Devil is the first movie produced under The Night Chronicles banner; a series of films whose stories originate from Mr M. Night Shyamalan, and because of that has many similarities to the writer/director's other films. It's quite talky, has a focused sense of location, character and story and is again thematically about finding belief and redemption.
It's about five strangers who get trapped in a skyscraper elevator, and the efforts of the police and security teams who are trying to rescue them, when they mysteriously die, one by one. John Erick Dowdle directs like a TV hack...competently but with little flair and the cast are a bunch of aspiring fellows who do a decent job throughout. The story originating from M Night means the thing is paced pretty well with the dramatic tension stemming from whether the killer is human or supernatural, whether they'll escape, and who the killer is...Satan in disguise or not.
The thing is, while it plays out competently enough, the ending is not that revelatory, being predictable and not that exciting. But for a psychological horror where people are stuck in a lift for most of the movie, it's pretty decent (and a damn sight better that 2009's Blackout starring Amber Tamblyn).
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