know their name, and it's at all possible for them to be the bad guy, especially if you don't really recognize the other people... they will be the bad guy.
Which meant I spent most of the movie being pretty sure the pretty woman on the elevator was the Devil.
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
P
A
C
E
....Until the other characters thought she was, too. And then I realized I was wrong. About the time you realize this, another person bites the dust and you're pretty damn sure that with the twist coming at the end, the mechanic can't be the Devil, which means one of the corpses is. It can't be the security guard because he just died and that would make no sense. And the mattress guy is too obvious, which means the old lady is going to scare the crap out of you with her demon eyes.
Jesus.
s
p
o
i
l
e
r
s
w
e
r
e
t
h
e
r
e
....
While it's playing, the movie is pretty entertaining. I'm pretty damn sure I wouldn't introduce myself to the other two people on an elevator when it's obvious one of them has killed two other people, but hey.
Thing is, after the movie ends and you pick at it, you realize it's the sort of movie you'd expect to find on Sci-Fi (shut it, we don't deal with their new name). And if you had found it on SF, you'd think, "Fuck, this was amazing!" for a Sci-Fi movie. But it's not and therein lies the problem. It needed something else and I don't know what that was/is.
If you're not a big fan of gore, but you like your movies to make you jump, Devil's not excessively gory. People die, but it's usually off-screen, and the deaths are meant to creep you out and not gross you out.
Elevators, man. Elevators.
The last movie I saw in the theatre was How to Train Your Dragon, so I agreed. We went. And for the most part we didn't snark aloud except when absolutely necessary.
If you're like me and couldn't remember, Devil is the one about the people trapped on the elevator. Basically, you're supposed to spend the entire movie trying to figure out which person is actually the Devil.
Since M. Night Shyamalan had a hand in this, you're also going to spend the movie trying to figure out the twist. Let me save you the trouble. The twist is that any movie that involves a scene wherein your lead character (or one of them, as the case may be) is told they need to forgive the coward who caused the tragically dead nature of the wife and kid, even if the coward is still Unknown... You know they're going to run into the person who killed them. You do know that, right? Because if you didn't, um... I think we need to have a talk.
So there's the twist. The cop whose family died in a hit and run is going to run into the person responsible for their deaths.
Moving along. I forgot the first rule of movies like this. If you can identify someone in the cast, even if you don't know their name, and it's at all possible for them to be the bad guy, especially if you don't really recognize the other people... they will be the bad guy.
Which meant I spent most of the movie being pretty sure the pretty woman on the elevator was the Devil.
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
P
A
C
E
....Until the other characters thought she was, too. And then I realized I was wrong. About the time you realize this, another person bites the dust and you're pretty damn sure that with the twist coming at the end, the mechanic can't be the Devil, which means one of the corpses is. It can't be the security guard because he just died and that would make no sense. And the mattress guy is too obvious, which means the old lady is going to scare the crap out of you with her demon eyes.
Jesus.
s
p
o
i
l
e
r
s
w
e
r
e
t
h
e
r
e
....
While it's playing, the movie is pretty entertaining. I'm pretty damn sure I wouldn't introduce myself to the other two people on an elevator when it's obvious one of them has killed two other people, but hey.
Thing is, after the movie ends and you pick at it, you realize it's the sort of movie you'd expect to find on Sci-Fi (shut it, we don't deal with their new name). And if you had found it on SF, you'd think, "Fuck, this was amazing!" for a Sci-Fi movie. But it's not and therein lies the problem. It needed something else and I don't know what that was/is.
If you're not a big fan of gore, but you like your movies to make you jump, Devil's not excessively gory. People die, but it's usually off-screen, and the deaths are meant to creep you out and not gross you out.
Elevators, man. Elevators.
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Date: 2010-09-22 11:44 am (UTC)