Devil (John Dowdle)
And so to the the first in M Night Shymalans 'Night Chronicles' project a high concept horror about a group of people trapped in a lift and interestingly a step away from behind the camera for the man once hailed as the natural heir to Spielberg. Since then of course Shymalans star has not so much fallen as crashed through to the earths core and the more cynical may imagine the horror in this set up would be most effectively achieved if one of the characters happened to be Shymalan himself explaining in intimate detail the hidden symbolic intricacies of 'Lady in the water' for the full 90 minutes. Thankfully this is not the case. The premise here is that the Devil himself is in fact one of the occupants of the lift and is patiently waiting to claim the souls of these sinners one by one. Its not an especially original scenario and is redolent of, most obviously John Carpenters classic 'The Thing' but also any number of 'Twilight Zone' style narratives where the tension is achieved by the knowledge that an unknown killer is in the midst of a crowd of innocents. Of course the advantage of this particular version is that the diabolical nature of the antagonist allows Dowdle to effectively break the rules of the siege conventions and introduce a malevolent, indestructible force that can play with the law of physics and reality, an idea which allows the gore to be ratcheted up in progressively inventive ways.
So does it work? Well after getting over the initial shock of handing money over to anything with Shymalans name on it (I stopped believing after 'Signs' some lasted a little longer) Devil struck me as an incredibly smart move both by Universal and also the one time wonder boy of suspense cinema Shymalan himself. He lost his mojo long ago and finally exhausted any goodwill with 'The Last Airbender' (a cinematic admission of defeat as much as any serious intent to restore his tattered reputation) so like a fighter pilot with the shakes he handed the controls to someone else. And its fine. Its not great, it wont last long in the memory but it didnt make me want to surgically remove my own eyes at the sheer absurdity of the plotting and the clumsiness of it all, which lets face it makes it a vast improvement on anything else he's been involved in for the last ten years. Its nicely paced just silly enough to be enjoyable and nasty enough to keep you in suspense. There is a thematic nod at its writers previous films in the last reel but apart from that its a standard horror that is comfortably the sum of its parts.While I can imagine it is a bittersweet experience to see the execution of your own ideas handled in a significantly superior manner to your own this could be the beginning of an astute professional side step for an artist who appeared to have lost all credibility.
Night, its time to give up the Day job. I think its best for everyone.
