Devil

Written by M.Night Shymalan, Devil follows a story theme also chosen by Stephen King in a Creepshow short-story film. In that case, a group of people were selected and presented with their individual reasons for going to hell.

With each person, the audience was offered a glimpse into their lives to see why didn't deserve to ascend into heaven, and were subsequently thrown into hell, conveniently located in the next room.

In Devil, a group of presumably normal people all find themselves in the lift of a lavishly built corporate office block. When the lift breaks down, the individuals inside slowly but surely reveal themselves to be flawed. As the film goes on, the characters are all revealed to be criminals in some way, shape or form.

As the characters are killed one by one, the blame and suspicion baffles both the security guards watching on, in their CCTV buncker, and the individuals within the lift itself. As tensions reach the surface, the twist befalls the tragic criminals, and the moral of the story is played out, much to the audience's disappointment.

Whilst the film is the first in this genre I've seen emulating the devil in such a way, and choosing to stick so closely to that influence, and the latter stages of the film are fairly well acted, it never leaves b-movie territory and suffers for that. Featuring Christina Hendrick's incredibly lucky fiancé and The OC's Logan Marshall-Green (Ryan's brother), the film was always destined to be bargain-bin fodder but at least it's entertaining fodder.

Unless you're a fan of any of the actors involved, which seems highly unlikely, Devil is not exactly going to light your world. However, it is short and contains a fair few thrills and the odd moderate scare so it's not all bad.

6/10